When and why to upgrade from OpenVMS 7.3-2 to 8.x

[Peter Barkas]

We're happily running 7.3-2 on our cluster but I notice that standard support expires in December 2006.

I have heard of performance problems when upgrading to 8.x and I am not aware of significant new features other than Integrity support.

As we have recently invested in new Alpha servers I wonder if there is there a good reason to upgrade and if so why and when?

Does anyone have experience to share?

[Heuser-Hofmann]

My experience with V8.3 vs. V7.3-2 is that the performance numbers of many programs and utilities are remarkably better.

Eberhard

[Karl Rohwedder · Accepted solution]

I can support Eberhard's opinion, there are many nice features in V8.3 (e.g. backup saveset compression).
Have a look at :
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/integrity/v83features.html
and
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/integrity/v82features.html
(Don't get irritated by the integrity in the URL, it covers Alpha and IA64).

regards Kalle

[Ian Miller.]

most of the new features apply to alpha as well as Itanium vms. Performance is better especially on multi cpu systems. IMMV

When VMS V7.3.2 moves to PVS I expect the support cost will be higher than support on the current version.

[Peter Barkas]

Thank you for the rapid responses.

I am encouraged to hear of positive performance differences and I have read the two FFBs.

We also installed a new SAN and backup device with the Alpha servers so the IO enhancements are not that important to us.

I'm still not convinced that the inevitable disruption to stability is justified by any of the new features.

However, as you point out Ian, support costs may be a factor.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

The customers I work with are all changing over right now, prompted by both the support status and the expectation to go to Itanium at some point. They don't want to take the step to 8.x before moving over (migrating?!) to Itanium.

As a user i welcome a ton of little and big DCL enhancements.

As an RMS person I welcome bigger buffers for convert output, and the P2 space global buffers in 8.3 (and the Virtual Memory re-use feature in 8.2).

I would go 8.3 for a first 8.x production test, but one of my customers decided to go 8.2 first anyway.

fwiw,
Hein.

[Peter Barkas]

From a personal perspective I agree with Hein, but for most of the folk here stability is much more important.

Without a juicy carrot or a big stick we'll stay where we are for a while I expect.

At least we can now be clear that is why and can ignore the scare stories about poor performance.

[Peter Barkas]

TBC