topic Re: What VMS systems are you managing ? in Operating System - OpenVMS

What VMS systems are you managing ?

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:10:37 GMT

The King thread made me curious about how many systems are managed by howmany people.

I would like to know :
1) what type of machine
2) how many of those machines
3) support hours 24/5, 24/7, 8/5

And how many persons are used for doing the System Management.

I have :

2 GS160=4QBB=2 clusters 24/7
4 AS4100=2 clusters 24/7
4 AS4100=2 clusters 10/5
2 AS4000=1 cluster 10/5
4 AS2100=2 clusters 10/5
1 AS2000 10/5
5 AS1000 10/5
6 AS1000 file servers 24/7
94 AStation500 10/5
and some lost stations, a bunch of decservers and the storage used by these nodes.

2 system managers doing 10 hours per day and on call 24/7.

Wim

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Kris Clippeleyr — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:37:35 GMT

Wim,

Can't go in too much detail, but we manage some 80 systems (all VMS, most of them clustered (2 systems per cluster)), ranging from AlphaServer 400 to DS25, and some VAXes.
Our group consists of 3 people, working 8 hours a day. Practically, we're also on call 24/7.

Greetz,

Kris

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Willem Grooters — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:39:41 GMT

Wim,

My list isn't half as big, to use an understatement):

1 PWS500au@600, VMS 7.3-2, 1-node cluster (yet), managed whenever needed but daily monitored.

System management tasks are "on request" for
- development and test machines (DS20 (1) (7.3-1), AXP1000 (2) (6.2, 7.3-1), AXP2000 (1) (7.3-1))
- a number of the 16 clusters (2100, 4100 and others, (7.1-2 - 7.3-2)) at customer's customer

and when I feel the need to do so:
- rx2600 (8.2 FT) at employers office

Not an impressive list, I know. Most experience is based on previous jobs

I'm getting curious on another issue:
If you are developing:
* What is your development system
* What languages, databases
* What development tools?

For me:

that named PWS500au (7.3-2): FORTRAN, PASCAL, COBOL, some java, some PERL, RDB and MYSQL. Using Netbeans (at least, did use standalone, working on Distributed Netbeans)

DS20 (7.3-1): SynergyDE Dibol, some java. Plain VMS (RMS, no tools but locally developed commandprocedures and conventions)

Willem

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 08:46:00 GMT

Willem,

Most of the 10/5 systems are development and test systems (except 60 AStations that are production).

Developments are done in C, Sybase + stored procedures, decwindows, DSM/Mumps, a little bit of Fortran and a very little bit of Pascal. I myself use WASD and DCL and some freeware stuff.

Wim

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Ian Miller. — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:45:33 GMT

mostly older small to medium VAX & Alphaserver up to some AS 4100 based clusters with HSZ70 storage at various remote sites. VMS versions from V5.2 to field test versions. My team of three does 8ish hours per day weekdays, occational weekend work and on-call 24/7. As the systems mostly belong to customers I don't think I can do details.

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Art Wiens — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:19:26 GMT

1 Cluster 24/7:
4 - AS800 , 2 - VS4000-96 , 2 - VAX 4000-105

1 Cluster 24/7:
2 - ASDS10 , 1 - AS800 , 2 - VS4000-96

HSG80 SAN w/ ~ 1,224GB - 24/7

Standalones:
1 test/dev AS800 , 3 test/dev VS4000-96

~ 20 production VAX4000-105 or VS4000-96 across the country , mostly 2 node clusters - 24/7.

2 people - 24/7 ;-)

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Art Wiens — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:21:13 GMT

Ooops, almost forgot:

Standalone:

1 - ES40 16/5
1 - AS800 16/5
1 - AS1200 16/5

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Bojan Nemec — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:55:32 GMT

I work in a small hardware,software and consultant company (I'am one of 3 owners).

We work on several sites with different systems from VAX 3100 to Alpha DS25, some of them are in cluster with different storage subsistems (from ordinary SCSI discs to HSV storage). Operating system version also varies from 5.5-2H4 to 7.3-2 in total about 20 or more systems.

On most of them, we are doing System Management and writing application software (partial solutions or full IT support). Some of the sites are 24/7 per call.

For this (system management and application software) we are in 2. For hardware and networking there is a third guy, but we use to mix our knowledge.

Bojan

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Jan van den Ende — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:31:10 GMT

Hi,

our environment is a little bit different again:
ONE production cluster, and 1, somtimes 2 test systems.
Productioncluster was build as 2 AS2100.
Add a VaxStation 4000-90. Add 3rd AS2100.
Move 2 AS2100 to second site at 7KM to form multi-site cluster.
Add ES40, Upgrade AS2100's to AS2100A's. Remove VaxStation. Add ES45 Remover AS2100A Add ES40. Remove AS2100A. Add ES45. Remove AS2100A. Add DS15Station. and lately: change DS15 station into server, and remove ES45
(ES45 "temporarily" available for prestige project).
All this while VMS 6.2 -> 7.1-2 -> 7.2-1 -> 7.3-1 -> 7.3-2.
Running DBMS, Rdb, Sybase, Progress, RMS, Basis+, and "random access"-(ported from Prime) Databases.
24 * 365.25, available, 7 * 24 support.
Support responsetime for two applics "should be less than 15 minutes".
6500 authorized users.
200 - 300 weekly mutations (major or minor) to user base, about same number in application authorisation changes.

- anybody seconding the plan to tranfer this to a Tru64 - M$ configuration?

