Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

OpenVMS virtualization: OpenVMS on VirtualBox, VMWare, Hyper-V, KVM, and more.

Topic author
marty.stu
Site Admin
Valued Contributor
Posts: 96
Joined: Tue May 21, 2019 6:56 am
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by marty.stu » Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:24 pm

Dear OpenVMS users,

Please use this thread to report your experience with different hypervisors not listed by VSI as compatible with the latest OpenVMS release. For the list of the hypervisors that were proven to be compatible by VSI staff, refer to this document (Section 1.2. Tested Platforms).


sms
Master
Posts: 317
Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:18 pm
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by sms » Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:15 pm

Code: Select all

      Mac Pro (Late 2013)  3.50GHz 6-core, 64GB.

      VMware Fusion Player
      Player Version 12.2.5 (20904517)  [Updated from 12.2.3 (19436697)]
      Licensed for non-commercial use only.


   The network "serial" port settings are not described in
VSI_X86E921_RN.pdf, but once found, the worst effect of hand-editing the
".vmx" file seems to be that the Settings > Serial Port panel (now)
says:

      This serial port is configured to use:
         Custom unsupported setting

with "Choose a file..." as the only other option.  Unsupported-but-works
is good enough for me.

     The only recurring problem I've noticed is the appearance of
line-drawing characters in the xterm/Telnet console:

      https://forum.vmssoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8573#p17971

   Owing to my peon status, I haven't gotten past VMS E9.2.  (Problems
dutifully reported to the field test Service Platform Support Issues
forum, but generally unrelated to VMware.)


niklas
Contributor
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:31 am
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by niklas » Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:00 am

We´ve tried it on vmware vpshere 8.
Got a fixed ISO that worked, but update 2 broke it again, have a support case about this but no fix for patch 2 yet from what i´ve seen.
Haven´t tried the version that got released 1-2 weeks ago yet, but since vsphere 8 isn´t on the list my guess it that it´s still the same issue to get it to run on vsphere 8.

Also, it would be great if console access would work, so that you don´t have to use serial connections to the servers, small thing that would make life easier when setting up machines :)

User avatar

martin
Valued Contributor
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2022 6:47 pm
Reputation: 0
Location: England
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by martin » Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:29 am

I'd like to try it on both AlmaLinux 8.7 and 9.1, but am awaiting the release of the hobbyist licences.
Martin
  • Retired System Manager: VMS/UNIX/UNICOS/Linux.
  • Started on a VAX 11/782 in 1984 with VMS 3.6.


sparcie
Member
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Apr 05, 2023 9:19 am
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by sparcie » Wed Apr 19, 2023 3:36 am

I got it to start booting (using emulation mode) on UTM (QEMU for MacOS) on my Macbook Pro (with M1 Pro).

need to test further tho and needed to do some manual config (which ill be sharing)

User avatar

dmjb
Active Contributor
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Aug 17, 2020 4:38 pm
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by dmjb » Wed Apr 19, 2023 9:16 am

sparcie wrote:
Wed Apr 19, 2023 3:36 am
I got it to start booting (using emulation mode) on UTM (QEMU for MacOS) on my Macbook Pro (with M1 Pro).

need to test further tho and needed to do some manual config (which ill be sharing)
Nice work... a few of us were trying here without much success: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8612 I am looking forward to seeing your configuration.


jwtb
Member
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 7:59 am
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by jwtb » Wed Apr 19, 2023 9:31 am

hi,

as a exercise I was able to install 9.2-1 on OpenStack (Train release) based VM.

It's Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) 16.1 // Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 with QEMU emulator version 4.2.0 (qemu-kvm-4.2.0-29.module+el8.2.1+15117+e1f00de1.12)

It's basic OS installation for now, I will play with it and simplify VM setup (all done with openstack CLI).
My setup is probably over-complicated, but anyway got OpenVMS prompt after 20+ years !

jwtb


ddkrahn
Visitor
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Apr 30, 2023 9:51 pm
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by ddkrahn » Sun Apr 30, 2023 10:32 pm

I got X86 9.2-1 booted, up & running in my home lab on a quite dated VMware platform:
  • Dell PowerEdge 2900
  • VMware ESXi, 5.5.0 build 7967571
  • vSphere Foundation 6.5.0.41000
I followed the VMware ESXi setup as prescribed. The serial port named pipe configuration worked as documented too - it is communicating with a Rocky 8 Linux VM on the same host using a Putty session.

Under this earlier version of the EFI firmware the BOOTMGR warns about ignoring an ATAPI device - and didn't list any available DK devices. This had me investigating the configuration details of the EFI Shell for a while, but it sees the DVD ISO as FS1 and can boot it. After RTFM the release notes and other VSI docs, the DK devices are not shown until initialized.

I performed the OpenVMS install with no issues and on reboot DKA0: appears in the BOOTMGR now. The DVD still appears as FS1 and if I disconnect the DVD from the VM, EFI can't find the BOOTMGR - so I probably have to do some EFI hacking to get a bootable VM without the DVD attached.


smirk
Newbie
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:28 pm
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by smirk » Mon May 01, 2023 9:02 am

I got it working under Proxmox (7.4-3) with a small bodge to work around the NIC. For some reasons OpenVMS hangs when detecting devices if you only have a singular NIC in the VM.

Anyway, out of interest I used nested-virtualisation (courtesy Intel EPT chip feature) and I have OpenVMS 9.2.1 running under KVM/QEMU inside an Ubuntu Server (20.04) VM which in turn is running under Proxmox. This has the advantage of not requiring any bodge with the NICs as KVM/QEMU (Ubunu) play nicely with 9.2.1.
Beyond installing it I have not done anything but VMS appears responsive, and demonstrates that nested virtualisation works.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the KSM feature of Proxmox (Linux) seems to happily work with OpenVMS and share it's memory pages between the various VMs.
Last edited by smirk on Mon May 01, 2023 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.


tim.stegner
VSI Expert
Valued Contributor
Posts: 55
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:14 am
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline

Re: Customer experience with hypervisors untested by VSI

Post by tim.stegner » Mon May 01, 2023 9:10 am

re: ...disconnect DVD and Boot manager doesnt...

The boot manager remembers the last path used, so until you explicitly boot dka0 it will continue to use the last working path.

There's somethng in the manuals about starting BM directly via FS0:, navigating to the efi\vms directory, and invoking vmsboot_mgr.efi (may have spelling wrong).

Post Reply