EVA using VMS & Windows

[Aaron Lewis_1]

On a nightly basis I need to FTP several gigabytes to a windows server. The problem is that sometimes the FTP's don't work properly. My network guys have looked at it without any success. If I added some drives to my EVA3000 and presented them to the windows server is there a easy {cheap} way to move the VMS data to the windows disks? Or would I still need to 'FTP' the data even though all drives reside in the same cabinet?

[Volker Halle]

Aaron,

you could use SAMBA (or Advanced Server/Pathworks) to provide access for your Windows system to the data on the OpenVMS disks via a file share. You wouldn't even have to move the data to the Windows system in this case.

Volker.

[Aaron Lewis_1]

Volker, I move the data from a dismounted shadow set. The VMS & windows apps both need exclusive access to the data.

[Volker Halle]

Aaron,

it may be possible to delete the presentation of a disk to the VMS system on the EVA and then present the same disk to the Windows system. But how would you handle the on-disk structure/file system/file access semantics from Windows (or from VMS) ?

There are tools available for OpenVMS to read/write FAT12/16/32 volumes (e.g. WINFX on the Freeware CDs).

Volker.

[Aaron Lewis_1]

I need this to be an automated / scripted processes. The data needs to be moved every night, including weekends. I don't want to have to come in to the office to delete / present disks everyday, and I definantly do not want to give this controll to the operations staff.

[Volker Halle]

Aaron,

would you want to delegate the EVA config change task to your Windows system ?

...
Comprehensive scripting: Command View EVA now ships with the HP Storage System Scripting Utility (SSSU), a powerful scripting utility. The SSSU provides a host to array communications bridge for documenting and automating EVA local and remote configuration tasks.


As you cannot access the same EVA disk from 2 different operating systems without prior intervention, why not consider an Advanced Server or SAMBA solution, assuming your network people can get this protocol to work...

Volker.

[Vladimir Fabecic]

What do you mean with "FTP's don't work properly"?

[Aaron Lewis_1]

Any idea where I can get a copy of SSSU?
Running Advanced Server or SAMBA is not really an option on our network. To many insane security policies on the windows side to make them work properly.

As for the FTP's not working properly, every once in a while the connection gets dropped.

STOR \clients\cache.dat
<125 Data connection already open; Transfer starting.
net write: %MULTINET-F-ECONNCLOSED, Connection closed
[Aborting data transfer]
<426 Connection closed; transfer aborted.
ABOR
<225 ABOR command successful.

Process says that windows is dropping the connection, and my windows guys say that this event is not recorded in any of the event logs, so it must be any Alpah issue.

It is really a random problem. We can go a couple of weeks with hitting it. Then we might get it 3 or 4 nights in a row. I have the FTP scripts setup to re-send on failure, usually on the 2nd or 3rd attempt the file goes okay, but occasionally all 10 retrys fail. I can't re-create during the day, and rebooting the windows server right before the FTP's happen seems to have no effect either.

[Antoniov.]

Aaron,
you want create a little partition on EVA3000 with a disk readable by windows and vms. Is it true?
I'm afraid this is impossible. Vms uses its own file system, called ODS2 or ODS5 while windows uses FAT32 ot NTFS file system. Totally different.
However, if you have Advanced Server installed on VMS, there is a little unknow utility, called PCDISK.
In this case, you can create a little FAT32 partition, readable by windows.
In some way this partition must be visible by vms with EVA3000 firmware.
If you have A/S and partition may be visible by vms you can read and write data with follows commands:
$ MCR PCDISK
$ USE B:

Warning: I never tryed with SAN/NAS disk. PCDISK works with local disk like DVA0:

Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

Aaron,
another solution may be NFS. You can create a local vms drive and a remote windows drive. Both operating systems supports NFS.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Antoniov.]

Sorry,
I don't read your last post.
What kind of ftp is running on windows server? I guess it's IIS that has some mismatch with any other ftp.
Just for example windows 2k3 server doesn't use bandwidth for ftp
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;891371
or else you can't transfer file greater than 2GB
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;831914
or else (this may be true) connection are limited
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;816525

Antonio Vigliotti

[Robert Gezelter]

Aaron,

Having regularly dealt with large transfers, I would suspect that the problem is neither on the source (ALPHA) or destination (Windows) systems. I would suspect that somewhere in the network, something is going "burp", and the connection is timing out.

Personally, I would break the transfer into smaller chunks, and do the transfers in sequence, repeating each piece until I can confirm that it arrived intact. Using ZIP/UNZIP is also an option frequently to reduce bulk (the reduction of size by ZIP/UNZIP can also be impressive with some data files). ZIP/UNZIP also provides a CRC check on the transfer of the file.

I hope that the above is helpful.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Andy Bustamante]

You can use Pathworks/Advanced server to provide a Windows share as already noted.

Provide the file size in a "control file" and have modify the transfer job to check against this.

Check the network speed/duplex settings all the way through. Have you network guys check line counters for errors. Auto negotiate has a poor history on Alphaservers. I'd recommend making sure both the server and the switch are hard configured to agree on speed/duplex settings.

Andy

[Volker Halle]

Aaron,

you may also want to consider using FTSO (File Transfer Spooler for Open Systems), which is available from the OpenVMS Freeware CD V7. It would allow you to set up a file transfer job on the OpenVMS system, which will automatically retry on failures. If it's implemented like FTSV (layered on top of DECnet and used internally within Digital for a long time to copy files aorund the world), it will also restart aborted transfers at point of the failure (may depend on functionality in the FTP server/client).

Pointer to SPD:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/info/SP5434/SP5434PF.PDF

I've heard, that it also works using Multinet.

Volker.

[Vladimir Fabecic]

Long time ago I had simular problem. I had to copy files from NT to VMS and from VMS to NT, many files and directories. Here is how I have done it: I took a linux PC and mounted network share from NT as local file system (using smbfs) and mounted VMS NFS export as local file system (using nfs). All I had to do was simple copy operation. And no additional software instalation on VMS or NT. Besides, Unix shell scripting is much more powerfull than NT shell (command prompt) scripting.
It worked fine.