linscomb@EMX.UTEXAS.EDU (Thomas J. Linscomb) (07/16/88)
To: Dr. C.H.Warlick, W.C.Bard, W.Hays, G.Terrell, J.E.Sanders, R.Baker, P.Watson, R.Watson, M.Knox, L.Ives, W.Anderson, J.Taylor, S.Vance, S.Kneuper, John St. Georges, J.Lund, J.Coupal From: Thomas Linscomb Subject: Spring DECUS U.S. Symposium Cincinnati, Ohio, May 15 - 20, 1988 Sessions Attended DE005 - Security Considerations in Computing Keynote/Panel LS008 - Large Disk Farm Management on VAX/VMS N104 - Cryptographic Security for Ethernet S006 - Time Management for the Data Processing Professional S060 - Hints and Kinks in Managing a Mixed Mode VAXcluster U042 - The Ultrix to VMS Bridge - An Implementation Discussion U050 - Using RSM to Manage Ultrix-32 Workstation from a VAX Server Running VMS V017 - HSC Software v3.7 V032 - Single Processor VAX System Performance for Your Boss V035 - VAX System SIG Business Meeting V042 - VAX System SIG Advanced Software Q & A V044 - VAX System SIG Software Improvement Requests V045 - VAX Systems SIG Working Group Chairman's Meeting V047 - VAX System SIG VAXcluster Working Group Meeting V065 - VMS version 5.0 Field Test Panel V093 - Introduction to VAX Assembly Language Programming V114 - Front-end Processing in Real-time VAX Systems V135 - When to Tune Your VAX V153 - A Facility for Queuing Tape Load Requests in a VAXcluster V186 - VMS Update V187 - Technology Impact on Software Licensing and the Need for New Solutions V188 - Software Business Technologies V190 - Local Area VAXcluster Performance and Tuning V191 - VMS Performance Update V192 - AUTOGEN Feedback V196 - Digital's New software Business Practices V209 - How to Use Captive accounts to Let Unprivileged Users do Privileged Things V250 - VAX/VMS System Management Q & A V901 - Using VMS v5.0 VAXcluster Features Board of Directors/Management Council Open Meeting Informal Get Together by VMS v5.0 Field Test Sites Anaheim Planning Meeting ------------------------------------------------------------ Synopsis: The big announcements for the Cincinnati DECUS Symposium were the new VAX 6200 processors, VMS version 5 and Digital's new Software Business Practices. In addition to these announcements, as usual, there were a number of technical sessions covering use of networks, system management and getting the most out of almost all of the Digital products. A number of the sessions focused on the new functionality and impact of VMS version 5. Since the Advanced Graphics Lab was a field test site for this software most of the information was not new. However, it was still good to talk to the software developers and iron out kinks and questions that I had developed during the field test. There were two meetings specifically for the field test sites. One was a public presentation by the sites of our reaction to the new software. The other was a private meeting with the software developers to get individual feedback on the software. The Advanced Graphics Lab has the field test documentation for VMS v5 for any UT Computation Center person who has a further interest. This is not the complete new documentation set that will ship with v5 but contains most of the changed information. There is one interesting note on the release of VMS version 5. Although the software was released to the distribution center, I suspect that it will still have a long lead time until it is publicly available. One problem is the sheer mass of new documentation that has to be produced and the other is that the product was announced long before all the minor problems were fixed. My guess as to when it will arrive from the distribution center is about August. I also suspect that it will come with a mandatory update and a maintenance release (v5.1?). A special "Keynote Security Panel" spoke on the the industry need to focus on computer security and the speaker's individual perspectives. The participants included Jim Burrows, Director of the Institue of Computer Science and Technology, National Bureau of Standards; Harvey Weiss, VP, Goverment Systems Group, Digital; Pat Gallagher, Director, National Computer Security Center, National Security Agency; and Randalph Sanovic, Computer Security, Mobil. Far and away the most interesting remark was the admonition by Mr Weiss of Digital of the goverments selection of ATT System V compliance as a purchasing standard. It appears that Digital (and probably Mr Weiss in particular) is still incensed over having to withdraw Digital's bid for one of the largest computer contacts in history. Attached are some of the notes that I took during the sessions at DECUS. Computation Center staff