Hello VMS enthousiasts,

From the VMSgenerations board a happy and wealthy new year.

We had a meeting - our "rendez-vous autour de VMS" series - on November
2021 the 18th. We translated some time ago the meeting report in
english. You can read here on our site here:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/CR3-18nov2021.pdf

or read it in this mail.

There are the links to all the presentation slides. A lot of them in
french, sorry. We work on translating more of them.

Hoping there will be more opportunities to the community to meet, speak,
and do things with VMS this year.

Best regards,

VMS generations Working group

________________________________________________

18th November 2021 Rendez-vous autour de VMS

MEETING REPORT

We held our last "Rendez-vous autour de VMS" session on November 18 with
a large audience. The main topic was "the availability of platforms
running VMS". We have invited some of the most important speakers
regarding hardware and software that support our favorite OS:

HPE for still available systems, new storage solutions and HPE hardware
support validity

* Dell Technology – storage alternative solutions running and
qualified VMS

* Stromasys – emulators for VMS

* ORACLE – news and update on VMS

* VSI – status of VMS progress on x86 and update of the roadmap

* And of course, news from VMSgenerations:

•update on discussions with VSI on licensing

•survey on the use of VMS first feedback

PRESENTATION BY HPE FINANCIAL SERVICES

Jocelin Bentayou for HPEFS (the financial branch of HPE) presented us
their asset management, financing and recycling offers for systems at
the end of leasing contracts. The circular economy/recycling axis is one
of their specialties. This sector can propose older systems and software
that have been removed from the official catalog to address the needs of
duplication/relocation, or capacity increase for projects that are
frozen on the software side. Requests in this sense from the VMS or
HP-UX installed base are quite frequent and the HPEFS catalog has often
enabled historical deployments to be extended without any technological
break.

Link to the HPEFS presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/1_HPEFS_VMS-Generation.pdf

STORAGE FOR VMS FROM HPE

Michel Parent for HPE Storage presented the latest news about VMS with
the MSA arrays, the evolution of the 3PAR family towards Primera, and
the Alletra full NVMe product line with a growing share of artificial
intelligence with InfoSight to optimize use and administration. Business
continuity is probably the most important aspect for VMS customers.
These product families are (or will be soon) qualified by VSI for VMS.

Link to HPE Storage presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2_2021-11-18-HPE-stockage-Primera.pdf

HPE POINTNEXT SUPPORT SERVICES

Eric Michée for PointNext HPE Services presented the support services,
from the first reactive level to the highest level of commitment. A
frequent request on the VMS installed base is the consideration of
long-life platforms. As the end of official support approaches,
offerings can be tailored to continue to use mature systems. Parts
availability is subject to creative options for the long term. A
significant number of VMS customers are taking advantage of these
extended support offerings.

Link to the HPE PointNext Services presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/3_HPE_services_Fondation_Care_OpenVMS-Itaniumpptx.pdf

DELL TECHNOLOGIES STORAGE SOLUTIONS

Sami Fredj for Dell/EMC presented the storage arrays and backup systems
and software qualified with VMS: Unity XT Flash or hybrid families with
included software, PowerMax NVMe scalable with included or optional
software, backup with PowerProtect Data Domain and VTL virtual tape
libraries, and integration with MicroFocus DataProtector, which are
often deployed at HPE customers sites.

Link to the DELL/EMC Storage presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/4_Dell-Storage-for-VMS.pdf

VAX AND ALPHA EMULATION

Alexandre Souf for Stromasys covered the good reasons for being
interested in emulators. Taking over the whole OS & applications without
rewriting, perpetuation on a recent hardware, removing the constraints
of the original hardware support... which explains the growing success
of these deployments covering VMS v5.5 to v8.4 on VAX and Alpha. Some
additional use cases may be considered: cybersecurity tests, disaster
recovery solutions, resizing for cpu or disks for an environment which
is stretched.

