RE: Portents of VMS death

From: Main, Kerry (Kerry.Main_at_hp.com)
Date: 06/05/03 

Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 18:55:24 -0400

JF -

NSK based systems use NonStop RDF (remote data facility i.e.
replication) for disaster tolerance. NSK is based on a shared nothing
architecture which means one master writer and then replicate those
updates to other facilities.

NSK does not support active-active clusters where different systems
directly update the same data at the same time. There are advantages and
disadvantages with both approaches.

Reference:
http://h71033.www7.hp.com/page/RDF_SW.html

Regards

Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.
Consulting & Integration Services
Voice: 613-592-4660
Fax : 613-591-4477
Email: kerryDOTmain@hpDOTcom
    (remove the DOT's and replace with "."'s)
OpenVMS DCL - the original .COM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: JF Mezei [mailto:jfmezei.spamnot@istop.com]
> Sent: June 4, 2003 5:43 PM
> To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
> Subject: Re: Portents of VMS death
>
>
> Rob Young wrote:
> > From: Andy Glew <glew@cs.wisc.edu>
> > And the Bank of Nova Scotia used to have its Tandem nodes
> in Halifax,
> > Montreal, Norway, and somewhere in the Caribbean.
>
>
> As of 1992, Tandem was still not able to "cluster" across
> buildings like VMS
> could. They could do the equivalent of decnet, with
> transaction replication
> which would require some "rebuild" to get the backup nodes back up.
>
> Also, if you are talking about POS/ATM controllers (used in
> banks), yes, you
> could have Tandems in various cities collecting transactions
> from local
> "terminals" and doing preliminary validation and then using a
> link to send the
> transaction to the IBM mainframe in the toronto head office.
> This is not a
> question of "clustering" but rather distributed processing.
>
> In banks, Tandems are used as glorified communications
> controllers/buffers.
> They handle the transaction and then forward it to the
> appropriate mainframe
> for processing (for instance, when using Bank A card at Bank
> B machines, the
> Tandem is what routes the transaction over). And the Tandem
> will buffer
> transactions for its own bank when that bank's mainframe is
> down (blindly
> authorized up to a certain amount, no matter what you
> actually have in your
> account), and once the mainframe is back up, will transfer
> those transactions
> to the mainframe for processing. (hint: if you do a
> transaction at an ATM and
> your bank balance is not available, it means that the ATM is
> "offline" and
> transcation won't actually execute until the mainframe is back up)
>
> With tandem, you have a backup process running on a different
> CPU with the
> application written to keep the backup process in sync so
> that it can pickup
> if the primary one fails. This means memory interface between
> 2 CPUs, dual
> disk access etc etc. Doing this across buildings would
> require shared memory
> access via fibre. VMS can't do that yet, in a galaxy, shared
> memory between
> VMS instances has to be in the same box too.
>
> Now, Tandem may have solved the shared memory issue since I
> last had a serious
> look at it. (which would give it quite an edge over VMS).
>

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