what does it mean OpenVMS ?

['chris']

hi

what does it mean OpenVMS exactly ?

regards
chris

[Martin P.J. Zinser · Accepted solution]

Hello Chris,

VMS is an operating system that was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (aka DEC aka digital) more then 25 years ago for the VAX line of computers. In the meantime if was first ported beginning of the nineties to the Alpha chip and right now first versions of VMS running on Intel Itanium chips are at test customer sites. Due to the close relationship to VAX chips it was known as VAX/VMS for a long time, but with the port to Alpha the name was changed to OpenVMS, also to reflect the Posix compliance of the system. For many longtime users Open is a silent prefix ;-) and they just use VMS as the name. So, why do we have a forum about this here? Well, DEC was bought by Compaq and Compaq was bought by hp ;-)

VMS is a very robust, secure and scalable system. It runs from PC sized 1 CPU boxes to 32 CPU SMP servers. Systems can be put together in clusters, which can be deployed over multiple datacenters, while ensuring data and application availability through system and datacenter failiures as well as hard and software upgrades. Cluster Uptimes without interruptions of several years are
possible with some planning.

Areas where VMS is used include finance, health care, lotteries, emergency call centers (911) and telecoms.

One example in Switzerland I am familiar with is the Swiss Stock exchange (SWX), which is running the swiss stock trading on OpenVMS. Also the derivatives market (Eurex) for Switzerland is OpenVMS based (And I am even more familiar with that ;-)

If you are really interested, there is a great program called the "OpenVMS hobbyist license", where you can get the OS, as well as compilers and other prodcuts for free for private use. And a small Alpha can be found for a few hundred bucks on Ebay. Having a VMS system at home definitly earns you some Geek points ;-)

Some more detailed history about the first twenty years can be found here

http://zinser.no-ip.info/common/vms/qaa/vmsbook.pdf

Greetings, Martin

[Uwe Zessin]

... and VMS is just short for 'Virtual Memory System'.

[Ian Miller.]

The Open was added when the POSIX complient library was added (around VAX/VMS V5.5-2) in a fine example of confused marketing by DEC.

[James C. Nix]

The significance of the introduction of the VMS operating system (and the VAX/Alpha processors) was that it enabled programs to be written without regard to the address space limitations of its predecessor, IE RSX-11M with a 32K word address space limit.

While many techniques were employed to overcome that limitation, disk and memory resident overlays, shared resident libraries with entry point re-vectoring and separation of instruction and data space in RSX-11M+ the effort was "programmer intensive".

In the first VMS project I worked on, a missile guidance simulation system, a VMS array processor was used just to provide the 10 million or so target coordinates to a second VMS simulation processor.

That would have required just a few overlays on RSX11M.

[John Gillings]

re Ian:

>POSIX complient library was added (around VAX/VMS V5.5-2) in a fine example of confused marketing by DEC.

Not quite. POSIX had already been around for several years/releases. The "Open" prefix was added in an effort to state that although "proprietary", VMS was "Open" in the sense it compiled with virtually all recognised standards and would talk to just about anything. POSIX was part of the story, but certainly not the whole reason.

Unfortunately it was about the same time Alpha was released. This produced all kinds of confusion as customers assumed OpenVMS was for Alpha and VMS was for VAX. The Customer Support Centres zillions of calls asking "how to upgrade from VMS to OpenVMS"? and asking about compatibility. We had to patiently explain that it was purely a marketing thing, and everything would continue to work, just the way it always had.

So V5.5-2 is just plain "VMS", V6 and above is "OpenVMS".

Of course, *real* VMS people know that the "Open" is silent ;-)

[Antoniov.]

Here official FAQ of HP
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/faq/vmsfaq_001.html#vms1
VAX stay for Virtual Address eXtension while AXP has not meaning.

@Antoniov

[Uwe Zessin]

Here is a history timeline:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/os/openvms-release-history.html

It says that the name-change and POSIX release came with version 5.5 (that is my memory, too). If I recall correctly, the boot banner was changed with VAX version 6.0 to say 'OpenVMS'.

I really liked the POSIX environment. It made some tools from the Unix world available and I could easily unpack 'shell-archives'.

[Willem Grooters]

Looking on what is on the curent system:

BPS2004A> prod show hist
----------------------------------- ----------- ----------- --------------------
PRODUCT KIT TYPE OPERATION DATE AND TIME
----------------------------------- ----------- ----------- --------------------
...
DEC AXPVMS DWMOTIF V1.2-6 Full LP Install 03-JAN-2003 11:33:16
DEC AXPVMS OPENVMS V7.3-1 Platform Install 03-JAN-2003 11:33:16
DEC AXPVMS TCPIP V5.3-18 Full LP Install 03-JAN-2003 11:33:16
DEC AXPVMS VMS V7.3-1 Oper System Install 03-JAN-2003 11:33:16
----------------------------------- ----------- ----------- --------------------

As you see:
VMS = Operating System (OS)
OpenVMS = Platform.

