Question about where we'll be able to run OpenVMS x86

[arne_v]

On VMS platforms, I'm thinking another one that would be very interesting is 64 bit ARM. That's arguably the way of the future, and certainly a great way to run software on very power-efficient devices.

That has been mentioned before.

And yes - ARM64 is interesting. And one day in the future RISC-V may become interesting as well.

But when prioritizing resources then it make sense for VSI to focus on x86-64 now.

Making VMS run well on one widely available platform is more important than making it run on multiple platforms.

And I suspect that most VMS customer are not focusing on power consumption. If you run 10000+ servers then power consumption matter, but if you can count VMS system on one or two hands then it is not a big number. Power consumption also matters for phones, tablets, laptops and maybe even for desktops - but VMS are not targeting those.

So my suggestion to VSI will be to add ARM64 support in VMS 12.0.

[afassl]

Hi,

the key is "supported configuration".
If you look at Oracle Database products, the statement from Oracle is interesting.
https://www.oracle.com/database/technol ... atrix.html
Means - only very limited support when running Oracle on ESXi (I'm assuming this to convince customers to move over to Oracle VM).
More explained in this article:
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digi ... -paper.pdf

Will be interesting, if this changes, if Oracle Rdb will be made available for x86 (found this interesting discussion from two years ago -> https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms/c/gVJPLdhkJgw ).
Will lead into additional questions:
- If VMS is only available on a virtualized environment, will this be than ESXi as well?
- Regarding licensing - this is always a "fun" discussion. According to Oracle all CPUS on the hypervisor have to be licensed, will this be the case than for Rdb as well?

BTW - VMware - had a look into the vsphere 8 release notes. There was a section mentioning phasing out LSI SAS controllers. Will this be an issue for VMS x86?

Best regards
Andreas

[arne_v]

I believe latest statement on Rdb for VMS x86-64 said expected 2024 Q1.

It seems somewhat likely that Oracle will use standard Oracle policy that for non-Oracle hypervisor you pay for all cores in hardware but with Oracle hypervisor you only pay for cores allocated to the VM running the Oracle product.

That will force people to use Oracle hypervisor.

But we will see - Oracle is also known for changing license policies frequently, so ...

Added in 8 minutes 41 seconds:
https://vmssoftware.com/docs/2022_accom ... 230110.pdf says:

Any word from Oracle on RDB for x86? I have checked their website, and so far,
nothing is mentioned in their compatibility matrix (just Alpha and Itanium).
Oracle communicated at the German HP Connect forum in September in
Böblingen, Germany, that the plan is to have RDB for x86 ready in Q1 2024.

[sodjan]

As far as I know, Oracle is also quite open to negotiations with customers.
So few larger customers pay by the official price list.

And I do not think that anything will show up in the "compatibility matrix"
until there is a released and supported version of it.

[gdwnldsksc]

Many of the cloud providers such as Amazon use the KVM hypervisor under the hood for their cloud instances, so it should be possible to deploy VMS x86 there. Perhaps the most notable exception is Microsoft who use Hyper-V, which is currently not supported by VMS.

Hyper-V support code is in VMS however. You'll see it in the boot messages. No storage support yet though.

[cgrant]

VMS does not currently support running on Hyper-V and there is a lot of work yet to be done before it does. Hyper-V is very different than VBox, KVM, and VMware. We have started the work but many things are higher priority at this time.

[arne_v]

As far as I know, Oracle is also quite open to negotiations with customers.
So few larger customers pay by the official price list.

Yes. A good customer can get a good deal. And a smart customer will get that good deal well documented.

And I do not think that anything will show up in the "compatibility matrix"
until there is a released and supported version of it.

That is common among all companies. Noone want to formally commit to anything that is not completed yet.

[sodjan]

Sure. And if you really *nead* to know now, you ask Oracle, sign an NDA and get to know what you need to know.

[pjacobi]

To run VMS on a laptop, download and install VBox or VMware Player Hypervisors. There are free versions of both hypervisors.

Microsoft Hyper-V support for VMS has been started but completion date is unknown. Hyper-V very strictly provides only two hardware models:

1. Legacy BIOS and legacy PCI devices
2. UEFI and ParaVirtual/Synthetic VMBus devices

It is not possible to create a Hyper-V VM with UEFI firmware and a legacy PCI SATA or NIC card as is possible with other hypervisors. For UEFI hardware model, Microsoft implemented its very own proprietary bus, the VMBus! See Linux new "lsvmbus" command, similar to "lspci" command.

While some of the boot support has been completed for Hyper-V, there is still the huge task to write VMBus storage and VMBus network drivers for VMS. There is no timeframe for this work, but I remain hopeful...maybe someday!


Paul A. Jacobi
VMS Software, Inc.

Added in 13 minutes 32 seconds:
Example of Linux "lsvmbus" running under Hyper-V in attachment.