Please keep us updated

[Dave Gudewicz]

Martin,

For those of us unable to be in VMSland this week, please keep us informed as best you can.

Many thanks,

Dave...

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello Dave (and the rest of the crowd),

unfortunatly I am most probably not the best person to ask, since I am mostly up in ZKO in a workshop to update the OpenVMS Exams (which is good news in itself, since a good certification program certainly helps to catch up with some of the mindshare occupied by CNA, MCSE etc.).

I can report that Sue is doing a tremendous job as ever, I already mentioned the Superdome you can play around with here. Since I was here early I got involved in the setup and had an opportunity to to literally screw around with a couple of rx2600. The box itself is ok in my opinion, although there are a few loose odds and ends that you most proabably would like your service technican to show you when you install your fist one.

We had our small "meet the people behind the names" BoF tonight. Willem, Ian, John Eerenberg, John Gillings and Tim (sorry, I draw a blank on the last name) where there. We had an animated discussion and generally a good time ;-)

The DSNlink BoF is still on for Wednesday and from the registration list it seems also a couple of people who are not active forums participants are interested.

John Reagen gave a talk about the Itanium instruction set. A very informative talk, but some of the design decisions made by Intel/hp for this chip are, lets say interesting.

Hoff gave the traditional Hints and Kinks talk, which is well worth the visit even if you have heard most of the stuff on earlier iterations. He has a new presentation on ATAPI devices in general and VMS in particular which is very interesting. DVD reader support will be added for Itanium. Other stuff you might want to do with DVDs is likely to work, but don't ask your support center for help ;-)

The other people around here certainly have more to report.

Greetings, Martin

[John Eerenberg]

Martin, Dave,

I'll take a second to chime in too.

I have to say that it is very good to be here. Interacting with the engineers is great.

Availability Manager is an overlooked gem (as in I have overlooked it). The presenter-engineer took suggestions for future features. I added my $0.02's worth for a new feature.

For TCP/IP Services, I got a chance to ask about efficiency (we are considering a config that will place upwards of 4,000 concurrent users on one box). If things pan out, it looks very good.

As Martin mentioned, we looked at the Itanium instuction set; very interesting is the understatement of the month. EPIC is a whole 'nother mind set. It'll be "interesting" to see-read a crash dump later this week.

and more . . .

Sunday and Monday are down, four more to go. :-)

Time for some zzzz's.
john

[Ian Miller.]

so far its been great. I've done 'VMS Process internals', VMS Sysman - using AM etc, stuff about hp openview agent (now available), wbem; troubleshooting hung processes, stuff on itanium instruction set (the people that designed that must have been on LSD :-)

We've seen the hp management too. Everyone is very upbeat about vms on itanium. hp have said they have done some vms marketing but they know it's not enough.

This evening we saw various demos of things including plenty of web stuff.

There is a feeling here that vms is in a better position that it has been for years.

[John Eerenberg]

I had my doors blown off when we did the Itanium lab. Each of us had our own server to config and boot! The lab was very well organized and rather complete.

The console in the Integrity servers is completely different from Alpha's. We spent 4 hours in a lab of which a full 2 1/2 hours was just at the console level. Understanding how to set it up and create alias's that make the console look similar to Alpha was one of our labs.

We used Rx2600 servers. They are very well engineered. There are 2 serial ports (one is on all servers, the other is only on some and has more functionality). IP on ethernet is available to both consoler "ports" too. Telnet is probably the prefered way to use the console over serial (serial port console logs aside). Firmware updates will be ftp'd into the console; no OS involvement. Simultaenous telnet console sessions can be made and controlled. You can point a browser at it and perform work that way. Setup of the console is going to be a significant part of working on an Itanium VMS server.

The last hour or so we finally booted VMS. At that point it was almost boring. However, I found it very interesting to look at the file dump of files that VMS is going to maintain for the console. I also ran SDA and looked at some data structures as well as some of the exe$sched:: code. Itanium's instructions are much more complex then Alpha; this documentation from Intel is invaluable: http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/manuals/iiasdmanual.htm . I think those that understand this stuff are going to be well employed for a long time. :o)

[Hein van den Heuvel]

This evening we had a nice 'social event'.
An informal gathering to close out the week, knowing there will be some more cool contents tomorrow morning.
This evening was the time to spend any excess 'VMS bucks' (earned through intellegent questions/feedback during presentations) during auctions for OpenVMS 'stuff' (shirts, mugs)
There was also a very good, emotional, cash auction to benefit the childrens fund for the late John Wisniewki.

A good time was had by all!

Regards,
Hein.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello all,

well, I am back (my luggage is still lost :-( .

As you would expect Itanium was a major topic of the sueposium (I've stolen this one from Hoff ;-) .

While I had no time to attend the class with the rx2600s that John mentioned I was setting up the classroom with the systems. I agree that they are resonably engeneered, you do want to look out for the small circuit board attached to the CPU getting loose though.

There was lots of high quality and in depth information on Itanium internals, from the instruction set to crash dump analysis. While I would not accuse the designers of substance abuse ;-), they certainly came up with some very "interesting" concepts. To quote a whitepaper by Ruth Goldenberg:

"Although we say "VMS is VMS", whether it runs on an Itanium, Alpha, or VAX platform, in the context of crash dump analysis, architectural differences are very apparent."

So, as long as we are talking DCL and normal business applications, the differences really should be minor. But once you get near to machine instructions the environment becomes considerably different. So, if you are into this and have not yet started to investigate Itanium, get ready now.

Hein already mentioned the happy hour on Thursday evening, which was a success in every respect. Not only did the participants (and I think also the presenters ;-) enjoy themselves, but also a considerable amount of money was raised for John's daugthers (more than 4000 USD). I think this was also in his spirit, of not letting you get down by a bad situation but rather to do something to improve upon the problem.

Did I mention that Sue did a fabulous job running the event? Well, if I have not, she definitly did. There was lots of high quality information <> generally a very good spirit between all the participants and the speakers. I really hope I will be able to make it also in Spring of 05.

Greetings, Martin

[Willem Grooters]

I can just add my personal notes - since my collegues already covered the general and most interesting issues...

This was my first bootcamp - and, most definitely, it won't be the last one! I loved the atmosphere, the 'family spirit' encountered between lots of attendees. Meeting lots of brothers (and sisters) actually sharing the same passion for VMS. Hopefully the message of the small user's concerns - the feeling of being forgotten - has come through with the management - and marketing!

Sue - I know you read this forum - thanks for the mavellous time last week!

Willem

[Ian Miller.]

I hope the energy generated by over 100 VMS fanatics in once place won't be lost :-)

One big thing I remember is the planned cheapness of the itanium vms systems. I hope public information will become available soon. The renewed enthusasim of the people because they can see VMS has a future is another thing.

I met Ruth Goldenberg too!

[Dave Gudewicz]

Thanks to all for the updates. It was good to hear about the help John Wisniewski's daughters will receive from his other family.

Martin,

I liked the sueposium reference borrowed from Hoff.

And I see that we can perhaps add a third item on the "you don't want to see this made list."

sausage
laws
VMS on Itanium

Hope your luggage finds it way to you.

Dave...