[Info-vax] VSI OpenVMS V9.1 Field Test beginning.

[Zane H. Healy]

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> wrote:
> In article <sbmr4c$7og$1 at dont-email.me>,
> =?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_S=c3=b6derholm?= <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com>
> writes: 
> 
>> Den 2021-07-02 kl. 12:44, skrev Phillip Helbig (undress to reply):
>> > In article <sbm5to$131v$2 at gioia.aioe.org>,
>> > helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de (Phillip Helbig (undress to reply))
>> > writes:
> 
> Right.  But the purpose of a field test is to test a system.  If such 
> clustering is allowed with 9.1 but not with 9.2, then that means that it 
> will be removed (or at least de-supported) with 9.2.  Why make such a 
> change after the test?  Yes, clustering with older versions makes sense

It would less than impressive if something works in 9.1FT, but not in 9.2.

>> And it has clearly been said before that a VSI version *is* needed and
>> that VAX will *not* be supported by the production rel (V9.2 and later).
>> I have not seen anything changing that so far.
> 
> Right, hence the questions.

Exactly, the fact that the release notes say any version of 7.3 or later, is
a pretty broad statement.

>> It can even by that the above text is slightly wrong. But does it matter?
>> How many are in need for a cluster with VAX and x86-64?
> 
> With VAX, probably few if any.  With Alpha?  Probably at least a few.

One very obvious use case, and one that I've been involved with is recovery
of old obscure media that requires a Q-Bus system (or potentially Unibus). 
For the project I helped with, it was interesting needing to figure out how
to read DEC media that even a couple ex-DEC FE's had never seen.  The only
way to read it was a Q-Bus system, and nearly impossible to source drives. 
Having such a system in a cluster enables easily moving the recovered data.

There are places that still keep VAXen around for applications as well.  Not
everything that was written on VAX was ported to Alpha, and even less was
ported to Itanium.  How many places that have remained on VMS have kept one
or two systems around running on real, or more likely emulated VAX or Alpha
hardware?

Zane