How many VMS systems exist

[Ian Miller.]

for many years we where told there are 'about 400,000 vms systems in the world' and I always wondered on the basis of this figure. Sometimes a modest growth was mentioned. What I would like to know is how many there are, is the number going up or down and what is the confidence in this the figure (is it just a guess or do hp have some sort of handle on how many). I know often VMS systems are hidden away unknown to most of the company and just sit and work in a state of benign neglect.

[Sue Skonetski · Accepted solution]

While it is against company policy to give out exact numbers, your figure is a little low and there is a modest increase. The numbers we use are based on fact and not a guess. There are services contracts, licenses and a few other ways to know. You are correct that there are systems tucked away in places that just keep on running. I remember a story of someone that had a VAX, it was running but they could not find it. It seems when the lab was remodeled some one thought it was part of the airconditioning system and put it behind a wall.

Warm Regards,
Sue

[Uwe Zessin]

I can't tell you the number - you didn't expect this, did you?

During most 'upgrades' I have seen so far we removed the same number of old servers as we put in new ones.

I know one instance where a HSZ50-based AlphaServer cluster was replaced by a DS10, but there have also been projects where a single node was replaced by a cluster.

[Uwe Zessin]

Hello Sue,

I have heard such a story, too, but in my version it was an old NetWare server. We had a customer who almost missed an AlphaServer for Y2K.

I doubt it will ever happen to a Windows system ;-)

[Ian Miller.]

why is the number a secret? Modest Growth - good but can you saw what percent?

I suppose systems traded around still have the licence even though hp does not know where it is (if system not on maintaince). How does hp know about systems thrown into skips?

My lost VMS system story. A small VAX in Hamberg formed a vital link in getting information on screens and worked for years. The users entered information on PCs and it was published. One day the information was not updated. After a while somebody remembered there was another system in between the PCs and the screens and a hunt around the building found the microvax in the corner of an office buried under paper etc. The disk had died. No backup existed as the system had been completely forgotten. I rushed to site with a tape containing the backup made before the system was shipped and restored it to the replacement disk. Luckily the information was not held on the VAX and they where back in business.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

What would interest me is if the 400 k number does include the hobbyist systems (and actually how many of these are out there). These obviously would have been prime candidates for "grey" licenses in former times.

Greetings, Martin

[Mike Naime]

I bet that we could account for at least 1000 VMS systems from the posters here on the ITRC forum. But it's a long way to 400,000 from there. :-)

I am among the minority of VMS users that is in a growing VMS shop. We have racks of DS25's and ES47's on order, and are getting ready to order more 32-P 1280's.

Unfortunately for the VMS Admins, I am outsourcing. While this means lots of Alphaservers for us to maintain. It also means that there are fewer VMS Admins at client sites working on 2-4 VMS systems because of us. It takes less Admins to maintain 200 Alpha's at 2-3 sites than it takes to maintain those same Alpha's at 60 sites.

[Antoniov.]

Only for playing, not serious :-)
Me and my customer have more than 10 active server, I'm a very little business so if I'm optimist I tought cover 10% of Turin market (but I cover much less).
In Turin there are at least 100 servers; in Italy there are at leats 2,000 systems.
UK, FR, DE and NL have at least same; in Europe I can count (as minimal) 20,000 VMS.
USA can have double and other country sa Europe.
Total: 100,000 vms systems world wide.
AT least 10 for for each vms: total 1,000,000 people using vms.
May be!

@Antoniov

[Jan van den Ende]

Well,
if we're shifting that way:

Antoniov, how many Europeans you guessed us VMS?

As far as know, EVERYbody in Europe that uses a cellphone for SMS messages uses VMS!.

That might increase you number somewhat :-)

Jan

[Antoniov.]

Jan,
I guess only for funny play ;-)
However, if there are much less systems (in Europe) I shall be amazed and I should become a big vms developer :-O
On the other side you could count and guess how many vms system exist.

Have a great day!
@Antoniov

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hi,

it is not that easy to say (I don't do contracts ;-), but my guesstimate is that we are running about 400 VMS systems (everything from AlphaStations 255 to GS1280).

Greetings, Martin

[Antoniov.]

Martin,
if you are right I cover the 2,5% of worldwide vms systems with my customers
:LOL
Here I service more than 10 vms system (entry level DS10, AS400, etc.) :-)
You are a very serious person too serious

@Antoniov

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hi Antonio,

sorry, I obviously was not clear enough. The 400 estimate is only for the company I do work for.

You could add 3 Alphas in my current home office and I do have to admit I am not exactly sure how many smaller VAX systems are still back in our home in Germany. (Between 5 and 10)

Greetings, Martin

[Antoniov.]

Wow Martin :-O
now I understand becuase you are the highest level user in vms!
Congratulation from me!

