SYSMSH@ulkyvx.bitnet (02/03/88)
Due to a series of upgrades on our VAXcluster I had some left over hardware that I used to beef up a couple of our Ultrix VAXes. I now have a VAX-750 running Ultrix with the CI-750 hardware attached to it. Now I realize that Ultrix does not currently support the CI. It sees that it is there, there is a ci780.bin microcode file in the 2.0 distribution, and there is a bunch of stuff in the error logger related to the CI. So, obviously DEC is heading in that direction. Especially if you read Charlie Matco....hahaha... Has anybody done anything with the CI? I've kept it primarily in the hope of future support (I'd love to use our cluster's tape drives) and to help out field service (they like vms diagnostics). We are running 2.0-1. Thanks... Mark Hittinger/systems programmer iv/C&T ocis south center University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky 40292 sysmsh@ulkyvx.bitnet Ps: I've already been using HSC backup to make full saves of my Ultrix disks. Has anyone else tried to disassemble the HSC backup/restore utilities to just deal with the series of logical blocks in a partition instead of the whole volume?
rad@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Richard A. Dramstad) (02/05/88)
In article <20313@felix.UUCP> SYSMSH@ulkyvx.bitnet writes: >Has anybody done anything with the CI? I've kept it primarily in the hope >of future support (I'd love to use our cluster's tape drives) and to help >out field service (they like vms diagnostics). We are running 2.0-1. At the Anaheim DECUS in December a member of the Ultrix Engineering Group was supposed to give a talk entitled something like, "Future Directions in Ultrix Mass Storage." The talk was cancelled. An Ultrix product manager (name not revealed to protect the innocent) confirmed that they had an Ultrix system working off HSC-connected disks, but the developer was too busy working on the project to actually discuss it at DECUS. I don't know if this will mean true Ultrix clusters (what would that mean anyway?), or if it's just a technique for getting faster access to RA-series disks for a single system. Since we have an 8600 with a DEC-maintained CI (keep those revs coming!) and will soon have a spare HSC50 as the result of merging two VMS clusters, I'm excited about the possibility of having anything faster than the awful Unibus/UDA50 path to our RA81s and RA82s. I asked about the possibility of field testing this new capability; perhaps you should, too. At any rate, don't throw away that CI... Dick Dramstad