Non-Administrative Access to OpenVMS on Oregon to Phase Out by Fall 2004

Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu

OpenVMS has been a wonderful operating system for UO's academic user community for fifteen years, but the time has come for the university to begin phasing out OpenVMS as a general-purpose academic computing platform. We will be doing so over so over the next two years, with all academic user access to OpenVMS on oregon.uoregon.edu scheduled to conclude by fall 2004.

In future issues of Computing News we will provide detailed transition information, but at this time we at least want to give you an overview of what will be involved in decommissioning OpenVMS on oregon.uoregon.edu, and advance notice of what's coming.

Daisy and Donald users not affected. Please note that the following information pertains only to academic users working on oregon.uoregon.edu, and does not affect any administrative computing users working on daisy.uoregon.edu or donald.uoregon.edu.

Also note that the phase-out described here will be taking place over a two-year period. We are informing you of these plans early and will work with all current Oregon users to ensure the transition is as smooth as possible.

Accounts

No new accounts will be created on oregon.uoregon.edu at this time. Any requests for exceptions to this policy will be closely scrutinized and will require compelling justification. (We are taking this step now to ensure that if you aren't currently using Oregon, you don't get started on the wrong path, given our announced plans.)

Email

We recognize that most folks who currently use oregon.uoregon.edu use it for email, and typically connect via POP3 or IMAP using a desktop client such as Eudora. For those users, our recommendation is to gradually transfer their email to Darkwing (in the case of faculty, staff and graduate students), or to Gladstone (in the case of undergraduate students who are currently on Oregon).

You'll find information on migrating saved Oregon email messages to Darkwing or Gladstone in the "Migrating Mail..." article on page 15. Disk quotas on Darkwing will be adjusted on request to accommodate mail currently stored on Oregon.

In the fall of 2004, any email still being sent to Oregon will automatically be redirected to Darkwing.

Web pages

We also recognize that in addition to email, some of you may have web pages on Oregon. In general, you should be able to easily move most of those web pages to Darkwing or Gladstone without any trouble--other than having to do the work involved in physically transferring the files and adjusting the URL of any page referring to www-vms.uoregon.edu or oregon.uoregon.edu

Again, if a quota increase is required to facilitate the movement of those web pages from oregon.uoregon.edu to Darkwing or Gladstone, it will be routinely made.

Users Running Applications Other than Email and Web Pages from Oregon

If you're using applications other than email or web pages on Oregon, we urge you to contact consult@oregon.uoregon.edu and arrange to move your applications to Darkwing or Gladstone in a timely fashion.

Yes, it is true we will still support oregon.uoregon.edu for another two years. However, we have limited staff to help you migrate your current OpenVMS applications, and if you wait until late summer 2004, we can't guarantee that we'll have sufficient time to devote to your particular application.

Why Now?

We know that many of you are interested in knowing why we're announcing this transition at this time. There are a variety of factors, including:

• VMS support staff attrition. A key member of our VMS Systems support staff is scheduled to retire within the year, and it is not clear that we'll find a suitable replacement. Unless that position is refilled, we'd be left with less than 1.0 FTE worth of VMS systems support staff for both academic and administrative OpenVMS support. That simply isn't enough to adequately support and maintain mission-critical OpenVMS systems, considering the need to provide coverage during vacation time, sick time, business-related travel, and so forth.
  
  
• Administrative Computing is examining alternatives. Academic access to OpenVMS has always been predicated on Administrative Computing's continued commitment to this system. This is largely due to Academic Computing's historical pattern of "inheriting" hand-me-down AlphaServers when Administrative Computing systems get upgraded, as well as a history of shared system support (whereby Academic Computing OpenVMS systems are handled incidental to Administrative Computing requirements). If Administrative Computing drops its commitment to OpenVMS, Academic Computing would be hard-pressed to fund the required hardware and staff to sustain that operating system.
  
  
• Hardware support. OpenVMS has traditionally run on Digital (then Compaq and now HP) Alpha hardware. HP has indicated that sales of AlphaServer hardware will last until at least 2006, with migration to HP Itanium-based servers. Unfortunately, sales of Itanium or Itanium 2-based servers have been slow, with less than 1000 Itanium-based servers shipping in Q2 2002, and no commitment to that chipset as yet from Dell, a key industry trend-setter (see http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-955962.html and http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,102470,00.asp ).
  
  Moreover, it will be difficult for OpenVMS, shipping on a limited range of proprietary hardware, to remain competitive with open source operating systems (such as Linux) running on commodity mass market Intel hardware (such as multiprocessor Xeon-based systems).
  
  
• Operating system support. OpenVMS was created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation, and OpenVMS, in June 1998. In turn, Compaq merged with HP this past summer. HP's best current public information about its plans for the OpenVMS product line is available at
  http://www.openvms.compaq.com/openvms/roadmap/openvms_roadmaps_files/OPENVMS_ROADMAPS.PPT
  
  (Note that the support futures outlined in that document do not represent a contractual commitment on the part of HP, and are subject to change without notice.)
  
  In its discussion of OpenVMS's future (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/07may02b.htm), HP strongly signals that HP-UX is HP's preferred direction for its customers. (On the other hand, see http://www.compaq.com/hps/commitment.html, which appears to express a strong commitment to OpenVMS.)
  
  
• Third party network software support. The UO has relied on third party commercial network software to connect oregon.uoregon.edu to UONet and the Internet at large. We have recently encountered a variety of issues in this area of network software support, including problems with SSH v.2, IPv6, and spam management measures. These and other problems convince us that OpenVMS will be increasingly hard to work with in a intensely networked environment like the UO's.
  
  
• Application support. It's increasingly difficult to get commercial software product support for OpenVMS. For example, Mathematica Version 4.2 isn't available for OpenVMS, and in fact the latest version of Mathematica that we've been able to obtain for OpenVMS has been 2.2. Likewise, the latest version of SPSS is 11.5, but the latest version of SPSS that we've been able to obtain for OpenVMS is 7.3. Other software applications (with the notable exception of SAS) also tend to be low priority for vendors--with OpenVMS support lagging if it's available at all.
  
  Yet another example of the demise of OpenVMS applications can be seen in Captaris' September 12th, 2002, end-of-life announcement for the WebMail product we've been running for OpenVMS users. For details, see http://www.captaris.com/staticresources/html/infiniteeol/wmiceol.html (Please note that IMHO web email, aka "green" web email, as normally used in conjunction with Darkwing and Gladstone, is not affected in any way by Captaris' announcement concerning their product. IMHO web email is a completely different product, and continues to be the recommended way for casual users to access their Darkwing and Gladstone email via the web.)
  

Other sites have migrated, or are in the process of migrating from OpenVMS to alternative platforms. Most government labs moved away from OpenVMS as a scientific computing platform in the mid- to-late 1990s, as have most colleges and universities.

In conclusion, while OpenVMS has done a great job for UO users for a long time, it is time for OpenVMS to enjoy a well deserved retirement at the University of Oregon. If you have any comments, questions or concerns about this announcement, please feel free to contact me at joe@oregon.uoregon.edu or (541)346-1720.