After 30 years, the venerable VMS operating system is showing no signs of going away. How is it holding on to its position at the heart of some of the world’s most mission-critical systems?
After 30 years, the venerable VMS operating system is showing no signs of going away. How is it holding on to its position at the heart of some of the world’s most mission-critical systems?
Most of the articles here highly biased towards one OS faction or another, leading to quasi-religious debates that have no answer. Finally an article that is informative and stays away from sensationalism. Good job Ken.
Our organization is tryig to sell into the govt and has been having trouble getting any useful information from the HP website. We want to target the unix portability layer at first just so we can get a taste of OpenVMS
Thanks osnews and infoconomy. Now i know a bit more on ‘that vms thingy which must be some kind of old OS’
Lol, after the first comment in this thread I just had to post that
But seriously, VMS has been around because it got into this niche market and did the job it was meant to do. However, I do see some threat from specialized Linux products out there. Although not always the best policy, being able to use the same platform for Cell Phones, Laptops, Desktops, Servers, and mission critical stuff is a utopian goal of software development. This is what Windows is trying to be, and why it has largely succeeded on PDAs & Smart Phones. So I think you will see some encroachment on VMS by specialized Linux.
I’ve spent the last 5 years working on VMS/OpenVMS systems. Of course, none of that was anywhere near close to unix stuff.
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My understanding is that the “Open” in “OpenVMS” means posix (api) support, so you don’t need to use the vms api to do stuff. Of course, there are a lot of differences vs unix, and while unix books are a dime a dozen, VMS books are rare and often out of print.
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You might want to check ebay for vms documentation. Dropping a couple bucks there might tell you more than the HP sales department.
As an old DEC (digital) employ I must say that either Compaq or HP has understood how big potential VMS has.
It’s the bullet proof OS!
I’m now a Linux user at my home, my business runs most on Windows. Both are good OS for the not so critical market. But VMS can run for years without a reboot. VMS had all the features 10-15 years ago that Linux now are starting to mimic
The awful truth is that Linux is not ready for the mission critical market yet, maybe in 10 years
Windows and Linux is just hobby OS in the mission critical market.
Why? VMS never fails! Don’t believe me?
I would still chose VMS if I hade to be responsible for some critical application like the stock market.
/Steve
I’m sorry but I’m falling back to the old adage: “Never is an awfully long time, I’d always bet against never cause you can’t lose.”
Does this mean that you would buy EVERY vehicle from moped to semi to trains to airplanes from one company?
One platform isn’t best in every situation. Just because some people are lazy doesn’t mean it’s better.
Although not always the best policy, being able to use the same platform for Cell Phones, Laptops, Desktops, Servers, and mission critical stuff is a utopian goal of software development. This is what Windows is trying to be, and why it has largely succeeded on PDAs & Smart Phones.
The only similarity between windows on the desktop and windows on smartphones is the name, they are two different operating systems, with different kernels etc.
I used to work at a cable tv company that used to deliver all it’s programming to the home set top box via vax/vms – for clarity they were using a switch star system for tv deliery, unlike the US (as I understand it) this system meant every box was uniquely addressable and therefore would allow someone to turn on and off channels as the user required.
I remember the interface (a command prompt) well, but in the 8 years I was there it never ever failed or needed reboot.
No kernel panics, no driver failure, do illegal operations, no red guru errors, no little bomb icon, just rock solid operation day in, day out.
…is OSAlert reporting rumors?
I don’t think VMS is going away at all. I have never used VMS, but I know it is heavily entrentched (banks, etc.)
I was a VMS Engineer. It was a pleasure to maintain because strict development/coding/testing standards were enforced (at least in my group, VMS Security) and while there were bugs, every OS has bugs and holes, DEC took OpenVMS security rating VERY seriously. They also were almost religious about creating and maintaining an operating system to match their VAX and later Alpha technologies for robustness.
Before I became a developer I was a System Manager. The only time our systems came down was for a power failure, hardware failure, or to do an image backup of the system disk.
Its memory and process management was excellent and the scheduler did a fantastic job of making a computer with 30 users and only 64mb of memory seem like it was blazing all of the time.
VAX Clusters were awesome too… Still are I suppose.
Balancing load across several CPUs…
I don’t know. VMS really is niche these days. But it deserves any notoriety it can get because it really is a great OS. Sadly, we just retired our last VMS machine where I work in favor of linux boxes.
You hear a lot of praise for VMS, but what some of you may or may not know the head VMS kernel developer left to work for Microsoft in the early 90’s to build, guess what, Windows NT.
http://www.melbournelinux.com/nt_history.html
Former VMS systems administrator and application developer… I’ve been hearing for years about the VMS and WinNT “connection”… which is why I always ask “Why then are WindowsNT and its descendants so (1) full of security holes and (2) CANNOT stay up for literally years between re-boots”… the systems I maintained were only rebooted for VMS upgrades and hardware upgrades. The era did not have security issues of the same nature we see today, but I’ll wager OpenVMS today is not hacked or spyware’d or adware’d like WindowsNT descendants. Maybe the guts of the OS have something in common, but it is downright offensive to hear “Windows comes from VMS” when VMS is so much better than Windows can ever hope to become.
how does VMS relate to MVS. from from dec, one from ibm? are they the same?
also do i recall correctly that openvms is now available free for enthusiats?
I highly recommend experimenting with the demo/user
account at telnet://deathrow.vistech.net
the OS is high quality and stable. Feels much more interactive than linux IMHO.
it’s not dead, its just not full of bells and whistles. besides, why would hp port it to IA64 if they werent going to use it…… or are they dumb?
MVS and VMS have nothing in common.
MVS – Multiple Virtual Storage, IBM’s mainframe OS superseded by OS/390 (now z/OS?). It also has no relation to its other mainframe OS VM/CMS.
I believe you are refering to the hobbyist licence… http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/ <- here?
Simon
vms on ia64 makes me happy
> vms on ia64 makes me happy
If anything VMS on IA64 should make you really worried. There are absolutely no signs of Itanic ecosystem improving and with Intel being the only developer of Itanic (HP dropped out) there is a pretty good chance of reduction of Itanic R&D budget. Itanic has such low sales volumes that I don’t see Intel pumping a whole lot of dollars in further development. I could see HP doing it, since they have their reputation to protect, but Intel will reduce the R&D budget in a heartbeat. Actually they’re already doing it. So, yeah, with the “popularity” of IA64 it is pretty easy to image VMS joining the HP’s already rich collection of half-dead operating systems (HP-UX, NonStop, Tru64) and platforms (PA-RISC, Alpha, and MIPS for HP3000 and NonStop).
Always nice trying out new systems
Is FreeVMS somewhat usable by now? Is it a viable alternative to OpenVMS in terms or reliability, security? Is EROS an even more secure OS? Anything else to consider? I really don’t like all the bugs and security flaws in today’s software.
The applications that this runs on includes computers and machines that cost millions each. Why replace it if it has been working for 15 years?
VMS has that unbreakable reputation only because
* the applications carefully work around bugs and are pedantically tested
* the infrastructure it is integrated into, is carefully choosen not to break it
* a massive lot of well trained and paid admins watch the baby 7*24
* the admins only perform actions pedantically tested not to be considered harmful
I am sure almost all of the Linux or WinNT or even a Solaris boxes around are administered by admin never being trained on the system and get installed untested crap fresh from some random website.
Carsten