Let anyone of Engineering correct me if I'm wrong:

First, on VAX, there was the VMS OS - built concurrently with the processor.
In the transition to AXP, the platform was introduced. The AXP (Alpha) processor is VERY DIFFERENT in hardware - but to keep the basic OS functionally unchanged (and have little differences in functionality bewteen VAN and AXP), some layer was required - that's what OpenVMS is about.
It's a concept to have (almost) the very same base for VERY different processors. That's what porting VMS to Itanium a "simple" job.

Willem

[H_Bachner]

I don't have the (Open?)VMS V5.5 SPD at hand, but the V5.5-2 SPD uses the term "OpenVMS VAX Operating System Version 5.5-2". The Release Notes started talking about OpenVMS with version V5.5-2H4, the V5.5-2 Release Notes only mention "OpenVMS Alpha" (and are titled "VMS Version 5.5-2").

At that time, (Open)VMS followed more "open standards" than any Unix derivate available. Marketing wanted to express this with the "Open" prefix.

Hans.

[John Eerenberg]

Chris,

OpenVMS also means you can get the source listings easily for one or two $K. Try doing that with the AS400 and some other OSes; if you as a system admin can get them at all, it won't be easy.

"OpenVMS" means, "come look at me and see how I work." For a proprietary operating system, that is pretty amazing.

john

[Keith Parris]

The name change from VMS to OpenVMS applied to the operating system as a whole, regardless of CPU platform, but it just happened to occur at a point in time such that the first VMS kit to have the OpenVMS name stamped on it was the brand-new Alpha kit, and this fact has caused no end of confusion since then because now many people think that "VMS" means "VAX" and "OpenVMS" implies "Alpha". In reality, subsequent releases of VMS on VAX also had the OpenVMS name as well.

It was the achievement of XPG4 branding which triggered the name change. At one point in time, VMS could legally have been called UNIX because it met all the requirements to qualify for the UNIX trademark. I think we're lucky Marketing didn't choose to rename it to something with IX on the end.

[Mobeen_1]

Chris,
OpenVMS just means that Open Virtual Memory System (VMS).

regards
Mobeen

[John Eerenberg]

> ". . . it met all the requirements to qualify for the UNIX trademark. I think we're lucky Marketing didn't choose to rename it to something with IX on the end."

No doubt!

[Antoniov.]

it met all the requirements to qualify for the UNIX trademark. I think we're lucky Marketing didn't choose to rename it to something with IX on the end.


What name?
VMSIX, VMIX or OPENIX
Theese name sound bad for me!

@Antoniov

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

I think we're lucky Marketing didn't choose to rename it to something with IX on the end.


You mean like OSF/1 or Tru64? I was once in a postion that also included OSF/1 support. I've met customers that where sure OSF/1 was not a "real" Unix because of the name...

Sorry, could not resist.

Cheers,

Martin

[Willem Grooters]

(Don't take this too serious, please....)


What name?
VMSIX, VMIX or OPENIX


Well, now we are chatting on this subject:
For Dutch, it's pretty easy :-D

'U' = you (well, English prononciation means the same)
'NIX' = 'nothing'

so :

UNIX = U NIX = you nothing => me all

opposite:

You all = me nothing = Not "you nothing" = not U nix => VMS (to name one)

EXACTLY what it is....

Just kidding.
I did attend a meeting in I think it was 1996, where this XPG4-achievement was presented. The sales-force tried it's best, but I think backing of Digital management mist have been miimal since that was the ONLY time (and the ONLY place) it was mentioned.
BTW -How are things today?

[Paul Jerrom]

IMHO what OpenVMS means is security, availability, useability, backward compatibility, plus the peace-of-mind that if you do something twice you get the same result!
Plus, of course, it means rare reboots, and not being paged at 2 in the morning!!
Although I guess that isn't what you meant...:-D

[James C. Nix]

It is nice not having to re-install the system every time some twerp with a pc writes another Blaster variant isn't it?

['chris']

hi

thank you for the answers !

does someone use OpenVMS at home, I mean installed on the home PC ?

greetings
chris

[Antoniov.]

No Chris,
doesn't exist a vms version for PC.
HP is developmenting a new version based on Itanium but I'm not sure it'll sell a PC version.

@Antoniov

[Ian Miller.]

you can certainly run VMS at home using the Hobbyist licence. Small second hand VAX and Alpha boxes can be obtained at reasonably cheaply and sometimes free (if people are clearing out)

[Keith Parris]

> does someone use OpenVMS at home, I mean installed on the home PC ?

It's not a requirement that you have VAX or Alpha hardware to run VMS. And it is indeed possible to run VMS on a home PC (though not natively), through the use of a VAX emulator program like the free simh by Bob Supnik or TS-10 by Timothy Stark (or the commercial Charon-VAX). See http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/ts10/ and http://www.softresint.com/charon-vax/index.htm, respectively.

You can then run the VAX version of OpenVMS under a Hobbyist license on top of any of these emulators and do so on an x86 home PC running either Windows or Linux.