topic Re: Upgrade question in Operating System - OpenVMS

Upgrade question

Piet Timmers_1 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:14:31 GMT

A simple question.

An alpha environment OpenVMS 7.3-2 must change to Itanium OpenVMS 8.3

Is it whise to upgrade the alpha fist to OpenVMS 8.3 and then the application to Itanium, or can I skip this alpha upgrade.

Greetings,

Piet Timmers

Re: Upgrade question

labadie_1 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:28:00 GMT

Hello

Well, you have Alpha Vms 7.3-2 at the moment. As Itanium begins with V8.any of Vms, you can only do
Alpha Vms 7.3-2 -> Alpha 8.3 -> Itanium 8.3

If you have the sources, you can try to copy them to Itanium 8.3, and re-compile. If you encounter a problem, you will not know if it has a relationship with the 7.3-2 -> 8.3 migration or the Alpha to Itanium migration.

It depends on the langage used in your software, the "quality and robustness " of this compiler on Itanium , the quantity of lines of code to migrate...

I would go for
Alpha Vms 7.3-2 -> Alpha 8.3 -> Itanium 8.3

Re: Upgrade question

Jan van den Ende — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:33:14 GMT

Piet,

as always, "it depends"

If your app is compiled (not too loose an assumption, I guess), then the best advise is to upgrade the Alpha, upgrade the Alpha compiler(s), and recompile & relink WITH ALL warning activated. (newer compilers tend to be a little more strict, and Alpha warnings are regularly I64 ERRORS).
Correct the code, then move it over to I64 & recompile. Data files, and essentially all DCL, can be just copied over.

But, IF there is little or no compiled code; or, IF there are no sources, THEN you might well have to find other ways.

And if you are bound to application continuity, prbably a mixed cluster as intermediate might be a good idea.

(SHAMELESS PLUG: if you need help, I do have one day per week available, except for the month of july)

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Upgrade question

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:02:03 GMT

The alpha 7.3-2 --> 8.3 upgrade typically is a non-event.

If the Alphas are to be decommissioned after the transition then upgrading them is a waste of (down/work) time.

If the Alpha are to participate in a cluster for a while, the I would want them to be at 8.3 even knowing 7.3-2 will cluster fine. It makes no difference for the existing applications and scripts. I just would not want to have to think whether I could use a given (new) feature on each box in the environment.

Focus on the Alpha --> Itanium transition.
Ignore the 7.3-2 --> 8.3 in that transition, as that will 99% sure be transparent and otherwise easy enough to deal with (some formatting changes in command output?)

fwiw,
Groetjes,
Hein.

Re: Upgrade question

Ian Miller. — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:14:57 GMT

See also the HP Integrity transition modules for some lists of things to consider

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/integrity/transition/modules.html

Re: Upgrade question

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:53:54 GMT

I would do it in 2 steps. Just to not have all the problems at once. But it all depends on how critical your applications are and how many good application debuggers you still have.

Wim

Re: Upgrade question

Hoff — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:46:01 GMT

Is it usually wise to have the same VMS and LPs on the source and target platforms for a port? Yes.

Is it necessary? No.

Would I upgrade Alpha here before launching the port? Maybe. Depends on how long I'm planning to operate across the two platforms, though that state often tends to be longer than planned, and on how crufty my existing OpenVMS Alpha code-base was.

And best to get to OpenVMS I64 V8.3-1H1 here, as that's as much as case of a hardware release as it's a maintenance release for V8.3.

All IMHO; there's no good simple answer here.

Re: Upgrade question

Piet Timmers_1 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:24:31 GMT

Everybody thanks for taking time to respond to my question.

As what I expected, there is no "right" or " wrong" answer. After the upgrade/transition, the alpha servers are not needed anymore, so the alpha upgrade looks waste of time.

To make the total process going from Alpha OpenVMS 7.3-2 to IA OpenVMS 8.3-1H1 not to complex I will advise to do the Alpha upgrade first.

Thanks.

ps. Every answer is "good" so everybody gets the same amount of point for it.