Virtualization, the Easy Way: The Stromasys Solution

In today's uncertain economy, smart IT professionals are considering the benefits of virtualization. Virtualization breaks the traditional dependencies between hardware and software, allowing customers to save money and increase efficiency, while IT departments can do more with less. Virtualization technologies offer greater business continuity and disaster recovery capability, as well as reduced downtime and the opportunity to consolidate servers. Proven to reduce administrative, maintenance, and floor space costs, virtualization also offers better capability to achieve service levels. The benefits of virtualization are abundant and well documented.

Nevertheless, the current economic situation also brings to mind the drawbacks associated with the technology. No company can deploy a virtual environment overnight, or without substantial cost. Although virtualization saves money over time, many businesses are not willing or able to make the initial investment required for deployment, which is considerable. Deploying a virtual environment can complicate licensing, as well as security and support. There are human factors to consider as well. What kind of training or new staff will be required? How will implementation affect, and possibly disrupt, current business practices? What about those companies whose legacy systems are still running their business or mission-critical applications? These companies are under increasing pressure to migrate as maintenance costs increase and the reliability of the systems declines, but how can virtualization work for them, without consuming the entire IT budget?

For these companies, the answer may lie with cross-platform virtualization technologies. Cross-platform virtualization allows applications created for one CPU and operating system to run on different platforms without modification, using combined methods of virtualization and hardware abstraction layers. A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an interface that makes it possible to add support for new devices and new ways of connecting devices to the computer, without modifying every application that uses the device. The Geneva-based company Stromasys is a pioneer in the field of cross-platform virtualization technologies, and provides a solution to the virtualization challenge for owners of DEC’s (Digital Equipment Corporation, now Hewlett-Packard) VAX and Alpha computer systems.

Hewlett-Packard stopped producing the VAX in 2000, and followed suit with the Alpha in 2007, but many of these systems remain in productive service around the world. Despite increasingly difficult to find replacement parts, increased downtime, and rising maintenance costs, users often have significant incentive to keep these systems; the applications they run may be heavily customized, may have taken years to develop, and are often vital to automation and process/control systems. They may have no choice but to keep these systems because of strict record-keeping or archival requirements. Then there is the venerated OpenVMS operating system, still in development by HP. Once known as VMS, its name has changed, but its record of excellence has not. Hailed for more than 30 years as one of the most reliable and robust general operating systems in existence, OpenVMS users call it “bulletproof,” and are reluctant to part with the OS that has served them so well for so long.

Options may seem limited for VAX and Alpha owners who wish to rid themselves of legacy hardware while maintaining the functionality of their current system. Software migration is a possibility, but the expense, time, and level of risk involved are enough to make most IT departments wary, and rightfully so. Migration also presumes that application source codes are available and owned by the client, but that is commonly not the case. On the other hand, doing nothing and risking hardware failure is not a viable option. According to statistics from the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, D.C., 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, and 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same period filed for bankruptcy immediately.

Faced with this frightening reality, owners of VAX and Alpha systems should not despair; the answer may be simpler and more affordable than they think.

Using Stromasys’ CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP cross-platform virtualization software, customers can replace legacy VAX and Alpha hardware, while the original operating system, applications, and layered software continue running without modification on new, industry-standard hardware. CHARON software products provide the benefits of virtualization, without many of the usual drawbacks. CHARON software costs a fraction of what typical migration or virtualization projects cost, and increases performance automatically by using modern CPUs, storage systems, and networks. Finding a solution that does not break the budget is always an important benefit, but especially in the current economy. According to Ray Schroder, IT Manager at Trend Windows, “We could have spent three or four million dollars on a replacement system we did not want, because we knew the VAX software itself still very much fit our business. The CHARON-VAX solution saved us millions, while enabling us to upgrade painlessly.”

CHARON also significantly reduces cost of ownership, maintenance fees, power consumption, and physical space requirements, while preserving current software investments. Mark Gillespie, Data Center Operations Manager at WorkflowOne and satisfied CHARON-VAX user, claims, “We went from paying more than $100,000 in maintenance fees per year to paying just under $10,000 per year. And we did it with virtually no effort on our part.” Using the CHARON-VAX solution, WorkflowOne began to see a return on their investment very soon after implementation, and dramatically reduced energy consumption, cooling costs, and the floor space required for their physical hardware. They were able to expand their data center after acquiring another large company, without the hassle of a large-scale migration project during efforts to reorganize. Because CHARON allows users to replace the original hardware, while the operating system, software, and applications perform exactly as before, there is no impact on day-to-day operations or current business processes. For business or mission-critical applications, the installation often takes place outside of normal business hours, and causes little or no disruption to operators or end users.

CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP software products also provide virtualization without complicating licensing. Extensively tested, CHARON virtualizes the original VAX or Alpha hardware so completely that Hewlett-Packard certifies it using the original AXE hardware verification tests developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. HP recognizes CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP as genuine VAX and Alpha replacement solutions, and provides transfer licenses for the OpenVMS operating system, layered software, and applications running in the appropriate CHARON environment. Multi-instance licenses for CHARON-AXP software are available to provide server consolidation capability, and allow multiple Alpha systems to run on a single server. Using blades and new multiple core processors increases the flexibility of the virtual environment, while further reducing energy consumption, maintenance costs, operating expenses, and the overall footprint of the data center. CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP both allow for increased storage capability, so the systems can grow with the customers’ changing needs.

 If security and support for the virtual environment are concerns, customers who implement CHARON-VAX or CHARON-AXP have no need to worry. OpenVMS is arguably the most secure operating system that exists today. Although the first release was more than 30 years ago, it has never been successfully hacked, because Digital engineers designed it to be secure from the ground up, not as an afterthought. CHARON does not pose the security risks commonly associated with virtualization technologies, such as malware designed specifically to attack virtual environments, because it virtualizes only the original hardware. Another drawback often encountered with virtualization is that vendor support for specific environments on virtual systems can be hit or miss. However, in the case of CHARON software products, support is readily available, as Stromasys offers both gold and platinum support plans, which provide direct telephone and email support, documentation and application notes, and access to updates, enhancements, and new versions for licensed products. The platinum support option provides coverage twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and a guaranteed four-hour response time for business or mission-critical systems. Hewlett-Packard also provides support for the OpenVMS operating system, layered software, and applications running on CHARON-VAX or CHARON-AXP when installed on HP hardware.

Using CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP software also reduces the impact of virtualization on human factors. Since CHARON enables the system to continue running on new hardware without changes, it eliminates the need to re-train current employees or hire new staff. Most users find that implementation of CHARON software takes place quickly and without inconvenience to them. They may not even be aware that a change has taken place, except for the increase in system performance. With CHARON, users can continue current business processes, while faster system performance increases productivity. For WorkflowOne, activities like backing up the system and end of month sales processing are seven times faster than before; operations that took twelve hours using the legacy hardware take less than two hours using CHARON on modern hardware. This feature pleasantly surprised MediSolution Network Administrator Josue Valdez. “We expected to reduce maintenance fees and increase our storage and memory capabilities using the CHARON-AXP software. The fact that the new system performs twice as fast as the original and takes up much less space is just icing on the cake.”

Other potential problems users frequently encounter when implementing virtualization technologies include difficulty in using existing monitoring and management tools. Stromasys also provides a ready solution to this common issue by offering Cockpit Manager for OpenVMS and VAXscan for Alpha or Integrity system management software. Cockpit Manager for OpenVMS software supports and automates OpenVMS system management on VAX, Alpha, and Integrity systems, covering all aspects of the IT production environment. It monitors and controls all OpenVMS systems including attached storage and networks from a centralized location, keeping track of events in the system environment, to help manage them and prevent problems from occurring. VAXscan is a high level programming language originally designed for text processing applications on VAX/VMS. VAXscan for Alpha or Integrity extends the life of VAXscan applications and sustains the skills of VAXscan developers by making this useful language available on reliable, secure HP OpenVMS Alpha and Integrity systems.

CHARON cross-platform virtualization software is the obvious solution for replacing legacy VAX or Alpha hardware while maintaining the functionality of customers’ valuable operating system, applications, and layered software. With so many of the benefits and so few of the drawbacks of other types of virtualization, only one question remains for owners of VAX and Alpha systems: What are you waiting for?

Stromasys SA is a privately held company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, serving thousands of users in more than 50 countries. Established in 1998, Stromasys SA was formed from a management buyout of Digital Equipment Corporation’s European Migration and Porting Centre following the HP/Compaq merger. The vast experience gained from years of large-scale migration and porting projects, system-level VMS engineering projects, and development of binary translators eventually led to the creation of the CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP software products. With full service sales and support locations in the United States, Eindhoven, and Hong Kong, engineering facilities in Russia and China, and representation around the globe, Stromasys continues to expand and is currently developing virtualization technologies for additional platforms, including the HP3000.