Re: Gee, as if I did not already know this ...

In article <459EFB95.526B3A9F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
David J Dachtera <djesys.no@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

In article <459DCA9A.D3BCF029@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
David J Dachtera <djesys.no@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

In article <459B1FE3.964AC35A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
David J Dachtera <djesys.no@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Bill Gunshannon wrote:

In article <1167745110.201974.200950@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
this has been true since its inception ... now the truth comes out ...

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36627

and what better mainframe os is there than OpenVMS ...
the only virus free place to be ...

Nice try Boob. But OpenVMS does not run on any "mainframe".
Also, they were talking about the licensing costs for zOS
being attractive. The same can not be said for OpenVMS.

They also talked about the power and AC requirements for
IBM systems having dropped considerably. And the Itanium?

Congratulations, you just gave the users of your favorite
OS another excuse to leave and head for IBM-land. :-)

It also establishes a precedent for touting TCO "in public" so HP can
come along and say, "Me, too!" in public rather than through the usual
stealth-marketing channels. (Hhmmm... Did IBM take HP's cue and "Trump"
their "bid"??!!)

Not that such is an even remotely reasonable expectation, just trying
to maintain some optimism here.

Let's not trot that red herring out again. As I have pointed out
numerous times before this idea that it takes less people to maintain
VMS than Unix or Windows is absurd.

Um, Bill?

TCO is not JUST about staffing levels.

Of course not, but that's one of the first things trotted out here.


TCO includes (but is not limited to) the costs of:

- Maintenance

What costs more to maintain? An Alpha or a commodity x86 box? I can
afford to keep entire spare machines in case of a failure. I can't
afford even one Alpha (or Itanium) on my budget. Complete replacement
hardware is cheaper than even a maintenance contract on a machine
capable of running VMS. And, replacement hardware can be acquired
overnight for my servers. What would that kind of turn-around on an
Alpha or Itanium capable of running VMS cost me?

Some environments, like healthcare, are highly regulated and who does what to
which machine can negatively impact that system's certification under gov't.
regulations.

Which has nothing to do with the relative costs, only the size of the
budgets.


- Support (not just personnel)

With commodity x86 servers you don't need the kind of support you need
on a VMS capable machine. You keep spares and worse case, you overnight
a replacement server. That's one of the nice things about COTS.

Support includes software (application) support, of course. Such contracts can
run into the $Millions per year.

And would they somehow be cheaper for an Alpha or Itanium running VMS
rather than an x86 or amd64 running Windows or Linux? Highly unlikely
I expect.


- Downtime (planned and unplanned)

What downtime? The only unplanned downtime I ever have is power failures.
And they affect the VMS systems here exactly the same way they affect me.
On top of which, they take the network down. A machine no one can get to
might just as well be down rather than wasting electricity. I would be
willing to bet that my servers have a higher availability percentage than
the datacenters VMS boxes. And planned downtime. Well, it's planned.
But you probably meant that VMSZ doesn't ever need to have a planned
outage. That is, of course, bullcrap. If oyu only have one then it
goes down just like any other machine when upgrades or maintenance are
needed. And if you have more than one? I do rolling upgrades just like
VMS. Clusters may sound cool, but how many VMS sites actually use the
feature? (I have asked this before, but still have not received any
kind of answer. I suspect the number to be a very small percentagbe of
the very small number of stuill existing VMS systems.)

The management requirements to enable rolling reboots usually include multiple
system disks. Now, there are ways to creatively manage the onus of such
requirements; however, these are generally considered undesirable. They also
require a fair amount of VMS system management expertise.

Where I'm at, we'd love to be able use such strategies. The application
software, however, imposes its own requirements and takes more than just the two
of us - it takes the entire application "core technical" team.

Boy, I am really confused. Just which side are you on? You seem to be
doing a real good job of proving my point that TCO for a VMS systems is
anything but lower than the alternatives.



In a letter to HP management, I suggested that they go forth to meet with
customers armed with a presentation that would knock Donald Trump's socks off.
In closing that letter, I suggested that HP should "Trump" the competition
before the competition "Trump"s HP.

So, it seems that HP snoozed - they losed (that's not even a word, is it?).

I won't argue that HP snoozes. But, sadly, when it comes to this whole
TCO thing VMS really doesn't have any advantage. Commodity Trumps pro-
prietary every time.

...until you consider that VMS runs only on proprietary platforms, even in the
I64 world. That really negates the commodity question, VMS-wise.

Which proves my point. Everything about VMS is more expensive. How could
anyone possibly believe that TCO is somehow lower when everything about it
is more expensive?

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Gee, as if I did not already know this ...
    ... But OpenVMS does not run on any "mainframe". ... VMS than Unix or Windows is absurd. ... TCO is not JUST about staffing levels. ... With commodity x86 servers you don't need the kind of support you need ...
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