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OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

vmssoftware.com

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Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#31

Post by tssva »

wogna wrote: post #20
fleitz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine server that has been up for decades. It can remain live through OS upgrades, hardware upgrades and I believe even architecture changes. It's like places that use mainframes it's probably not a good idea to build a new bank on mainframes but if you have one it's far less risk to keep the mainframe than rewrite everything. OpenVMS has some very unique features but truthfully it's most valuable feature is it run…

But that's the thing: places which fit those requirements usually run some IBM solution (AS/400 and the likes). I've never encountered VMS in production before, so I'm really curious to some concrete examples of companies using it.

VMS was widely used in healthcare.

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#32

Post by gobusto »

wogna wrote: post #20
fleitz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine server that has been up for decades. It can remain live through OS upgrades, hardware upgrades and I believe even architecture changes. It's like places that use mainframes it's probably not a good idea to build a new bank on mainframes but if you have one it's far less risk to keep the mainframe than rewrite everything. OpenVMS has some very unique features but truthfully it's most valuable feature is it run…

But that's the thing: places which fit those requirements usually run some IBM solution (AS/400 and the likes). I've never encountered VMS in production before, so I'm really curious to some concrete examples of companies using it.

I used to work as a software developer in the UK insurance industry, and I can tell you that we (and hence several of the insurers/brokers we dealt with) used OpenVMS.

In contrast to some of the other comments here, we weren't using it because moving to another OS - or architecture - would have been a pain. In fact, our software originally ran on x86 machines at some point in the distant past, before we migrated it to OpenVMS relatively recently.

I don't know why OpenVMS was given preference over GNU/Linux, *BSD, or Windows; I'm guessing that the technical managers above me had their reasons, but I couldn't say what they were.

I left that job a few years ago, but I think that they did intend to eventually phase out the VMS systems as our new, GUI-based product slowly replaced the older text-based one.

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#33

Post by malux85 »

wogna wrote: post #16
yourapostasy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still a non-trivial pile of organizations out there that rely upon VMS. I still can hardly believe it myself when I run into them, but as I understand the situations when I ask out of curiosity, these are relatively lower-margin organizations, and the cost of rewriting their VMS applications for them greatly exceeds the cost of adopting a platform that is a port to a major chip architecture and emulating th…

Could you give an example of such an industry? VMS to me has always been that OS that everyone claimed to be better than UNIX-likes, but none could explain why.

Here's a couple of examples for you:

I Sysadmined a VMS box running on a couple of AlphaServers (2100 and 2100A) if I recall.

At one point a disgruntled employee had taken a 22 rifle into the server room and shot several rounds at the equipment, only 1 bullet hit, but it went through a RAM bank, the system disabled the faulty hardware and continued running.

The other cool part was the interchangeable boards - the system had a case that swung open on the side and you could insert cards much the same way as you slot in PCI cards today, except one of the cards could be a CPU block, or it could be RAM, so if you had a CPU intensive workload you could disable a physical board of ram, take it out, and replace with a CPU board - without halting or rebooting the OS

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#34

Post by wfunction »

4ad wrote: post #27
bitwize wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenVMS is more reliable than Unix, and bears a more sophisticated kernel design intended to handle real-world workloads. In particular, unlike every extant Unix except Solaris, async I/O is handled the correct way in OpenVMS (and Windows NT), with real async system calls and completion-based notification.

> OpenVMS is more reliable than Unix, and bears a more sophisticated kernel design intended to handle real-world workloads. So Linux is not intended to run real worldloads?

Linux is not Unix (?)

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#35

Post by 4ad »

wfunction wrote: post #34
4ad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenVMS is more reliable than Unix, and bears a more sophisticated kernel design intended to handle real-world workloads. So Linux is not intended to run real worldloads?

Linux is not Unix (?)

For all the reasons that matter, it is. Same kernel design, same external interfaces, same kind of internal interfaces.

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#36

Post by mariuolo »

protomyth wrote: post #7

OpenVMS supports nine programming languages,six of which use a DEC-developed, proprietary back-end code generator on both Alpha and Itanium. We are creating a converter to internally connect these compiler front-ends to the open source LLVM back-end code generator, which targets x86_64 as well as many other architectures. (The other three compilers have their own individual pathways to the new architecture.) This sho…

> (The other three compilers have their own individual pathways to the new architecture.)

Is one of them for VAX or is binary support for that architecture being dropped?

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#39

Post by rollthehard6 »

chx wrote: post #37
lallysingh wrote: post #2

Who, and why?

Atomic plants. Why? I guess because it doesn't stop. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep... http://www.mapps.l-3com.com/candu-plant-control-systems.html

See also Tandem, another HP owned system now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NonStop_(server_computers)

Re: OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]

#40

Post by ch_123 »

mariuolo wrote: post #36
protomyth wrote: post #7

OpenVMS supports nine programming languages,six of which use a DEC-developed, proprietary back-end code generator on both Alpha and Itanium. We are creating a converter to internally connect these compiler front-ends to the open source LLVM back-end code generator, which targets x86_64 as well as many other architectures. (The other three compilers have their own individual pathways to the new architecture.) This sho…

> (The other three compilers have their own individual pathways to the new architecture.) Is one of them for VAX or is binary support for that architecture being dropped?

Based on some of the prior documents, I believe they are:

MACRO-32 (The compiler for VAX assembly), C++, Ada

MACRO-32 works at a lower level than the other languages, and needs to generate assembly directly instead of an IR. The C++ compiler is being replaced by Clang, and the previous VMS releases used Adacore's compilers, so Adacore will need to be convinced to port their compiler to x86 VMS.

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