From: SMTP%"vms-steering-list-owner@DECUS.Org" 26-OCT-1993 11:38:25.26 To: EVERHART CC: Subj: Breton: OpenVMS Futures Primer Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1993 11:30:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Betsy Ramsey Subject: Breton: OpenVMS Futures Primer To: VMS-STEERING-LIST@DECUS.ORG Errors-to: vms-steering-list-owner@DECUS.Org Warnings-to: vms-steering-list-owner@DECUS.Org Resent-message-id: <01H4KF1AN4MA8WXMM2@DECUS.Org> Message-id: <01H4KF0KJJ6C8Y56YG@CU4700.CUA.EDU> X-VMS-To: IN%"VMS-STEERING-LIST@DECUS.ORG" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Comments: Send vms-steering-list subscribe/unsubscribe requests to vms-steering-list-request@DECUS.Org Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,vmsnet.misc From: breton@star.enet.dec.com (Brian Breton) Subject: OpenVMS Futures Primer Message-ID: <1993Oct25.205439.19259@e2big.mko.dec.com> Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 20:56:57 GMT OpenVMS Futures Primer October 1993 Announcement Digital Equipment Corporation OpenVMS Engineering Product Management Office, ZK3-4/T61 110 Spit Brook Road Nashua, New Hampshire 03062 FAX:+1 603-881-0120 (VMS PM ZK3-4/T61) Email:OpenVMS_REQ@STAR.ENET.DEC.COM October Announcement Copyright Statement The information in this document is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital Equipment Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. Copyright 1993 Digital Equipment Corporation All Rights Reserved. The following are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation: OpenVMS DEC FORTRAN OpenVMS AXP DEC C VAX ManageWORKS DECnet DEC C++ OpenVMScluster DEC Pascal DEC COBOL PATHWORKS for OpenVMS Preface This document describes Digital's vision for future feature enhancements to OpenVMS. Its intent is to explain the concepts of four major areas. Part 1 provides a discussion of a new 64-bit file system. Part 2 provides a discussion of the future plans for OpenVMS 64-bit support. Part 3 provides a discussion of enhancing the availability of OpenVMSclusters. Part 4 provides a discussion of future plans for OpenVMS system management software based on a PC management station. Part 1: The New File System Overview Today, OpenVMS provides a robust, reliable, highly-available cluster file system that meets the stringent data integrity requirements demanded by customers. The New File System (TNFS) for OpenVMS AXP will extend these capabilities, especially in the areas of performance, data management scalability and on-line backup, to meet the requirements of customers well into the 21st century. TNFS is a 64-bit clustered physical file system and data protection utility that uses coherent distributed caches, a revolutionary log-structured file system technology, and an extended file model. This technology, based on the latest research work at the University of California, will go a step beyond contemporary logging file systems, providing innovative capabilities in the areas of backup, disaster recovery, clustering, and write performance. Technology Features Performance: read performance will equal that of best-in-class file systems. The sequential structure of TNFS, in combination with its innovations in caching technology, will break through today's barriers, yielding leading-edge write performance. These advances in write performance can be further enhanced when paired with RAID-5. Continuous Backup: TNFS will perform on-line backup (the ability to consistently back up data while it is being changed) at an extremely high speed. The new design makes it possible to leave any or all previous states of the file system on disk, and then allows recovery of deleted files, or return to previous versions of files. Scalability: this new design provides seamless management of up to 10 TB of on-line data. In addition, it will be a foundation for leading-edge storage management applications by further extending the addressability of both near and off-line storage. Disaster Recovery: another benefit of the design is the flexible and potentially low-cost method of maintaining a remote, consistent copy of live data. Cluster Capability: TNFS is designed as a fully-functional cluster file system, providing transparent cluster-wide access to files. The availability characteristics of clusters are further extended with the introduction of a high-performance on-line backup facility, providing unparalleled scaling and throughput. Compatibility: existing applications can take advantage of TNFS without modification because it supports a fully-compatible RMS file system API and an equivalent backup interface. Further, technologies like clustering and volume shadowing utilize TNFS features transparently. Heterogeneous Client Support: TNFS is designed around an extended file model that is a superset of the file features used by the industry's leading operating systems. TNFS enhances the capabilities of distributed file systems servers, allowing all popular clients access to the same file. For example, a single file accessed by heterogeneous clients such as UNIX, Windows NT, OpenVMS, and Macintosh, will appear to each as a native file. Summary OpenVMS customers can be assured that OpenVMS will continue to support them by reliably managing their data into the 21st century. The new file system supports terabytes of on-line data with high performance and high availability while enabling rapid recovery from data loss or disasters. Part 2: OpenVMS AXP 64-bit Plans Overview Digital is moving toward a full 64-bit virtual addressing implementation on OpenVMS. 