[HECnet] long term paks

Fri Mar 13 21:35:47 PDT 2020

I love the *concept* of VMS being ported to Intel. As a hobbyist it’s very exciting. If VSI has a suitable hobbyist program for this, I’d take it all for a spin.

But I’m concerned about the business viability of all of this. Nobody would consider VMS as a new platform for a new deploy. This is obviously targeted for legacy, on-prem, historical applications that can’t be retooled otherwise. I get the whole “a new hardware platform extends the life of my application” thing, but I wonder how much of this workload really still exists – or that should continue to exist in its current shape or form.

The largest example of VMS production usage that I know about is Ticketmaster. They still have VMS machines running on simh today, however they were forced to migrate large portions of their stack across to more modern infrastructure (think Kubernetes, Tectonic, CoreOS, Docker, AWS) in order to keep their business moving and evolving. Even for a client such as this, I doubt they would move any remaining legacy VMS machine away from the current platform across to Intel native.

All technology has a use by date at which time it’s only of interest to enthusiasts, hobbyists, collectors and the like. Just because you can keep it working isn’t always an excuse to keep it alive. We constantly see new technology evolving which offers newer and more modern solutions to legacy issues.

There is also the associated training and devops cost for anyone new who works on a legacy platform. You should avoid this at all costs when there are more people available who can work on modern infrastructure. I’m dealing with this at the moment with one of my clients who uses a PICK based accounting/invoicing system. They are down to one consultant who can work on this platform. Nobody wants to know about it. The company needs to move away from this platform, but doesn’t want to spend any money. They will eventually be forced to do this – and it’s going to happen at an inconvenient time when something major breaks.

I love all technology, and I’ll continue playing with VMS and other deprecated home computing platforms such as the TRS-80. I grew up with this stuff, so there is an internal (hobbyist) desire to keep using them, but I’d never consider them options for any new business related applications.

Cheers, Wiz!!

From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Thomas DeBellis
Sent: Saturday, 14 March 2020 7:08 AM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] long term paks

I think part of this is valid.  However...

The VAX to Alpha emulation was an ongoing effort and I recall that what was published about it was quite interesting (I think this was mid-1990's).  Recall that the Alpha was the fastest chip in the world at the time; 300 Mhz.  Nearly incomprehensible...  That was plenty of speed to get your VAX code working.

With gigahertz speeds, it seems to me that not only would emulation of Alpha be usable, but that emulation of Alpha emulating VAX would be usable.

The value-add of x86_64 VMS is that you can keep running VAX software; the sources might not exist.  You may have invested many, many man-years in development and this is a cheaper alternative to porting.  That is certainly the case in many instances on z/OS.  It is not about the cheaper hardware.

Microsoft has a different sales model that is largely consumer driven; if you don't respond quickly then people go elsewhere.  For commercial systems, hoops are de rigueur.  Believe me, you just don't walk in and pick up an IBM mainframe (or you didn't anyway).  In some ways, VSI, Stomasys and the others are acting in a perfectly ordinary manner (that we as hobbyists do not appreciate).

________________________________

	On 3/13/20 3:49 PM, Keith Halewood wrote:

	I’m still having difficulty in envisaging a situation where VSI (and Stromasys and other commercial purveyors of VAX and Alpha emulators) can actually generate any new business even if/when VSI produce a port of VMS to x86/64. Are VSI going to bother doing JIT, or even one-time translation of VAX and Alpha images to x86/64. I got the impression that VAX to Alpha image translation wasn’t that great for anything particularly sophisticated. VAX and Alpha legacy software and its maintenance are probably as locked into now obsolete layered products as they are the hardware (real/emulated). New potential customers buying x86/64 hardware or cloud capacity are going to take a look at Windows and Linux, having already discounted the several orders of magnitude higher costs of VMS if the somewhat opaque VSI marketing rituals haven’t already put them off.

	I know what Windows Server 2019 will cost me, up front or hosted, on a range of platforms or providers within about 15 minutes of looking.

	I haven’t the faintest idea with VMS – neither HPE nor VSI will tell me until I jump through hoops and then it’ll be after ’72 hours’ of evasion and horse-trading.

	No thanks.

	Keith

	From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of David Moylan
	Sent: 13 March 2020 11:32
	To: hecnet at update.uu.se
	Subject: Re: [HECnet] long term paks

	From what I have heard, it’s full commercial rate with no discounts. Think $20K plus per instance licensed. 

	Hobbyist users who wish to use their VAXen beyond December 2021 will need to obtain “alternative” licensing. 

	Cheers, Wiz!!

	Sent from my iPhone

		On 13 Mar 2020, at 7:47 am, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:

		I'm suspectÂ  "normal commercial prices" == "bring your wallet"

		Go see what prices are for SAS to see what I mean.

		On 3/12/20 2:58 PM, Paul Koning wrote:

			Can anyone translate "normal commercial prices" into numbers? 

			            paul

				On Mar 12, 2020, at 2:51 PM, Dave Wade <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote:

				Jon says normal commercial prices so too expensive for most

				Dave

				On Fri, 13 Mar 2020, 7:46 am Ray Jewhurst, <raywjewhurst at gmail.com> wrote:

					I haven't received an emailÂ from them yet but I wonder if the offer will time sensitive or if we wait until December 31st 2021 when the final free hobbyist licenses expire. 

					RayÂ 

					On Thu, Mar 12, 2020, 2:41 PM Bill Cunningham <bill.cu at suddenlink.net> wrote:

					I just received an email from the HPE program. I guess they are going to 
					have long term PAKs they are selling to hobbyists. So I guess I am out. 
					There is someone named Jon you can get these from. I believe Jon Feldman.

					Bill

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