Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
In this article, I will guide you through the process of setting up and operating the x86 virtualized version of the OpenVMS operating system, provided by VMS Software, Inc., in a clustered configuration on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) bare metal instance. I will also emphasize integration points between OpenVMS guests running on the Amazon EC2 instance and various AWS services.
Introduction
OpenVMS is a midrange server operating system developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1977. It was known for pioneering capabilities like clustering, which led to unmatched high availability. According to a February 2018 Business & Technical Update from VMS Software Inc., the longest recorded uptime without a reboot was 17 years, achieved by a European railway company. Modern operating systems, including Windows Server and Linux, have their roots in OpenVMS. Today, OpenVMS remains in use across industries that require the highest levels of uptime and security, such as financial services and manufacturing.
The VSI OpenVMS V9.2 for x86-64 represents the first production release for x86 virtualization that operates on VMware, KVM, and VirtualBox. This release allows for the instantiation of OpenVMS guests under the KVM hypervisor on an Amazon EC2 bare metal instance.
Overview of Solution
In this solution, I provisioned an Amazon EC2 c5 bare metal instance running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 within a private subnet in an Amazon VPC. The KVM hypervisor is installed on this EC2 instance to host the OpenVMS guests. Additionally, the KVM hypervisor hosts AWS Storage Gateway—Amazon S3 File Gateway and AWS Storage Gateway—Volume Gateway guests. The local virtual network provided by KVM allows for low-latency access to these AWS hybrid storage services from the OpenVMS guests. I will also highlight AWS Transfer Family as an SFTP destination for the OpenVMS guests.
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