[Info-vax] upgrading to VSI VMS---and back

[Hans Bachner]

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) schrieb am 06.01.2022 um 16:33:
> In article <4246c283-6a6b-4838-bc87-ee6347b6b36dn at googlegroups.com>,
> Volker Halle <volker_halle at hotmail.com> writes:
> 
>> here is the OpenVMS cluster compatibility matrix:
>>
>> https://vmssoftware.com/products/clusters/
> 
> Better than I remember and better than some here have suggested.  Alpha
> only: no problem mixing HPE and VSI.  VSI Alpha and x86?  No problem.
> Even HPE Alpha and x86 is possible for migration (with 8.4, apparently
> completely supported).

Apparently, the modifications to the SCS protocol (which require a patch 
for existing VMS versions) have been postponed to V9.3. As stated 
previously, VSI can only produce patches for VSI VM releases.

> (Even VAX, not to mention Itanium, are also
> possible, though it's not clear what is the maximum number of different
> architectures there could be in one cluster.)

As of OpenVMS 9.1, all four architectures can coexist in the cluster:

> View of Cluster from system ID 1341  node: X86001                6-JAN-2022 21:40:05
> ┌───────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
> │                  SYSTEMS                  │                MEMBERS                │
> ├────────┬───────────────────┬──────────────┼────────┬────┬─────┬───────────────────┤
> │  NODE  │      HW_TYPE      │   SOFTWARE   │  CSID  │ VO │ STA │  TRANSITION_TIME  │
> ├────────┼───────────────────┼──────────────┼────────┼────┼─────┼───────────────────┤
> │ X86001 │ VMware, Inc.      │ VMS V9.1     │  1000E │  1 │ MEM │ 23-AUG-2021 08:10 │
> │ CHVAX4 │ VAX 4000-108A     │ VMS V7.3     │  10023 │  1 │ MEM │ 16-DEC-2021 22:05 │
> │ CAXP24 │ AlphaServer DS10  │ VMS V8.4     │  1000A │  0 │ MEM │ 11-AUG-2021 12:13 │
> │ GIGAHZ │ AlphaStation DS15 │ VMS V8.4-2L2 │  10015 │  1 │ MEM │ 22-SEP-2021 14:28 │
> │ CAXP15 │ AlphaServer DS10  │ VMS V8.3     │  10013 │  1 │ BRK │ 23-SEP-2021 10:59 │
> │ CHAXP2 │ AlphaServer DS25  │ VMS V8.4-2L2 │  10022 │  1 │ MEM │  7-DEC-2021 19:56 │
> │ IMGACT │ HP rx2660  (1.67G │ VMS V8.4-2L1 │  10021 │  0 │ MEM │ 23-NOV-2021 14:15 │
> └────────┴───────────────────┴──────────────┴────────┴────┴─────┴───────────────────┘
> ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
> │                                    CLUSTER                                    │
> ├───────┬───────┬───────┬────────┬──────┬───────────────────┬───────────────────┤
> │ CL_EX │ CL_QU │ CL_VO │ CL_MEM │ MEMS │       FORMED      │  LAST_TRANSITION  │
> ├───────┼───────┼───────┼────────┼──────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┤
> │     4 │     3 │     4 │      6 │   64 │  4-AUG-2021 00:39 │ 16-DEC-2021 22:05 │
> └───────┴───────┴───────┴────────┴──────┴───────────────────┴───────────────────┘

This is a mix of physical and virtual machines (nodenames starting with 
"C" are CHARON-VAX or CHARON-AXP instances). Each node has its own 
system disk, disks can be shared with the documented restrictions (e.g. 
no ODS-5 for the VAX).

Hans.