64-bits for OpenVMS means much greater performance and data capacity for applications that choose to use 64-bit addressing. Examples include molecular modeling, imaging, and real-time voice analysis. At the same time, OpenVMS engineering is committed to continuing to provide a 32-bit environment for applications that have no need for 64-bit virtual addressing, therefore, 32-bit applications will NOT need changes in the future. This preserves investment in today's applications as customers move them to Alpha AXP systems. Several of Digital's compilers on OpenVMS AXP already take advantage of 64-bit technology through an efficient internal representation of 18 digits of packed decimal data. For example, the COBOL compiler for Alpha AXP systems will transparently convert packed decimal data upon input/output to/from this new representation. Packed decimal calculations are then done very quickly with the new format. This means that COBOL applications will have far better performance on Alpha AXP systems. Below is a table showing the data declarations needed to access 64-bit integer and floating point for each of Digital's compilers. 64-bit 64-bit Language Integer Floating Point DEC FORTRAN V6. INTEGER*8 REAL*8 DEC C V1.3 __int64 double DEC C++ V1.3 __int64 double DEC Pascal V5.0 INTEGER64 DOUBLE DEC COBOL V1.1 PIC 9(18) USAGE COMP USAGE COMP-2 OpenVMS AXP memory management code has been implemented without the 30-bit physical memory restriction. It is now possible to put gigabytes of memory onto an OpenVMS AXP system. In addition, OpenVMS AXP supports up to one terabyte files and databases today, easing restrictions on maximum file size. While this is not technically a "64-bit" implementation, it is consistent with the scaling of OpenVMS toward greater performance and data capacity. Alpha AXP systems bring the power of RISC computing to OpenVMS applications. As the 64-bit capabilities unfold, OpenVMS AXP will set the stage for a whole new generation of applications. Part 3: Enhancing the Availability of OpenVMSclusters Overview VAXclusters have provided an industry benchmark in availability, scalability, ease of management, and configuration flexibility. Today, VMSclusters can be configured into highly available systems with no single points of failure, with redundant paths to I/O devices, data redundancy using volume shadowing, and application recovery with RMS Journaling. With this announcement, OpenVMS- clusters, consisting of OpenVMS VAX systems and OpenVMS AXP systems, share the same attributes and features. OpenVMS AXP systems now support Volume Shadowing to ensure access to data even in the event of disk failure and RMS Journaling for application recovery. OpenVMS AXP systems now also support the FDDI as a cluster interconnect. OpenVMSclusters provide an ideal platform for building highly available, scalable servers unmatched by any other platform in the industry. However, providing a highly available system is only part of creating a high availability server. With PATHWORKS V5 for OpenVMS, the full range of OpenVMScluster scalability and availability features can now be incorporated into all client/server applications running on popular PC clients: DOS, Windows, Windows NT and OS/2. If a network connection to a cluster member goes down, a new connection is automatically made to another cluster member. When a PATHWORKS session is created, client connects are targeted to the least loaded cluster member. PATHWORKS cluster support is transport-independent. You can use any of the supported PATHWORKS for OpenVMS transports: DECnet, TCP/IP, and NETBEUI. One of the most overlooked aspects of increasing system availability is eliminating outages caused by human error. Studies have shown that between 25-35% of all system outages are caused by human error. ManageWORKS, available with PATHWORKS for OpenVMS V5, manages multivendor NOS environments including PATHWORKS servers and clients, NetWare servers, and LAN Manager servers. ManageWORKS provides a graphical user interface and a hierarchical management view to enable users to manage in a meaningful way. In the near future, the OpenVMS operating system will support system management software based on ManageWORKS, allowing for integrated and consistent management of both OpenVMScluster systems and PC LANs. Part 4: The OpenVMS Management Station Software Overview The OpenVMS management station software currently under development will enable management of one or more OpenVMScluster systems from a single Windows-based PC. This is the model for OpenVMS system management of the future. The project goals are: - to simplify and reduce the effort required to manage one or more OpenVMScluster systems - to provide the ability to manage one or more OpenVMScluster systems as a single management and user domain, out-of-the-box - to scale the effort required to manage an OpenVMS site linearly and predictably relative to increasing size and complexity - to eventually be able to manage systems remotely The management station software is based on the PATHWORKS V5.0 ManageWORKS framework. This graphical user interface provides the infrastructure for implementation of system management functions such as user account management or printer management. The ManageWORKS framework presents a hierarchical management view and provides the ability to manage multiple OpenVMS systems from a single source. It enables users to view, organize, and manage objects in a way that is meaningful to them. The interface will provide an integrated, consistent look-and-feel for all OpenVMS management tools as opposed to the varied syntax of the DCL interface for each utility today. The target for the PC management station software is OpenVMS multi-cluster sites and in particular, environments consisting of PC LANs with OpenVMS hosts. While the PC management station software is intended to manage only the OpenVMS environment (it is not designed to be an enterprise director), the ManageWORKS interface brings both LAN and OpenVMS management together under one framework and provides the opportunity for integration of applications and services. The first version of the management station software will provide the capability to manage user accounts and the infrastructure under which future management applications will be deployed. --------------------------------------- Brian Breton, Breton@STAR.enet.dec.com OpenVMS Product Management Digital Equipment Corporation 110 Spit Brook Road Nashua, NH 03062 USA ---------------------------------------