VMS's Stability Prompts Move To ItaniumVMS's Stability Prompts Move To Itanium

The venerable VMS operating system just won't fade away, and one longtime observer thinks he knows why--it's stable.

"It doesn't break," said Terry Shannon, publisher of the "Shannon Knows HPC" newsletter. "It doesn't get viruses. It's unhackable. It's bullet-proof." While Shannon said VMS's 400,000-plus licenses are dwindling every year, one interesting aspect of the software is that some users in "mission-critical and clustering applications" in particular are moving to VMS for its stability. In fact, he said, some users that had strayed from VMS are returning. He cited the Veterans Administration as an example of a user with heavy stability and security demands that recently moved to VMS.

That's why Hewlett-Packard--the current proprietor of the operating system--is evaluating HP OpenVMS 8.2 as the first operating-system production release for the Itanium line.

VMS originally was developed by the Digital Equipment Corp. for its VAX hardware line two decades ago. Rights to the operating system were transferred when Digital was acquired by Compaq, and later when Compaq was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

HP has overseen the porting of some early versions of VMS designed to operate on the Itanium line. Mark Gorham, VP of HP's OpenVMS System Division, said in a recent letter that HP has been working closely with VMS independent software integrators and large software providers to upgrade current VMS installations.

"We are working closely with industry-leading software vendors such as Oracle, BEA, BMC Software, and Computer Associates to fully port OpenVMS environments and application portfolios to Integrity [Itanium] servers," Gorham said. "The HP OpenVMS ISV partners have already committed to port more than 550 of their applications to the OpenVMS Integrity platform."

The first production release of OpenVMS 8.2 is scheduled for distribution in the second half of 2004. Gorham has said that the coming VMS releases will be based on "common source code," making it easy and cost-efficient for software vendors and customers to support both the HP Integrity Intanium and the company's AlphaServer systems. The Alpha line, also originally developed by Digital, is still in widespread use, although HP has been encouraging Alpha users to switch to the Itanium.

"In the near term," Gorham told users in the letter, "you can continue to upgrade your AlphaServer systems and when your IT plans call for it, you can simply add HP Integrity servers to existing OpenVMS clusters."

Shannon, who has written a book on VMS, said there is a strong supporting cast of software vendors populating the VMS universe. It's not unusual to see HP supporting 96-node VMS-based configurations, while independents will take over from there supporting much larger configurations.