Competence Center for VAX/VMS migration: what do YOU want

[Didier Morandi_2]

I have to create and publish a private letter on that subject since I learned a couple of off the mike information.

I will use your email addresses from public posts you did all, and also any addresses that you will send to me at didier dot morandi at freesurf dot fr

This will be a small list, handled manually. If you do not want to receive any info on that subject please tell me and you will be removed at once.

D.

(that private info is mainly for the European market. Sorry for that).

[Art Wiens]

Fresh back from the Charon-VAX training where we learned there is a company making PCI-Unibus and PCI-Qbus adapters for those environments that absolutely still rely on custom adapters in such buses.

http://www.logical-co.com/index.htm

Cheers,
Art

[Garry Fruth]

A methodology for comparing old source to old object and old executable modules. Change management is likely to be less rigorous or non-existant over the long life of some customer written software.

I worked on one Vax to Alpha migration, where the customer thought, but was not sure, that the .exe that they were running matched the various .cob source modules. I was able to assure that they had the correct code, by compiling the source with the old compiler and using the DIFF utility.

[Didier Morandi_2]

re: Art

Hum hum... did you read this?

"Read this: "http://www.didiermorandi.com/products.htm
"and visit that: http://www.logical-co.com/

posted in here Jun 21st?

(pls new comers, read *whole* threads before replying to them. It's Netiquette. Thanks).

D.

[Art Wiens]

No I did not _really_ read that. So sorry...I thought I actually had something pertinent to contribute after reading one of Willem's comments and "rushed" to the bottom to reply.

Moderator, please remove those 10 points as I'm not worthy!!

Cheers anyways,
Art

[Didier Morandi_2]

your humility gives you 9 points more :-)

D.

[Lawrence Czlapinski]

Didlier: Pershaps, you could have it all generic for VMS migrations. You might also have customers that would want to migrate from VAX to Alpha.
A checklist of things that have been problems with other conversions with ways to handle them for the new target system. You have listed some of these on your site.
Lawrence

[Keith Cayemberg]

Hi Didier,

I have just some random suggestions for you.

Many of the ideas so far provided would fit under the heading "I64 Migration Best Practices" with the proviso that there are many different and complicated situations inwhich a customer may find themselves (or may not yet know the're in). This suggests to me that this discovery and solution process (needing input from others experiences, consultants, and specialized services at each stage) may be best represented in a decision tree that could be continually added to and improved as new customers progress to being successful old customers.

This decision tree could eventually be provided on the internet complete with further links to service providers and solutions in the appropriate places.

I would also like to note that migration to/from Alpha may be an appropriate path for some customer situations when moving from VAX to IA64. Consequently, limiting your Competency Center to a VAX-IA64 direct path may not be the best practice for some of your customers.

A migration decision tree would include branching questions such as
"Do you have all source code for your application?"
This would probably be a binary yes/no decision. But other decision points would likely be multinary with many possible paths which depend on customer preferences or needing consultancy such as:
"Will you prefer to transfer the serial machine interface: (1) As is without code change or compile - goto decision between Charon-VAX and DECmigrate paths (2) As a native image with recompile possibly needin code changes (3) As a re-tooled solution running over TCP/IP and better integrated into the existing modern CIM infrastucture.

Number (3) is something I have run into a couple of times. Often VAXen are sitting in factories almost forgotten. When moving to Alpha, Charon-VAX or I64 a typical question is...
"How do we move that specialized Serial Interface to the Machine-5 to TCP/IP so that we can move Level-2 VMS System to the Regional Computer Center 3 kilometers away. There must be some standards or experience with protocol conversion between Serial and Data Packets!"
However I have found little information in the internet to answer such a question directly.

If I remember correctly the OpenVMS migration manuals do have some simplified decision trees. You may need to clear up any copywrite issues if you which to expand on this idea.

Cheers!

Keith Cayemberg

[Didier Morandi_2]

Re: all
If I do not ack your posts or suggestions please consider that they have been included in the specs :-)

Re; Keith.
After having read twice your message (thanks for it), I realize that if I put on line such IA tools, I loose my job as a Consultant... :-(

So, in other words, as someone said: "there is inuf space for us all" once the mig phase has arrived in VAX users minds. This is why the VMSgateway.net site will "offer" questions and answers but answers on the "what" and obviously not on the "how" or I've better go back SAP :-)

D.

[Didier Morandi_2]

All,

I have to drive to The HP European Competence Center in Sophia-Antipolis (Valbonne), south of France tomorrow.

I have an appointment with someone there on Tuesday.

I'll let you know via the private mailing list I'm working on.

Until that, if you wish to have a look at the VMSgateway site prototype (only three pages on line for the moment, as the other ones will depend on what I will learn on Tuesday), feel free to click http://www.vmsgateway.net

Feedback (and English corrections) GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks,

D.

PS: Yes, I will have one for all of you :-)

[Aaron Lewis_1]

Didier, It may be helpfull to cover
Business Recovery / Fault tolorance issues.
Todays solutions are much better than what was available when VAXes where state-of-the-art, or even when VAX went EOL.

While hard to image, it is possible that some companys/clients currently running on VAX, do not have a seperate recovery center with compatable VAX hardware. If they lost their datacenter, they would be out of business.