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How Big Is VMS?

(vmssoftware.com)
77 points rbanffy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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jamesy0ung ◴[] No.43575439[source]
Is there any reason to use VMS today other than for existing applications that cannot be migrated? I've heard its reliability is legendary, but I've never tried it myself. The 1 year licensed VM seems excessively annoying. Is it just old and esoteric, or does it still have practical use? At least with Linux, multiple vendors release and support distros and it is mainstream, whereas with VMS, you'd be stuck with VSI.
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davesmylie ◴[] No.43575547[source]
I was actually surprised to see that there's been a release in the last 12 months - I had thought it was dead.

I used it extensively in the late 90's early 00's and really liked it. As a newb sysadmin at the time, the built-in versioning on the fs saved me from more than one self-inflicted fsck up.

I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments.

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1. lproven ◴[] No.43580362[source]
> I can't imagine there would be any green-field deployments in the last 10 years or so - I'm guessing it's just supporting legacy environments.

This is not entirely the case.

I have been writing about VMS for years. The first x86-64 edition, version 9, was released in 2020:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/10/openvms_92/

Version 9.0 was essentially a test. 9.1 in 2021 was another test and v9.2 in 2022 was production-ready.

There's no new Itanium or Alpha hardware, and version 8.x runs on nothing else. Presumably v9.x is selling well enough to keep the company alive because it's been shipping new versions for a while now.

Totally new greenfield deployments? Probably few. But new installs of the new version, surely, yes, because VMS 9 doesn't run on any legacy kit, so these must be new deployments.

It's been growing for a few years. Maybe not growing much but a major new version and multiple point releases means somebody is buying it and deploying it. Never mind no new deployments in a decade... more new deployments in the last few years than in the previous decade.