can contact me for further details. ------------------------------------------------------------ V186 - VMS Update Mixed Interconnect Cluster - Phase II 42 nodes total, up to 16 CI nodes, up to 26 NI nodes reducted transition times Support mount verification of tapes VAXcluster licensing - grandfathered CI licensing licenses will be included in new System Building Blocks Dump file enhancements (DUMPSTYLE) Increased Working Set limit (100000 limit in SPD, no VMS limit) Modular Executive System Management License Managment Facility (LMF) SYSMAN Paper Keys DECnet, Shadowing, RMS, Journaling, VAXcluster No more MicroVMS there will still be user licensing RX33 distributions RX50 is still available (but not in H-kit orders) Rolling upgrade RECALL/ERASE Printer queues Stock type jobs grouped DECnet VAX multiple proxies cost splitting of paths command recall in NCP DEQNA - this hardware is to be phased out (1+ years) driver will ship as unsupported DELQA is replacement ------------------------------------------------------------ V114 - Front-end Processing in Real-time VAX Systems VAX Front end processing KA800 - front end processor VRTA$ - VMS call to communicate with VAX ELN (also DCL commands (REALTIME ...)) Set physicalpages to less than real number of pages, can then map extra pages ------------------------------------------------------------ U050 - Using RSM to Manage Ultrix-32 Workstation from a VAX Server Running VMS Remote System Management and Ultrix-32 Workstations VMS versions 4.4 - 4.7 RSM - available for Ultrix 2.2 (client only) Installation of operationg system and applications Ultrix backups Trial installation (using VMSINSTAL or setld) only Local Area Network for VAXstations and MicroVAXs Management, BACKUP, Operating System Server RSM went to the Software Distribution System on April 7 Note: Jan Thompson says that version 2.2 is due here real soon now. We have just gotten the binary licenses signed. These are something we never got before for this specific product and was why we didn't get RSM when it was released. ------------------------------------------------------------ V192 - AUTOGEN Feedback Feedback replaces using OLDSITE%.DAT Designed to increase paramaters quickly and to decrease them slowly. provides adjustment to approximately 16 system paramaters including MAXPROCESSCNT, GBLPAGES, GBLSECTSIONS, NPAGEDYN, PAGEDYN, IRPs, SRPs, (does not include LRPs), ACP{DIR, DINDX, HDR, MRP}_CACHE, MSCP_BUFFER, LOCKIDTBL, pagefile size, swapfile size, "Current" values are when snapshot is taken. This should be when the system is under load Digital suggests using two passes- @autogen savparams testfiles feedback @autogen genparams reboot feedback ------------------------------------------------------------ V017 - HSC Software v3.7 Provides an HSC performance improvement of up to 64% HSC50 HSC70 Version 3.50 375 700 Version 3.70 550 1150 I/O requests per second Provides faster disk drive failover by reducing the time required from 48 seconds to 4 seconds This reduces total time from 63 to 18 seconds Adds support for VAXsimPLUS By using VAXsimPLUS and VMS Shadowing it is necessary to have only a single replacement disk available to replace any failing disk. Corrects several known problems Including correction of the "GCS (Get command Status) problem" An interesting note- The lowest requestor number (K.sdi) has higher priority for simultanous I/Os ------------------------------------------------------------ V190 - Local Area VAXcluster Performance and Tuning Performance is limited by throughput of disk(s), disk controller, CPU and Ethernet adapter Disk IOs / second (using 4 block transfers) RA70/82 30 RA81 25 RD53/54/RA60 20 Controllers UDA-50, KDA-50, KDB-50 These will never be a limitation RQDX3 45 Ethernet Adapters DEUNA 45 DELUA 100 DEBNA 115 (under VMS v4.6) DEQNA/DELQA 120 For the following configurations the limiting resource in the configuration is shown as the first item on the line- MicroVAX-II / RAxx RQDX3 / MVII ST506 disk controler / MV2000 2 * RA70 / 3500 NI / 4 * RAxx / 360x The effect of the boot node on the satellites performance is low until the load on the boot node is high. To improve performance - Move files off the system disk: SYSUAF, JBCSYSQUEUE, VMSMAIL, RIGHTSLIST, NETUAF, NETNODE_REMOTE Install files /OPEN/HEADER Use SHOW DEVICE/SERV/ALL to adjust the SYSGEN paramater MSCP_BUFFER (This paramater is one of the parameters adjusted in VMS v5 when using AUTOGEN FEEDBACK.) ------------------------------------------------------------ V901 - Using VMS v5.0 VAXcluster Features This was actually a meeting