HPE OpenVMS Systems

Whitepapers

OpenVMS information

HPE OpenVMS systems

Evolving business value

Whitepapers

The following whitepapers offer valuable information about HPE OpenVMS, including IT consolidation, clustering, high availability, total cost of ownership (TCO), and more.

The section “Other OpenVMS whitepapers” is updated with additional technical white papers, data sheet and a quick reference card.

» Tuning and troubleshooting OPCOM [PDF, 140 KB]
This white paper outlines the different tuning mechanism available for HPE OpenVMS operator communication manager (OPCOM). It also articulates the common issues reported by different customers and how to overcome these issues. (February 2013)

» Using Bus Addressable Protocol (BAP) for OpenVMS device drivers [PDF, 916 KB]
This white paper details the use of BAP to perform DMA operations in HPE OpenVMS on Integrity servers. (February 2013)

» HPE OpenVMS NUMA Programming Guide [PDF, 380 KB]
This document provides detailed overview and usage of OpenVMS NUMA/RAD programming interfaces. It shows the usage of programming interfaces and ability to create custom Application Programming Interface (API) which can help application designers to take maximum advantage of complex NUMA architectures. (April 2012)

OpenVMS on HPE Integrity servers

» Performance comparison: HPE OpenVMS on HPE AlphaServer and HPE Integrity systems [PDF]
HPE and customer tests compare the performance of applications running on OpenVMS AlphaServer and OpenVMS Integrity systems. Results strongly indicate that OpenVMS users can obtain substantial performance improvements on the HPE Integrity server platform. Moreover, ongoing enhancements in the OpenVMS operating system itself can also improve application performance.(September 2007)

» HPE OpenVMS on Integrity server blades for HPE BladeSystem c-Class[PDF]
This white paper discusses the well-documented attributes of OpenVMS running on innovative, flexible, future-proof HPE Integrity server blades in the HPE BladeSystem. It highlights the benefits of OpenVMS on Integrity server blades, including the ability to meet specific business outcomes (accelerating growth, lowering costs, and mitigating risks) in a "best-run" infrastructure—meaning one that is cost-savvy, change-ready, energy-thrifty, and time-smart. (September 2007)

» Delivering high availability and disaster tolerance in a multi-operating-system HPE Integrity server environment [PDF]
High availability and disaster tolerance are the IT elements that contribute to business continuity. The purpose of this document is to illustrate how the HPE Adaptive Infrastructure enables enterprises to achieve their HA and DT objectives in multi-operating system environments with HPE Integrity servers. (September 2006)

» Virtualization and HPE OpenVMS [PDF]
This white paper describes how the HPE OpenVMS operating system is addressing rapidly changing business demands, now and in the future. (June 2006)

» HPE Superdome Hybrid Servers[PDF]
This white paper describes how HPE Superdome servers based on the HPE sx1000 chipset can support configurations with both PA-RISC nPartitions and Intel^® Itanium^® 2 nPartitions in the same server. It addresses the hardware, firmware, operating system, and management tools required. (January 2006)

» HPE OpenVMS cluster support on HPE Integrity servers [PDF]
This white paper provides detailed information about HPE OpenVMS cluster software running on HPE Integrity servers and how the design of the OpenVMS cluster architecture facilitates the integration of OpenVMS on HPE Integrity servers into an existing OpenVMS cluster environment. (September 2005)

» Integrating HPE Integrity servers into the OpenVMS AlphaServer environment [PDF]
This white paper provides background information that supports the decision to transition from OpenVMS on HPE AlphaServer systems to OpenVMS on HPE Integrity servers. It highlights the benefits of OpenVMS on Integrity servers and explores planning the integration of HPE Integrity servers into the OpenVMS environment. (August 2005)

» Making the transition from HPE OpenVMS VAX to HPE OpenVMS on Integrity servers[PDF]
This white paper provides a background to support the decision to transition from VAX systems running OpenVMS to OpenVMS Integrity servers. It highlights the benefits of OpenVMS on Integrity servers and presents an overview of migration business practices in the areas of licensing and trade-ins, while also discussing technical considerations of the migration process. (June 2005)

» Porting applications from HPE OpenVMS AlphaServer systems to HPE OpenVMS Industry standard 64 for Integrity servers [PDF](January 2005)

