Talk:VM (operating system)
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I guess this should be at "VM {operating system)"; I'll move it when I get a chance. Noel (talk) 11:39, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Is it just me, or does this article seem very strongly biased?
- It's not just you. Admittedly I work for a competitor, but this reads like marketing literature. --192.18.42.249 23:04, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
- Agreed. I'm mildly surprised this one hasn't gotten an NPOV complaint. In any event, the merge seems like a Good Idea. Jay Maynard 16:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Does "VM/390" exist? I thought VM/ESA was the initial S/390 VM offering. TimP 03:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
The VM nomenclenture has never been very tidy - VM/XA, VM/HPO and VM/SP have also been official names.
Both this article and the VM/CMS one are pretty sad. Henry Troup 19:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Some thoughts from a z/VM sysprog
Well, after all the advertising, some thoughts from a z/VM sysprog...
After some time of getting used to it z/VM is a great system to work on. But, of course, it also has its disadvantages.
On the downside, z/VM can be a real pain for the sysprog staff. Many things have to be done manually, especially when upgrading the z/VM environment to a new release which includes tedious editing sessions merging the old system files with the new ones. IBM doesn't offer a simple procedure for this task, while system maintenance can usually be done with a simple command, SERVICE.
Luckily z/VM features REXX, a great scripting language which is nowadays available for almost any system platform, helping to automate the upgrade process. Still, since z/VM had'nt been too popular before Linux for z/Series came to existance, there's a serious lack in support and education personnel - any sysprog dealing with z/VM knows most of the IBM people working on z/VM personally. While these guys do a great job supporting customers, IBM would be well advised to recrute new experts in the near future.
What's more: if a customer doesn't stick to the IBM way of doing things (like running only a few z/VM LPARS) it shows an obvious lack of systems management functionality, at least 'out of the box'. There are many inofficial (aka unsupported) tools available from IBM's z/VM website, but their evaluation and installation is completely up to the customer, and you still find yourself coding many small helper utilities, because the things you need are simply non-existant.
Of course, all of this is absolutely transparent to the system images you run on z/VM, but it can occupy the z/VM sysprog quite a bit. Admittedly, it's fun to code on z/VM, but it can be hard to explain this to someone's boss, who has been told (probably by some IBM consultant?) that z/VM can be run absolutely stable (which is true, at least most of the time) and without much effort (which, in my experience, really depends on the given situation).
Compared to PC-based solutions, z/VM is much more powerful, but at the same time, much more complex to maintain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.59.38.230 (talk • contribs) 19:52, 3 November 2006
Moved from the article to here by RossPatterson 01:07, 4 November 2006 (UTC).
[edit] Restructuring of VM and CP/CMS material
I have just finished a reshuffling/rewriting of material from VM and CP/CMS articles. I have tried to incorporate the various comments applicable to this page, though of course there were many issues involved. If you don't see something that you feel was important, naturally please go ahead and make changes. Trevor Hanson 19:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Also: If anybody can upload a public-domain VM teddy bear for inclusion here, that would be nice. I see plenty of bears on the web, but obviously they do not belong to me. I think this would be a nice addition. (In contrast, I did not feel that the huge VM/370 welcome screen from earlier did much for the page.) Trevor Hanson 19:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] AIX/Linux under VM
I had stated that VM was required for AIX and Linux, but this was just challenged. After some further investigation, I see that I was misinformed. I had been relying on some strong and credible statements to that effect (which of course I can't put my finger on at the moment), but I now see from other sources that this must have been bogus. IBM's installation docs clearly describe native configurations, e.g. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246264.html. There probably have been specific environments or situations where VM was the only way to go, which led to the claims in the sources I had trusted. I agree that the blanket statements here needed to disappear. I have thus removed the remaining claims about VM being necessary. It would be helpful if some good references about native AIX/Linux configurations could be located, particularly from an historical perspective about AIX. Trevor Hanson 18:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Dates missing
I am not competent to contribute here, but I wish to point out there are too little dates (years), in this article, so that the timeline of the whole VM story is blurry. Even the "History" section only has one year: 1972. You can't figure out what happened later and when. If the experts could fix this, I'd be very grateful. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.180.69.18 (talk) 08:24, August 22, 2007 (UTC)
- Good point. I had been hoping that a current z/VM expert would step in on this page and add some more detail about recent history. I have added the z/VM original release date (October 2000) and a link to IBM's z/VM release history. Plenty of early dates are found in the CP/CMS articles. Details on the middle years between 1972 and 2000 could be beefed up by somebody with the expertise and interest. Most of the release dates should be close to the associated hardware announcements, e.g. the XA versions were linked with the release of XA hardware. On the other hand, there probably aren't too many people who care about specifics on those events. The IBM archives remain the best bet for a timeline of versions. Trevor Hanson 22:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Restructure of articles about IBM mainframe operating systems
After a big edit of MVS I concluded that the whole set of articles about IBM mainframe operating systems from System/360 onwards needed to be re-structured to minimise overlap and to make clearer the evolutionary relationships between these operating systems (notably in memory management, which is historically a major distinguishing feature). There is already some support for this proposal. Please add comments at Talk: MVS. Philcha 23:56, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