Link to the Stromasys presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/5_Stromasys-VMSGenerations-emulateurs-OpenVMS.pdf

ORACLE UPDATE

Kevin Duffy for Oracle presented the work in progress with VSI and the
VMS news from the Oracle catalog. Regarding the database Enterprise
Edition side, 11gR2 will be the last release available on VMS, with a
very long-term support cycle. The issue of the VMS 11gR2 client and its
inability to connect to the last generation databases (21c) has been
raised by several users. This is reported to be a barrier to maintaining
VMS for some who need to interoperate with newer versions of the
database. Oracle and VMSgenerations are listening to feedback on this
subject. In regard to Rdb, v7.4 offers the longest support. The version
for x86 will be based on this 7.4 stream.

Link to the Oracle on VMS presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/6_ORCL_Oracle-Database-and-Oracle-Rdb-Product-Family-Update-France-Public-2021.pdf

VSI ANSWERS ON LICENSING OPTIONS Benoît Maillard presented the status of
the association's dialogue with VSI on licensing options. Several
suggestions on the forums led us to a list of 10 options that VSI could
have proposed. For each, VSI has indicated its position, usually a
refusal for various reasons. We have received a lot of negative feedback
from users about this new way of selling VMS which is very unbalanced,
to the point that some people are talking about leaving VMS due to these
conditions. We believe that VSI must listen to its installed base and
find more satisfactory answers, otherwise the effect will be the
opposite of the one desired.

Link to the VSI-VMSgenerations dialog presentation:

https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/7_10-questions-a%CC%80-VSI_18nov21.pdf

"OUR FUTURE WITH VMS" SURVEY

Gérard Calliet presented a first summary of the questionnaire on the use
of VMS distributed by the association during last fall. The answers
collected reveal several concerns. The following points are the most
frequently reported by the users who responded: Plan to abandon VMS in
the short/medium term (2 to 5 years). Little interest in upgrading to
VSI despite the end of support for HPE v8.4. Loss of confidence in VSI
due to the change in licensing (mandatory subscription), and also due to
the delays in the x86 port. Given the interest of this survey to better
understand the expectations of VMS users, we will propose an English
version of the survey, and add a more precise survey on the needs in
terms of tools and software packages. The dependencies indicated by
users could help convince software vendors to keep VMS in their catalog.

Link to the VMSgenerations survey analysis presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/8_Pre%CC%81sentationRe%CC%81sultatsQuestionnaire.pdf

VSI ROADMAP UPDATE

Adam Hoff Nielsen from VSI commented on the roadmap update for the x86
version of VMS. It is expected that the so-called "limited production"
version 9.2 will be released in spring 2022 and the production version
with native compilers in late 2022.

Specific answers were provided by Homi Faris to questions asked about
the VSI roadmap :

1) X86 VMS cluster with HPE VMS ? It will normally be possible to have
mixed clusters (x86 v9.2 - Itanium HPE v8.4, x86 v9.2 - Alpha HPE v8.4,
and x86 v9.2 - VAX v7.3) but the final decision is not taken. On the
other hand, it is likely that improvements to the cluster protocol in
v9.3 for security will make x86 v9.3 clusters with HPE versions of VMS
impossible.

2) NVMe storage on ProLiant running native VMS (bare metal) ? NVMe is
not on the current roadmap but VSI is considering it and thinking about
possible support in the future.

3) Does SMP work on ProLiant in bare metal ? Yes

4) Will VSI support smaller machines natively (bare metal) ? VSI is
aware of the need for small bare metal machines and will investigate
this after 9.2 .

Link to the VSI Roadmap Update presentation:
https://www.vmsgenerations.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/9_VSI_ActualisationRoadmap.pdf

AND FINALLY, A WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATION BOARD...

The participation was significant both in number and duration and we
thank all those who have given us their precious time. It is the mark of
a strong support which illustrates the interest for the subjects of our
"Rendezvous". The exchanges between participants and speakers were rich
in information, which reinforces our belief in the format of these
meetings. It seems important to us to maintain this openness to the
entire VMS ecosystem, suppliers, editors, consultants and of course
users. We are already working on the next "Rendez-vous" that will be
dedicated to services, consultants and integrators providing
professional support to users during all phases of VMS deployment and
their project life cycle. The association's board is listening to users
on the topics they want us to address, and more broadly on any
contribution, reaction or suggestion so that the association's activity
reflects everyone's expectations.