IT consolidation

» IT Consolidation Solutions from Hewlett-Packard[PDF]
This IDC whitepaper sponsored by HPE examines the new role consolidation is playing as IT infrastructures evolve. It looks at the business value of consolidation and the steps organizations must take to plan and implement a successful consolidation effort. HPE IT consolidation alternatives are profiled, along with the experiences of several of its customers. (January 2003)

OpenVMS high availability, disaster tolerance, and security

» HPE OpenVMS Clusters [PDF, 1 MB] New!
This whitepaper talks about the diverse technical aspects (server, networking, storage) involved in setting up multi-site OpenVMS clusters with built-in redundancy to avoid single point of failure in any of the components. (June 2013)

» HPE RTR Failover in multihome setup [PDF, 145 kB]
This whitepaper provides details on failover mechanism and timeout calculation in a multihome setup. (Feb 2013)

» UK National Health Service [PDF]
Learn how the UK National Health Service used split-site OpenVMS clusters to develop and deliver their new blood and transplant system (December 2008)

» OpenVMS Active/Active Split-Site Clusters [PDF]
The Availability Digest (www.availabilitydigest.com) has published a comprehensive article on "OpenVMS Active/Active Split-Site Clusters" in its June, 2008 issue. This article goes into considerable detail about the elegance of OpenVMS disaster tolerant cluster environments. Like active/active systems, OpenVMS clusters recover in seconds because once a failure is detected, all that must be done to continue operation is to switch the subset of users who were connected to the failed node to surviving nodes at any of the sites. Furthermore, no data is lost following a failure (a Recovery Point Objective, or RPO, of zero is achieved) because the application file system copies are updated synchronously. (Posted with permission from Availabilty Digest, www.availabilitydigest.com) (June 2008)

» HPE's disaster proof solutions: ensuring application availability [PDF]
This white paper produced by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. provides independent validation and analysis of the HPE disaster-proof live demonstration. (June 2007)

» OpenVMS disaster tolerant reference architectures [PDF]
OpenVMS environments deliver a full continuum of high availability (HA) and disaster tolerance (DT) from basic clusters to widely separated disaster tolerant data centers. This white paper explores a concise description of sample OpenVMS disaster tolerant architectures. (March 2007)

» Disaster Tolerance Proof of Concept: OpenVMS Host-Based Volume Shadowing and Oracle 9i RAC over Extended distances [PDF]
This concept paper demonstrates how OpenVMS Host-Base Volume Shadowing (HBVS) along with Oracle9i® RAC, as well as the connectivity technology from LightSand and Digital Networks, ensures high availability and data integrity over a variety of significant distances, including those formally supported by OpenVMS Clusters. (January 2006)

» The HPE OpenVMS Approach to High Availability Computing [PDF]
This whitepaper examines the capabilities that contribute to a high-availability environment and explores the industry-leading high-availability features of the HPE OpenVMS operating system. HPE OpenVMS solutions combine industry-leading high-availability and disaster-tolerance capabilities with open database and application support, and the power of HPE AlphaServer systems and HPE Integrity servers delivers unrivaled flexibility and breadth of customer solutions. (December 2004)

» Fibre Channel in a Disaster-Tolerant OpenVMS Cluster System [PDF]
This whitepaper highlights the general underlying principles of traditional disaster-tolerant OpenVMS Clusters and describes the impact of adding multiple interconnects for storage. Illustrating how HPE OpenVMS is addressing rapidly changing business demands now and in the future, this paper also presents options that are available today for configuring multisite OpenVMS Cluster systems, as well as mechanisms that may be implemented in the future to provide additional disaster-tolerant capabilities. ([updated] November 2004)

Adaptive Enterprise

» The Adaptive Enterprise and OpenVMS [PDF]
This whitepaper outlines OpenVMS contributions to the HPE Adaptive Enterprise (AE) initiative, and gives customers a better understanding of how to plan the integration of their current and future OpenVMS environments into the Adaptive Enterprise. (July 2004)