@Antoniov

[Willem Grooters]

How many - I think: there are far too many systems, and these are far too embedded in crucial environments to abandon VMS.
(In some meeting it was concluded that this is what would happen if we lost all VMS systems (and kept the rest up-and-running):

COMPLETE CHAOS.
)
Nevertheless, I would like to know in what environement these systems are at work; simply as file/web/mailserver, as a 'back-office' system, or as a front-end? Office-based or steering maufactoring?

Another aspect - What is the perspective for software development - from de developer's point of view? Grim, I'd say, since in any of these environments, the majority of applications will be rock-solid, proven good software, if any is added to the system, if not yet delivered by HP...

Willem

[Uwe Zessin]

We have a customer who buys small AlphaServers (DS10) from time to time. He uses them on a big plant to collect data about electricity, steam, ... for billing purposes. I usually don't know about them except when I look into our order processing system as this is just box-shifting and the customer does all work on his own.

[John Eerenberg]

The total number of systems doesn't tell the whole story. At one time I we had over 25 systems. Now we have half that number. In the mean time the number of users has grown an order of magnitude. The largest cluster has roughly 7,000 users (and growning). We found a way to keep extracting huge efficiencies by consolidating on ev6's. ev7's are next. ;-)

john

[Andy Bustamante]

John makes an excellent point about comparing users to systems. We've dropped almost 60 percent of Alphas compared to 10 years ago, but have consolidated the these users on a five node cluster in manned data center. Easier to maintain and adds redundancy so it's a win-win.

Last week I migrated a customer who has his system on site from a 4100 to an ES-45. HP sees one system under service, but I've just tripled the number of end users this customer can handle.

[Uwe Zessin]

Number of users should be trackable as well, because bigger servers need more license units.

I have not checked - is it still possible to buy an unlimited user license for a system?

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Well number of users is also not all ;-)

The application I am most familiar with essentially requires one user on the system
(Yes, there are a few interactive accounts for the personal nursing the application, but strictly speaking we could do without). And I suppose similar things could be said about other applications (Oracle comes to mind
at once).

Greetings, Martin

[John Eerenberg]

Uwe,
> "I have not checked - is it still possible to buy an unlimited user license for a system?"
Absolutely!

Martin,
> "Well number of users is also not all ;-)"
> "The application I am most familiar with essentially requires one user on the system"
Most defintely. I have that situation too (albeit on a small scale). When it is operational, I wonder how I can track the number of users? It would be similar to forum "guests" not logged in.

john

[Willem Grooters]

To put a related question:

How many applications are maintained, or newly developed
- explicitly and solely on the VMS platform
- on VMS and ported to Unix/Windows
- on Unix/Windows and ported to VMS

Both 'home-grown' and purchased.

Willem

[Dan Cornett]

Just to cite another (current) instance:

In 1997 I came to a 2-site manufacturing environment with ~37 VMS machines (some in clusters), mostly VAX. There are now ~22 machines, split between VAX and Alpha (with a large net increase in MIPS, of course!). The largest machines are dual-processor DS20's (dual CPU's so a run-away real-time task doesn't kill the whole system). The number of machines will never probably get below 8-10 across the two locations because of the functional independence desired and necessary between manufacturing areas.

More to the point of the question, however: there is one building where they have a two-machine VAX setup (not a cluster; not even networked -- a production VAX with hot backup and external I/O switched automatically when they switch to the backup). They bought a 3rd machine as a spare in 1999. None of those 3 have been on any maintenance contract anywhere since installation (sometime before 1997). I only know about them because they need Y2K remediation (which required a larger disk, a little more memory, and updating to the minimal Y2K VMS/Vax version). I suspect those 2 (3?) machines are not counted in the ~400,000 -- and generally are not thought of even by local site management when they want to know how many computers are used.

We also have about 4 machines that were purchased as spares, but don't show up on any maintenance nor software licensing contracts.

So, if we're typical (for manufacturing, as opposed to general usage or "back office"), then might one presume any counting of (particularly older) machines to be at least ~10% low.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hello Willem,

depends what you count as "an application".
We do constantly develop our software. One "exchange" uses a couple hundred executables.
So, how many "applications" are these? One, since they are all kind of related, about 6 (different production envrionments we run), approx 1000 (Total number of different images)?

Greetings, Martin

[Willem Grooters]

Apart from the number of hobbyist machines (there will be quite a lot of them?) there might be quite a number of VMS systems around, mostly VAXen, presumably, that will not be counted. I recall to have read that in France only, there are thousands of them (Didier Morandi - you seem to have some figure?) and I know for the Netherlands, though a lower number, there will be quite a lot as well that are not counted. 400.000 is a VERY LOW estimate!

Willem