Re:OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]
by segmondy on Monday July 17, 2017 @08:32AM
(#14787868)
Ever work with Sun servers? Yeah, you could swap out cards, CPU, ram, drive, power, without halting or rebooting the OS. But not just Sun servers. This is not a feature unique to Alphaservers/VMS.
Re:OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]
by seasoned_geek on Thursday July 20, 2017 @10:40AM
(#14812852)
It was originally a DEC specific design copied/stolen by others. DEC created the design concept of a common back plane. Other than some logic switches to control power/enabling, there was nothing it provided. Every machine was completely customizable.
I'm not a hardware buy, but I believe this is a carry over from the VAX days long before there was SUN.
Re:OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]
by malux85 on Monday July 17, 2017 @03:00PM
(#14791369)
Nope! I didn't know that. Very interesting.
The Alphas had a motherboard and daughterboard - and the daughterboard was a generalized bus, so a single slot could have a RAM or CPU slot in it --- were Sun servers capable of this too? Or was a RAM slot a RAM slot and a CPU slot a CPU slot and they were not interchangeable?
I'm curious because I've never seen any other machines with a generalized CPU/RAM bus, I'm curious if Sun hardware supported this? If it did, can you remember the model numbers so I can read up on it?
Re:OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]
by segmondy on Monday July 17, 2017 @07:19PM
(#14793117)
Re:OpenVMS State of the Port to x86_64 [pdf]
by lallysingh on Monday July 17, 2017 @09:50AM
(#14788449)
What happened to the processes using the RAM?
I Sysadmined a VMS box running on a couple of AlphaServers (2100 and 2100A) if I recall.
At one point a disgruntled employee had taken a 22 rifle into the server room and shot several rounds at the equipment, only 1 bullet hit, but it went through a RAM bank, the system disabled the faulty hardware and continued running.
The other cool part was the interchangeable boards - the system had a case that swung open on the side and you could insert cards much the same way as you slot in PCI cards today, except one of the cards could be a CPU block, or it could be RAM, so if you had a CPU intensive workload you could disable a physical board of ram, take it out, and replace with a CPU board - without halting or rebooting the OS