OpenVMS total cost of ownership

» Total cost of upgrade for AlphaServer OpenVMS Environments
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper detailed quantitative analyses of the costs and benefits associated with upgrading HPE AlphaServer OpenVMS environments to HPE Integrity i2 servers. (August , 2012) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Quantifying the Total Cost of Ownership for Entry-Level and Mid-Range Server Clusters
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper compares equivalent configurations of HPE Integrity servers running OpenVMS against IBM/AIX and Sun/Solaris. OpenVMS Integrity configurations consistently perform with significantly lower TCO than the competition when considering real-life environments and requirements such as application uptime, system management, and typical life cycles. (June 2007) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Quantifying the Total Cost of Upgrading HPE OpenVMS AlphaServer systems to OpenVMS on HPE Integrity servers
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper provides a detailed Total Cost of UpgradeTM, or TCUTM, analysis for upgrading OpenVMS AlphaServer systems to OpenVMS Integrity servers. It quantifies the costs and benefits from the upgrade and provides detailed cash flow analyses for four upgrade and two consolidation scenarios. The analysis shows that in many cases companies cannot afford not to upgrade from AlphaServer to Integrity. In some of the scenarios studied the payback period is so short that it is measured in months, not years! (April 2007) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Crisis in Continuity: Financial Markets Firms Tackle the 100km Question
Tabb Group
This whitepaper examines issues that are central to the issue of risk mitigation and data replication in global financial markets firms. (June 2005)

» Improving Availability and Lowering TCO with HPE Integrity Servers and OpenVMS
Alinean, Inc.
This whitepaper compares OpenVMS mid-range clusters with IBM and Sun UNIX mid-range cluster TCO, availability, and business value. This TCO analysis helps decision makers invest more intelligently by analyzing the total cost of assets over their useful life. This ensures that the purchase decision is not made simply on the lowest initial purchase price, but considers change cost, ongoing support and maintenance, and service levels that include availability of applications and data. (January 2005) Posted with permission from Alinean, Inc.

» Are some RISC-Based Clusters More Secure Than Others?[PDF]
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper provides a detailed comparison of potential vulnerabilities and security-related cluster crashes for HPE OpenVMS, IBM AIX, and Sun Solaris Server Clusters. (June 2004) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Are Some RISC-Based Clusters Easier to Manage Than Others?[PDF]
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper provides a detailed comparison of the resources required to manage HPE OpenVMS and IBM AIX server clusters. (May 2004) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Total Cost of Ownership for Entry-Level and Mid-Range Clusters [PDF]
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper provides a detailed analysis of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of three different RISC-based server clusters: HPE OpenVMS, IBM AIX, and Sun Solaris. (February 2004) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» OpenVMS VAX to OpenVMS AlphaServer Upgrades [PDF]
TechWise Research, Inc.
This whitepaper provides a detailed analysis of the benefits realized and satisfaction achieved by upgrading VAX systems to AlphaServer systems running OpenVMS.([updated] September 2000) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

Other OpenVMS whitepapers

» BL8x0c i2 OpenVMS 8.4 Performance [PDF]
This whitepaper provides detailed analyses of the performance advantages of OpenVMS V8.4 running on BL8x0c i2 (Itanium 9300) server blades. The performance of the new server blades were tested using integer and floating point tests as well as four specific application tests: Apache, Rdb, Java and Oracle 10gR2. Based on all of the analyzed data, BL8x0c i2 server blades running OpenVMS V8.4 offer significantly better performance than older OpenVMS environments. ([updated] September 2000) Posted with permission from TechWise Research, Inc. www.techwise-research.com

» Using X.25 over IP [PDF]
This whitepaper addresses the use of X.25 protocol for communication in OpenVMS environments, and encourages customers to use X.25 over the IP protocol. By moving to a single network (TCP/IP), customers enjoy greater efficiency and effectivity. The IP protocol is being actively engineered and enhanced, while X.25 is a mature product from an engineering perspective. (August 2008)

» Migration from HPE Advanced Server for OpenVMS to HPE OpenVMS Common Internet File System (CIFS)
HPE OpenVMS Common Internet File System (CIFS) for OpenVMS is the next generation file interoperability software succeeding Advanced Server/Pathworks server. HPE CIFS provides users with seamless file and print interoperability between OpenVMS and Windows-based systems. It is based on the popular Open Source product, Samba, from Samba.org. For customers migrating to the Integrity platform, HPE OpenVMS Common Internet File System (CIFS) based on Samba is the recommended solution. There are no plans to port HPE Advanced Server for OpenVMS to the Integrity platform. Thus, customers who are currently running HPE Advanced Server V7.3B for OpenVMS/HPE PATHWORKS Server V6.1 for OpenVMS should consider moving to HPE OpenVMS CIFS. This whitepaper will help customers prepare for a migration to CIFS from their ASV environments. (August 2008)

