sasaki@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU.UUCP (07/17/86)
If you remember from last time, a poor Harvard installation was having problems with System's Industries SIMACS system. SIMACS provides clustering for little money. Unfortunately, when version 4 of VMS came out, SIMACS stopped working. The system manager who is stuck with SIMACS has been writting to SI to try and get SIMACS working so he can upgrade to version 4 (version 4 came out 18 months ago). The installation has been paying for software support during this entire time. After much effort he has found that SI has three solutions. The first solution is to use the latest release of the SIMACS software. This has several problems and is (in my opinion) a kludge. Using the latest software involves using the version 3 F11ACP to actually deal with the disk. You do qio's to SI's ACP which then talks to the version 3 acp which finally does the i/o. What you end up with is disk access, but with none of the version 4 file i/o features (file-name limitations, no ACLs, shared file limitations, etc...). SI's second solution is to buy their new cluster on an ethernet. This looks like a pretty good solution, but does cost. The third solution is to wait for a new XQP that will deal with things properly. Unfortunately, SI has made no promises about the availability or functionality of the XQP. It will cost money though. Throughout this discussion, SI has been completely unsympathetic and has put forward little effort to solve this problem. I had thought that SI would offer some sort of compensation (maybe a discount on the cluster on ethernet?) for all of the troubles that have been endured, or at least some sort of indication that they are trying to figure out a better way of doing things. And after all of this, SI wanted more money for software support. SI has been unsympathetic to the problems of the site and have offered no workable alternatives that don't involve buying more of SI's products. Based on SI's unresponsiveness, I have stopped recommending SI's products to anyone. I hope that other info-vax readers will consider Harvard's experience with SI before doing any more business with them. I have glossed over much of the detail, this note is too long already. If anyone is interested in the details, please send me mail. The above has been my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion's of Harvard University. ---------------- Marty Sasaki uucp: harvard!sasaki Harvard University Science Center arpa: sasaki@harvard.harvard.edu One Oxford Street bitnet: sasaki@harvunxh Cambridge, MA 02138 phone: 617-495-1270