topic Re: AMDS and Availability Manager in Operating System - OpenVMS

AMDS and Availability Manager

Piet Timmers — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:07:02 GMT

Hi everybody,

Can someone explain we: what is the difference between AMDS en Availability Manager.

Thanks.

Piet

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

labadie_1 — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:25:20 GMT

Amds is the "old" product and will be progressively abandoned. Availability Manager is the product which will be updated.

Amds installation adds a verb to the Dcltables:
$ avail/motif
or
$ avail/interface=decwindows

With Availability manager, you do not have this verb, as you install a part on NT (or W2K) and you click there.

You should stick with Availability manager, unless you do not have a NT with an X display available.

You have a very good presentation at
vmsone.com/~vmsonepages/dfwdays/Presentations/Kierstein.ppt

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Ian Miller. — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:28:33 GMT

Availability Mgr is the follow on product from AMDS. It runs on VMS and Windoze platforms and usese java. It needs more memory and CPU than AMDS. Current versions of Availability Mgr have caught up with AMDS in terms of functionality.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Ian Miller. — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:59:01 GMT

See
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/availman/index.html
for more info.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Martin P.J. Zinser — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 11:43:54 GMT

To Quote from the AM documenatation:

"The Availability Manager tool evolved from the OpenVMS-only DECamds product and its Motif graphical user interface (GUI). Because the Availability Manager Data Analyzer requires a Java run-time environment, it does not run on OpenVMS VAX, which does not support Java."

An yes it does run on Alpha. One point of annoyance, AM insists on installing its own copy of the JRE independet on what you have already on your system...

Greetings, Martin

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

EDER MEDEIROS VICENTE J — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 13:40:45 GMT

Hello,

The AM product will eventually replace DECamds. The initial rewrite was part of the system management policy to try and have OpenVMS system management tools work on OpenVMS and Windows, since an OpenVMS system manager may have one or the other available, but not both.
As far as AM packaging its own JRE to run against, it didn't used to. So, when the system manager changed versions of Java on their machine, AM broke. Most of the time, going from one version of Java to another involves some porting. So, AM now provides its own runtime environment so it will always work, and the system manager is free to install whatever version of Java he/she desires.
Hope this helps.

Barry Kierstein
AM Project Lead

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Ian Miller. — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 15:09:48 GMT

Thank you "Barry Kierstein AM Project Lead"
A helpful statement from a person you knows. Any chance of speeding it up? It's still appears slow compared to AMDS when running on a alphastation thats not exactly leading edge (alphastation 400 4/233 :-)

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Willem Grooters — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 01:56:30 GMT

Ian:

IMHO There's just ONE proper way to speed it up: it should be running in NATIVE mode - so NOT in Java....

Willem

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

EDER MEDEIROS VICENTE J — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:21:39 GMT

All,

Hmmm... I am not sure how I became Eder, anybody know? I just signed up for this forum yesterday...
Anyway, speeding up AM on OpenVMS. The biggest thing now is to give it the memory it needs. If it is always garbage-collecting, this slows down the GUI tremendously, creating pauses in responding to data updates, mouse clicks, etc. If you are seeing pauses, then look into the part of the installation notes dealing with performance considerations for help in this area. The GUI, when given enough memory, will be a bit slow, but consistent.
Now, for the rest of the speedup. Java is slower. Why then Java? Well, keeping sources going for both Windows and OpenVMS is very low. The code differences to accomodate both platforms is about 2 pages of Java code, and about 6 pages of C code for native routines. If the rewrite had been done in C, then one would have to work more closely with the operating system, graphics, etc., and more time taken to these details rather than features and enhancements.
Once the port to Itanium is finished, etc. the team here will be looking at performance. There are some indications that things can improve with some study, but with porting to Itanium, needing mature Java performance analyzers, etc., this hasn't been done yet. With this will come some more up to date recommendations on memory settings, etc.

Barry

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Martin P.J. Zinser — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 10:01:02 GMT

Hello Barry,

sorry, am I the only one who thinks the state of software development is ridiculous if an upgrade of the Java enviroment breaks the application? If anybody would tell me that I do have to ship the C-RTL to every customer and install it in a separate tree since if they had a newer one the program would not run, I would declare that person nuts. But for Java this just is accepted as "normal". In which direction is IT moving here?

