[Vms.sig-hu] HP brings OpenVMS to the SuperDome - Cnet article - Many thanks to everyone that forwarded to me - public information (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Mon, 10 May 2004 11:25:42 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: HP brings OpenVMS to the SuperDome - Cnet article - Many 
thanks to everyone that forwarded to me - public information

http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5208195.html

	HP brings OpenVMS to the SuperDome
Last modified: May 7, 2004, 10:16 AM PDT
By Matt Loney 
Special to CNET News.com

               
MUNICH, Germany--OpenVMS, Hewlett-Packard's high-end operating 
system,
got its first European outing this week on the company's high-end
Intel-based SuperDome server. 

During the 1990s, OpenVMS moved from the old VAX minicomputers to 
the
64-bit Alpha processor. HP's demo of it here this week included an Intel
Itanium 2-based SuperDome SD32a server, an AlphaServer and an 
Integrity
rx2600 server, all running OpenVMS as a cluster. 

HP's Web site puts the release of OpenVMS on Itanium in the second 
half
of 2004, and executives said the launch will be towards the end of this
time frame. However, representatives who demonstrated the 
technology at
HP's ENSA at Work user conference seemed to think that early 2005 is a 
more
realistic target. 

"All the core features are there," said an HP representative manning the
show stand. "We now even have DECNet running on the Itanium 2 
platform,"
he added, referring to DEC's old networking protocol, which is still
used today by some mission-critical applications in preference to the
ubiquitous TCP/IP. 

The representative noted that most of the work that still needs doing is
on qualification--making sure the operating system behaves itself on 
the
hardware and that applications behave themselves on the operating
system. 

The Itanium 2-based Integrity rx2600 was the first Intel-based server 
to
which HP ported OpenVMS. The OpenVMS V8.1 Evaluation release for HP
Integrity servers is currently available on the rx2600 and the rx4640.
The production release of the operating system for both Alpha and
Integrity servers, called V8.2, is expected to support the rx1600,
rx2600 and rx4640. 

The porting of the operating system to Itanium 2-based systems will 
give
OpenVMS users an upgrade path when HP discontinues the Alpha 
processor
line, which it picked up with the acquisition of Compaq. 

"We still run a lot of critical systems on VMS," said OpenVMS systems
manager Reg Palmer of Centrica, the company that owns British Gas.
"We'll keep it for several years," added Palmer, who said he found the
show demonstrations of VMS on Itanium 2 encouraging. Palmer said 
that
although the original announcement of the end of the Alpha line was "a
nasty shock," the switch to Itanium 2 made sense. "There is no
performance difference anymore to justify the extra cost (of Alpha
processors)." 

When Compaq launched the first 64-bit Alpha processor in the early
1990s, it was, at 200MHz, significantly faster than Intel's then
top-of-the-range 66MHz Pentium. Intel's introduction of a successive
product lines, starting with the Pentium and now the Itanium 2, has
steadily eroded that performance lead. 

"In the future, we will have Windows, Linux and OpenVMS on 
SuperDome,"
Palmer said. "Compaq talked about similar road maps anyway...so it 
turns
out the processor will be Itanium 2 instead of Alpha--we don't really
care about what processor it all runs on." 

Matt Loney reports for London-based ZDNet UK.