» International Securities Exchange scales off the charts [PDF]
International Securities Exchange (ISE) is the world's largest equity options exchange. In March 2004, HPE and OMX Technology of Sweden performed a benchmark test at the request of ISE to determine the performance parameters of running the OMX Technology CLICK XT trading application on the firm's HPE OpenVMS platform. Designed by OMX, the benchmark was conducted at the HPE OpenVMS Solution Center in Nashua, New Hampshire, and tested essentially the same application code that is used in daily production at ISE. (March 2005)

» OpenVMS Floating Point whitepaper [PDF]
HPE is bringing its OpenVMS operating system, middleware, and application portfolio to Intel® Itanium® architecture, which has a 64-bit model and basic system functions similar to the Alpha chip. There are, however, some implementation differences between the two platforms that might affect user-written applications, such as the availability of hardware-supported floating-point formats. Itanium architecture implements floating-point arithmetic in hardware using the IEEE floating-point formats, including IEEE single and IEEE double. AlphaServer system architecture supports both IEEE and VAX system floating-point formats in hardware, and OpenVMS compilers generate code using the VAX system formats by default, with options (on AlphaServer systems) to use IEEE formats. Irrespective of whether it was originally written for VAX systems or AlphaServer systems, an OpenVMS application that uses the default VAX system floating-point formats needs to produce equivalent behavior on the Itanium architecture using IEEE formats at the lowest level. (May 2003)

» OpenVMS Calling Standard Manual [PDF]
This standard defines the requirements, mechanisms, and conventions that support procedure-to-procedure calls for HPE OpenVMS on VAX systems, HPE OpenVMS systems, AlphaServer systems, and Integrity servers. The standard defines the run-time data structures, constants, algorithms, conventions, methods, and functional interfaces that enable a 32-bit or 64-bit native user-mode procedure to operate correctly in a multilanguage and multithreaded environment on VAX, Alpha, and Itanium® processors. (April 2003)

» PL/1 to C/C++ translation services [PDF]
Software Resources International
This is a whitepaper from a third party, Software Resources International. HPE makes no claims about this document, its authors, or the company. HPE provides this as courtesy to OpenVMS users who may want to consider translation of PL/1 code to C/C++ in preparation for moving applications to the Itanium®-based Integrity platform. (2003)

» Documentation in presentation form for KP services as they apply to OpenVMS on Integrity servers [PDF]
KP services, originally named Kernel Processes, should be used by developers who are porting code that switches or manipulates stacks. Stack switching code is much more complicated on OpenVMS for Integrity servers than it is on OpenVMS for AlphaServer systems or VAX systems. Therefore, HPE recommends that developers use the KP services rather than porting their stack switching code. This presentation describes the functions of KP services for OpenVMS. (2004)

» HPE OpenVMS Technical Journal V17 (US English)

» Data Protector on OpenVMS improving backup times- OpenVMS Technical Journal V18 (US English)

» OpenVMS Cluster over IP- OpenVMS Technical Journal V18 (US English)

» Automatic Backup Monitoring and Reporting for HPE SLS and HPE ABS- OpenVMS Technical Journal V18 (US English)

» Best practices for production-based clusters and backup environments- OpenVMS Technical Journal V18 (US English)

» Porting DBMS Linter to OpenVMS/Itanium– OpenVMS Technical Journal V19 (US English)

» HPE OpenVMS technical journal v19 (U.S. English)

» HPE RTR Failover in multihome setup―Technical white paper (US English)

» OpenVMS Terminal Driver Port Class Interface for Itanium [PDF] (November 2003)

» Migration from HPE Advanced Server for OpenVMS Common Internet File System (CIFS) (US English) [PDF]

» HPE OpenVMS V8.4 on HPE Integrity Systems- Quick Reference Card [PDF]

» HPE OpenVMS Technical Journal V17 (US English) [PDF]