Re: Help adding a larger drive to Alphaserver

From: Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOEGER (peter_at_langstoeger.at)
Date: 08/03/03 

Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 12:51:13 GMT

In article <8tWcnRO_FZfOgbGiU-KYvg@comcast.com>, "m68k" <m68k@comcast.net> writes:
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Please don't. This is a text-only newsgroup

>I am a newbie to VMS and DEC hardware. I am in the process of converting
>most of my Linux servers on my home network to OpenVMS. Due to some
>recent donations from a local university, I now have an Alphaserver 300
>and a VAX6000/610 with two disk arrays, 9mm tape drive, Infoserver and
>more! The VAX takes up half my garage and is power hungry beast (even
>without disk arrays turned on) compared to the little Alpha. I want to
>make the Alpha my http, IMAP, ftp, Telnet shell access server.

Good idea.

And get rid of the VAX6000 ;-)
With the money of the (saved) electrical power bill you can buy a new AMD PC
plus an additional VAX hardware emulator (like CHARON-VAX) maybe every month.

>Question: I want to put a larger SCSI hard drive in the Alphaserver.
>Currently it has two 1gig drives. I need at least a 8 gig drive. Can I
>simply add an 8gig drive and then do a fresh OpenVMS install, or is
>there a limit to the drive size?

I recommend, reading at least the VMS FAQ !!

There is a limit of 1.08GB for the _system_ disk on certain old VAX hardware.
But this is not the case for _your_ hardware.

There is a limit of ~8GB for every disk on very old VAX/VMS (aka OpenVMS VAX)
versions (below V6). But this versions were current more one and a half
decade ago so I think, that this is not the case for _your_ software (but
you forgot to mention which version you [want to] run, so we can't be sure).

I'd recommend OpenVMS VAX V7.3 and/or OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-1 (V7.3-2 in late fall)

And, yes, you can add more disk drives without problems as you long as
they fit into the case and have the same electrical dimensions (so probably
no IDE or UltraSCSI, only SCSI, and a properly terminated SCSI Bus). There
are external disks possible however.

As minimum size for a VAX system disk, I'd say 1GB minimum and 2GB recommended.
As minimum size for Alpha system disk, I'd say 2GB minimum and 4GB recommended.

Smaller disks _can_ be used with both platforms by not installing layered
products (which you might miss later on) or by removing some parts of VMS
(debugger, assembler, fonts,...) or by having page/swap[/dump] files on
non-system disks (but for a beginner this is not a first day task).

Installing a disk doesn't need a reinstall or even a reboot of VMS (as long
as you need not open the chassis where a power-down is highly recommended).
A simple "SYSGEN> AUTOCONFIGURE ALL" (VAX) "SYSMAN> IO AUTOCONFIGURE" (Alpha)
is all you need to see/get in VMS the newly added devices (mind for SCSI
ID conflicts). They pop up as [$alloclass$]DKAxxx: just like other disks.

Moving the system disk from the 1GB disk to a new say 2GB disk doesn't need
a reinstallation of VMS either (but maybe you want to do this as an exercise)

(in my last job I did the last installation of VMS about 1987 with VMS V4.6
and only did VMS upgrades since then - or did _clone_ a disk for new systems -
I'm to lazy to install a fresh VMS, install more than 20 layered products
later and finally install way over 30 ECOs - so who needs a fresh install ? -
This means, I did install every ECO for every hardware every time, because I
might have got this hardware a few months later ;-).

You only need to BACKUP/IGNORE=INTERLOCK srcdsk:/IMAGE dstdsk:/NOINIT (after
INIT/USER=SYSTEM/OWNER=SYSTEM/HEADER=70000 dstdsk: and MOUNT/FOREIGN dstdsk:)

You could make this backup even from the running system, but the recommended
way is to shutdown VMS and boot standalone-backup (on VAX) or boot a small
VMS eg. from VMS installation CD (on Alpha).

I hope you are familiar with the OpenVMS hobbyist program.
I hope you are aware that third party IP stacks like TCPware and Multinet
also have an OpenVMS hobbyist license.
I hope you are aware that many freeware products also run on OpenVMS.
I hope you read the available VMS docs one after another until you are
finished (which takes some months/years).
And finally I hope that you will love VMS and come back here for questions,
suggestions and discussions...

Good luck 

-- 
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTOEGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail  peter@langstoeger.at
A-1030 VIENNA  AUSTRIA              I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What Tape Library for VMS and FC cluster
    ... Would like to poll some experiences with VMS. ... or so I am informed by OpenVMS engineering. ... >> However, we may need a backup server anyway, in which case the backup ... Have a spare disk in your storage with a minimal system on it ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: MicroVAX/VMS newbie, couple of questions
    ... boot the 3400 as a cluster satellite, then copy a good VAX VMS ... system disk to it's internal disk using BACKUP or shadowing, ... Or you could install an Alpha emulator on something (Unix, Mac, ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Installing VMS without a bootable CD-ROM drive
    ... working VAXstation 3100 M38 running VMS 7.3. ... My thought was to temporarily put the disk from the VLC into the M38 and ... restore the backup saveset on the bootable VMS install CD to the VLC's ... VMS saveset to the VLC disk, from a running instance of VMS in the M38. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: Installing VMS without a bootable CD-ROM drive
    ... working VAXstation 3100 M38 running VMS 7.3. ... My thought was to temporarily put the disk from the VLC into the M38 and ... restore the backup saveset on the bootable VMS install CD to the VLC's ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: upgrading (or installing) VMS on a system with no CD drive
    ... O.k., this is OpenVMS VAX, so ignore my prior comments about OpenVMS Alpha. ... all you need is access to the savesets. ... disk is large enough, you can put thiem in on the system disk. ... For an INSTALL it is a bit more complicated. ...
    (comp.os.vms)