Support on VMS and on the technical sides of all applics com from 3 people, one of them 50 % of time.

Jan

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Zahid Ghani — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:39:03 GMT

I have 4 node Disaster Tolerant Cluster
2 x nodes (DS25) at each site
HSG80 Storage
with LES100 intersite link
Robomon cluster management.
and MSL5026 tape library.
24x7 support provided by 3member team.
with average of 1500 users connected to the cluster at any moment.
Application is SOP, WEB ordering,logistics- all bespoke.
zahid

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

labadie_1 — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:48:30 GMT

Jan

Support responsetime for two applics "should be less than 15 minutes".
6500 authorized users.
200 - 300 weekly mutations (major or minor) to user base, about same number in application authorisation changes.

Support on VMS and on the technical sides of all applics com from 3 people, one of them 50 % of time.

So two and a half guys to manage all that ?
Congratulations.

I suspect that after the move to Tru64 or Windaube, it will require a lot more people.

I wonder how CFO and head of IT can justify that they need a lot more money to do the same thing (not counting the migration cost).

Gerard, puzzled :-(, but having already seen very similar things several times

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Karl Rohwedder — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 03:25:49 GMT

I am freelancing together with 3 friends and I am the last VMS guy here, all others are doing
mainly Windows...
On the customer site I am managing a bunch of 10 VAX systems, mainly VAXstations and MicroVAX and 2 VAX4000-400 and 14 Alphas, mainly
DS10/DS20 and some older ASRV 1000A system, some clustered some standalone.

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 04:15:43 GMT

I forgot to mention : 1 person is 60%, I also manage some smelly middleware and monitor my systems 10/5. Only backups and monitoring at night is not our business (repairing is). Of course I don't count all my bosses but 20% of our work is for satisfying them instead of VMS.

Jan : we have a menudriver to maintain users. It takes 1 minute to do the work and 1 minute for admin. So 200 users would take 400 minutes or about 7 hours.

I am amazed about the differences in load per person ...

Wim

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Steven Underwood — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:55:04 GMT

Well, I'm am no where as large as many of you here but...

1 ES40 24/7 (moving to 7.3-2)
1 DEC3000/400S 24/7 (7.1)
1 MicroVAX II 8/5 (5.2)

Just me here to maintain these plus all the other equipment on our network (~300 PC's). So glad VMS does not need much babysitting ;)

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Jan van den Ende — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:18:53 GMT

Wim,

basically (nearly) all of usermanagement changes are performed by a batchjob that gets its info from the mutations in the personnel system.
Those just require us < 5 minutes / day to check smooth running.
We have convinced Management that ANY info in the personnel system is considered THE info our systems have to go by, so ANY errors (in spelling of name, in end-date of job/contract, in department...) that are found in error ONLY get repaired in the personnel system, and next morning early it is fed into VMS.
Btw: different applications DO need info from the personnel system that are NOT in SYSUAF, and that all is maintained by the same job (5 - 15 minutes daily).

Changes in authorisation for (level of) application use are REQUESTED by a user's superior, and decentrally there exist several dozen Authorisation Officers, who have to sign the request. Then it is transfered to a department that inplements them (over VMS, Tru64, AIX, Novell & W2K)
In VMS application authorisation is implemented as an identifier _ACCESS, which governs the appearance of the applic in the main menu, and the protection of the applic funtion files. Granting/revoking this identifier is coupled (by Advanced Server) to adding/removing corresponding group membership in Novell & W2K, which then governs the availability of the app. on the desktop.
The people authorized to do those autorisations are authorized to access the AUTOR applic, and those users have NO privs, the AUTOR applic has the necessary ones.
Of course all this with nice accountings and reportings.
So, it WAS quite a job to put this all together (it has been a years-long expanding development), but NOW it requires very little effort.

Although: a big reorganisation, and a change of personnel system, are to be implemented before year's end, so, never a dull moment.

Cheers,
have one on me!

Jan

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Lawrence Czlapinski — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:22:55 GMT

Wim,
2 sites
4 clusters (2 production and 2 development)
10 Standalone VMS (8 production and 2 development)
1 Unix (Alpha or Vax)
2 system managers doing up to average of 8 hours per weekday plus on call 24/7

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Martin P.J. Zinser — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:01:38 GMT

Hi Wim,

while I can not go into details, about a dozen production clusters, a few hundred VMS systems in other use, SAN, PC and Unix server support.
About 15 employees in system management.

Greetings, Martin

P.S. My main affiliation is actually not with that part of our operations ;-)

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Willem Grooters — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 02:32:45 GMT

Jan forgot to mention one thing: The cluster that is up-and-running-and-available for over 7 years now, is part of that environment. Without interruption (of some significance). ALL hardware and software replacement were done 'on the fly'.

Only he can tell if that involved more people than the two-and-a-half. But I doubt it would.

Who can _guarantee_ this availability with Unix or Windows - and the TCO....

Willem

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

labadie_1 — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 03:30:45 GMT

Wim

may be we should start un new thread about Vms TCO... :-)

Re: What VMS systems are you managing ?

Ian Miller. — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 03:39:43 GMT

The VMS advantage is often hidden as the true cost of supporting systems running inferior operating systems is not known (too much unpaid overtime by the Slaves of the Dark One). The reliability adjusted TCO (as seen in http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/whitepapers/tco_clusters/TCO_WP_Feb04.pdf ) is an interesting approach with I think shows the true cost more accurately.

I think the figures shown here (people/server) could only be matched by a very homogenuous and tightly controlled unix server farm with a lot of automation.