with the VMS VAXcluster developers to allow feedback to them. There were a number of ideas developed, one of which was that there needs to be a method to determine the amount of Ethernet bandwidth utilization by a VAXcluster on an Ethernet. Again there was a call for an automatic method to load balance disks that are connected to HSC disk servers. ------------------------------------------------------------ V188 - Software Business Technologies This session primarily covered the CDROM, the license Mananagement Facility (LMF) and its component parts. Some interesting notes on CDROMs - It cost about $3000 to master a CDROM. This cost should come down to $1500 and the disk will be available in one week The current Digital CDROM holds 600 Megabytes The seek time on the disk is between 1 and 3 seconds. Throughput is about 150 KB/s. The CDROM players can only be connected the MicroVAX q-busses, but can be mounted clusterwide like most other disk drives. (The CDROM player can also be configured into other non-VAX hardware.) ------------------------------------------------------------ S006 - Time Management for the Data Processing Professional Track information and commitments Magazines - must schedule time to read The benefit of planning is not the plan, its the planning. Meetings - What, when (start and STOP!), and should respect time Activity list/sheets - when:, amount of time:, priority: A or B if items continue to slip then dump only handle an item once Keep a record of each contact - This will refresh your memory before each new meeting ------------------------------------------------------------ V065 - VMS version 5.0 Field Test Panel I sat on this panel since I headed up the field test of VMS version 5 at the AGL. The participants were asked to name the best feature and worst problem of the new release of VMS. The best new feature was the mixed interconnect cluster functionality. The worst problem that UT Austin experienced was the ACCOUNTING utility ignoring the /TYPE qualifier and not processing local USER records for three months. Also named as a problem were getting layered products, both from third parties and Digital that worked under the new operating system. This is partially due strictly to being a field test site, but is none the less something other sites should consider when thinking about field testing software. Over all this session was pretty glowing, with very few negative comments about the V5 release. ------------------------------------------------------------ V209 - How to Use Captive accounts to Let Unprivileged Users do Privileged Things Make the version number on the LOGIN.COM file 32767. This will not allow a higher version of the file to be created. In the Authorization file, set the process limit to one (/PRCLM=1). Use READ/TIME_OUT=255 to insure the captive procedures are not left logged in. ------------------------------------------------------------ U042 - The Ultrix to VMS Bridge - An Implementation Discussion Network File Server (NFS) software for VMS provides Arpa/Internet end node implementation on ethernet Currently (May 1988) in field test. IN: IP ICMP ARP UDP TCP FTP OUT: RJP EGP SMTP TELNET Uses QIO interface, VAXC to provide socket interface The entire software is implemented as a driver and ACP The project goals - data sharing between NFS and VMS provide NFS clients with same file serving as any Unixed based server The following were not goals - NFS client support for VAX/VMS support for data conversion for non-stream files no yellow pages (YP) no lock manager (LM) no status manager (SM) The system supports two different file system models, the VMS file system or a Unix file system. VMS file system - Provide NFS client with access to RMS Stream LF (VMS) files - file subject to VAX/VMS file system rules - client limited by NFS proto. file system model Unix file system - 100 % compatable with Unix file system built using container file system (Bridge File System - BFS) cluster wide failover provides static load balancing NFS user is mapped to VMS username/account implementing protection everything (!) is asynchronous - there are wait, process, cache queues does not use RMS and is seperately tunable with its own caches the Bridge File System is not described to users i-node == VMS file id == VMS file name An import/export tool is used to move file in and out of the containers Slower throughput in containers name translation and duplicate caches (to RMS) There is a analysis program to clean up containers. This is necessary if files have been changed, restored from BACKUP or been manually moved.