| ▲ | davesmylie a day ago |
| I was actually surprised to see that there's been a release in the last 12 months - I had thought it was dead. I used it extensively in the late 90's early 00's and really liked it. As a newb sysadmin at the time, the built-in versioning on the fs saved me from more than one self-inflicted fsck up. I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments. |
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| ▲ | lproven 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments. This is not entirely the case. I have been writing about VMS for years. The first x86-64 edition, version 9, was released in 2020: https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/10/openvms_92/ Version 9.0 was essentially a test. 9.1 in 2021 was another test and v9.2 in 2022 was production-ready. There's no new Itanium or Alpha hardware, and version 8.x runs on nothing else. Presumably v9.x is selling well enough to keep the company alive because it's been shipping new versions for a while now. Totally new greenfield deployments? Probably few. But new installs of the new version, surely, yes, because VMS 9 doesn't run on any legacy kit, so these must be new deployments. It's been growing for a few years. Maybe not growing much but a major new version and multiple point releases means somebody is buying it and deploying it. Never mind no new deployments in a decade... more new deployments in the last few years than in the previous decade. |
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| ▲ | Kon-Peki a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I had thought it was dead. HP tried to kill it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years ago they announced the EOL. This company - VMS Software Inc (VSI) was formed specifically to buy the rights and maintain/port it. So you have an interesting situation. Old VAX and Alpha systems are supported, supposedly indefinitely, but if you have an Itanium system it has to be newer than a certain age. HP didn’t sell the rights to support the older Itaniums, and no longer issues licenses for them. So there is a VMS hardware age gap. Really old is ok. Really new is ok. |
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| ▲ | rbanffy 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's now ported to x86 as well, so you can probably just order a Dell box and install OpenVMS on it. | | |
| ▲ | lproven 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | HP box. It is a former HP product. Version 9.x has been out for 5 years, stable for 3, and primarily targets and supports hypervisors. It knows about and directly supports VMware, Hyper-V and KVM. So, yes, get a generic x86-64 box, bung one of the big 3 hypervisors on it, and bang, you are ready to run VMS 9. | | |
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| ▲ | rbanffy a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| MCP and MVS (now called z/OS) are all still supported. Not sure whether MCP still receives updates though. |
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| ▲ | skissane a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Not sure whether MCP still receives updates though. MCP Release 21 came out in mid-2023, and release 22 is supposed to be out middle of this year, with further releases planned: https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/microsites/clearpath-futur... Looking at new features, they seem to be mainly around security (code signing, post quantum crypto) and improved support for running in cloud environments (with the physical mainframe CPU replaced by a software emulator) Unisys’ other mainframe platform, OS 2200 is still around too, and seems to follow a similar release schedule - https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/microsites/clearpath-futur... - although I get the impression there are more MCP sites remaining than OS 2200 sites? | | |
| ▲ | sillywalk 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Does MCP or OS 2200 have any well known users, or was there a niche that they fill(ed)? Also, I noted in those two roadmaps that they offered continuity - Clear Path Forward -> "Don't worry about migrating or refactoring your apps", but also stated that "none of these new features are guaranteed to show up, and if that damages your company financially, it's not our fault". I don't know if this is just a standard legal cop-out | | |
| ▲ | skissane 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Does MCP or OS 2200 have any well known users, I know the Michigan state government uses Unisys MCP (I don’t know for what): https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/dtmb/Procu... In 2023, NY State Education Department had an RFP to build a replacement for their Unisys MCP-based grants admin system with a modern non-mainframe solution (don’t know current status of that project): https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/funding-o... It is generally easier to find out who government users are because they are often required to publish contracts with the mainframe vendor, RFPs for replacement systems or services, etc. (Exception is some national security users where the existence of the system and/or the tech stack it runs on may be classified.) By contrast, private companies, that kind of info is usually only available under NDA - obscure legacy systems is the kind of “dirty laundry” a lot of business don’t want publicly aired In 2013, it was reported in the media that the Australian retailer Coogans was one of the last (maybe the last?) Unisys mainframe sites in Australia - https://www.smh.com.au/technology/tassie-retailer-rejects-cl... - I don’t know if they kept their mainframe after that or got rid of it, but in 2019 they went out of business - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/hobart-retailer-cooga... > but also stated that "none of these new features are guaranteed to show up, and if that damages your company financially, it's not our fault". > I don't know if this is just a standard legal cop-out I’m pretty sure that’s just the “standard legal cop-out” - lots of vendors put language like that in their roadmaps, to make it harder for customers to sue them if delivery is delayed or if the planned next version ends up being cancelled |
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| ▲ | quesomaster9000 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, but z/OS is part of a larger longer-running hardware strategy that, with virtualization, serves the needs of mixed-OS workloads and multi-decade tenures overseeing 24/7 systems. The corpse of OpenVMS on the other hand is being reanimated and tinkered with, presumably paid for by whatever remaining support contracts exist, and also presumably to keep the core engineers occupied with inevitably fruitless busywork while occasionally performing the contractually required on-call technomancy on the few remaining Alpha systems. VMS is dead... and buried, deep. It's a shame it can't be open-sourced, just like Netware won't be open-sourced, and probably has less chance of being used for new projects than RiscOS or AmigaOS. | | |
| ▲ | icedchai 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I also disagree. Porting VMS to x86-64 was a huge endeavor. They wouldn't have bothered unless there were at least a few big customers to make it worth it. Otherwise, why not go with emulation? There are commercially supported Alpha and VAX emulators for x86. | |
| ▲ | lproven 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I disagree. It's in active development. They're putting out new versions and selling licenses. There are much deader OSes out there than VMS, such as Netware. I suspect that there are more fresh deployments than there are of Xinuos's catalogue: OpenServer 5, 6, and UnixWare 7. https://www.xinuos.com/products/ Last updated 2018... | | |
| ▲ | bigbuppo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | A few years ago I actually purchased a Netware license, right at the start of Covid. It was an ordeal, and not because of Covid. Multiple retailers and distributors stopped selling Netware/Attachmate/Micro Focus products because of that purchase. Micro Focus was completely uninterested in handling Netware sales in any way, shape, or form, except to existing customers with big maintenance contracts. I can also speak from personal experience that it was just that side of Micro Focus that was uninterested in making any sales. The AMC (cobol compilers) division was great and I'm happy they ended up at Rocket after the OpenText merger. |
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