[rescue] Solaris on a PPC (now VMS)

[Dave McGuire]

On Wednesday, February 5, 2003, at 02:53 AM, Kevin wrote:
> This brings me to a question.  I am not very familiar with VMS
> but i see that many people who use it claim that it is
> superior to many of it's competitors.  My question is
> basically, what is so good about it?  I'm not arguing that it
> is not, especially since i know nothing about it.  I just want
> to know what it's strong points are and how it compares to the
> competition?

   Well...one strong point is reliability.  It DOES NOT GO DOWN.

   We're not talking about Windows' idea of "does not go down" meaning 
runs for a few days at a time.  We're talking about machines in active 
use that go for years...Not one or two years, but TEN...between 
reboots.  No joke.

   Another thing is features...it's got every kitchen-sink feature that 
one can think of.  It's about as far from UNIX's minimalist approach as 
an OS can be.  Access control lists on files.  Very flexible batch 
queue management.  Powerful resource accounting and usage tracking.  A 
command language that makes shell scripts look like MS-DOS .BAT files.  
The list goes on and on.

   One other thing is clustering.  REAL clustering with shared 
resources...not "plug them all into an ethernet switch and pass UDP 
packets back and forth between running applications" crap that a lot of 
people refer to as "clustering" these days.

   Security.  Try to crack a VMS system.  Just try.

   It really is an amazing OS, even if DCL is a little verbose.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire             "I've grown hair again, just
St. Petersburg, FL           for the occasion."       -Doc Shipley