Greetings, Martin

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Keith Parris — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 11:30:20 GMT

Barry, I've submitted a request to the ITRC folks to help you with your identity crisis.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Rob Buxton — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 19:30:26 GMT

Martin,
Yep, the JRE updates are a real pain irrespective of the environment. There are differences between JRE 1.3 and 1.4 that break applications written using the earlier one. Hmmm backwards compatibility eh?

Thankfully you can have multiple JREs installed on your workstation.

As regards AM, there's one issue, it seems to be network sensitive. I've never fully got to thebottom of it as I'm the only VMS admin here and increasinly have less and less VMS stuff to do.

HP, on a number of products,are moving away from JRE's, the new Insight Manager still uses a JRE but the statements being made are that it is gradually being removed.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Mitchell Bell — Mon, 24 May 2004 11:26:30 GMT

Have you found where to download the latest software?

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Ian Miller. — Mon, 24 May 2004 13:15:41 GMT

Mitchell,
what do you mean download the latest software?

The current release AM V2.3-1 is available from
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/availman/

and V2.4 will be arriving real soon now.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Dave Pierce — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:38:40 GMT

I am not sure if this should be a new thread, but are there any issues with running mixed versions of AMDS on the same cluster, with different system disks. The VMS 7.3-1 to 7.3-2 seems to want me to reinstall AMDS. I would like to keep up to the current version. We do a slow rolling upgrade over the cluster, where each node is booted into an upgraded copy of the system disk over a period of ~ 3 to 6 months. Each time a node is rebooted into the disk, the rolling upgrade continues. We have 3 systems upgraded, 6 still to go. AMDS fails getting data from the newly upgraded nodes even after successfully starting the data provider. I get the following message %AMDS-I-NOLBR, cannot find library AMDS$CONFIG:AMDS$VMSAXP-V732.LIB for node xxx where xxx is the node name when I issue the AVAIL/MOTIF command on any node. Will a reinstall on the 7.3-2 nodes fix this, as I suspect?

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Ian Miller. — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 16:57:11 GMT

There are two parts to AMDS. The data provider (rmdriver) part is supplied with VMS and is upgraded with VMS. The console is seperately installed and is upgraded seperatley. For each version of VMS there is a .LIB file in AMDS$CONFIG. These are supplied with the AMDS console and newer ones are included with the newer version of the console. Sometimes you can copy the .lib files from a system running a newer version of the console to a system running an older version. However its generally a good idea to upgrade the console to get the latest features and bug fixes.

The answer to your question is to install the current DECamds Console kit and all will be fine. This will be on the VMS CDs or from the Availability Manager web site
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/availman/

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Volker Halle — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 04:21:53 GMT

Dave,

to clarify on Ian's answer, you need to install the NEW AMDS (V7.3-2) kit on the OLD (V7.3-1) OpenVMS systems, so that they'll get the library for the new OpenVMS version.

You only have one kit for AMDS, you need to modify the OPTIONS to also install the GUI:

Do you want the defaults for all options? [YES] NO

and then answer YES to the question about also installing the data analyzer.

For AVAIL_MAN, there are now 2 separate kits: AVAIL_MAN_COL (collector) and AVAIL_MAN_ANA (the GUI).

Volker.

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Bart Zorn_1 — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:46:13 GMT

Both products *should* have the same functionality by now, but the fact that AM is written in Java makes it really hard to use. Even on a DS15 with 1 GB memory it is not fast.

What is still missing from AM is the System Overview window of AMDS. AM allows you to view only one group at a time.

Regards,

Bart Zorn

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Bob Blunt — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 12:52:19 GMT

Check the release notes for the product. Most of the current releases will install on older versions of OpenVMS and "do the right things" I try to keep the most recent version installed on the console manager system(s) in our lab and cascade that release down through our clients as required or possible. I'm pretty sure that the current release will load the client pieces on anything down through V6.2-ish.

bob

Re: AMDS and Availability Manager

Barry Kierstein — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 14:34:40 GMT

All,

Here are some answers to what has been brought up lately.
To veiw newer versions of OpenVMS, one must upgrade a system with the latest kit. For the most part, the support for a newer version of OpenVMS is in the data collection programs which are part of the Data Analyzer (GUI). Sometimes the Data Collector/Provider piece (RMDRIVER) is enhanced for a release of OpenVMS, but the Data Analyzers are coded to know what version of RMDRIVER they are communicating with, and what the capabilities are.
In conclusion, most of the time you get support for a newer version of OpenVMS by just installing and using the new version of the Data Analyzer.

Barry Kierstein
No longer "Eber"...