Rich Marcello
Vice President, OpenVMS Systems Software Group

The papers you will read in this issue of the Journal describe how we in the OpenVMS engineering community set out to bring the OpenVMS operating system and our loyal customer base into the 21st century. The papers present both the development issues and the technical challenges faced by the engineers who delivered the OpenVMS operating system version 7.0 and the Spiralog file system, a new log-structured file system for OpenVMS.

We are extremely proud of the results of these efforts. In December 1995 at U.S. Fall DECUS (Digital Equipment Computer Users Society), Digital announced OpenVMS version 7.0 and the Spiralog file system as part of a first wave of product deliveries for the OpenVMS Windows NT Affinity Program. OpenVMS version 7.0 provides the "unlimited high end" on which our customers can build their distributed computing environments and move toward the next millennium.

The release of OpenVMS version 7.0 in January of this year represents the most significant engineering enhancement to the OpenVMS operating system since Digital released the VAXcluster system in 1983. OpenVMS version 7.0 extends the 32-bit architecture of OpenVMS to a 64-bit architecture, allowing OpenVMS Alpha users to fully exploit the 64-bit virtual address capacity of the Alpha architecture. As you will read in some of the papers in this issue, however, our design goal for OpenVMS version 7.0 went beyond just delivering 64-bit virtual address capability to OpenVMS users. It was essential to us that OpenVMS users be able to upgrade to version 7.0 with full compatibility for their existing 32-bit applications.

In addition to achieving the significant goals of 64-bit addressing and compatibility for 32-bit applications, version 7.0 includes very large memory (VLM), very large database (VLDB), fast I/O, fast path, and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) enhancements. These new features recently combined with the power of the Alpha architecture to earn OpenVMS a world record for performance. In May of this year, OpenVMS version 7.0 on an AlphaServer 8400 system configured with eight processors and 8 gigabytes of memory, running Oracle's Rdb7 database and using the ACMS transaction processing monitor, set a new world record for TPC-C performance on a single SMP system. Audited performance was 14,227 tpmC at $269 per tpmC. Just this past August, the combination of OpenVMS version 7.0, Oracle's Rdb7 database, the ACMS monitor, and the AlphaServer 4100 system achieved world-record departmental server performance. The new world record was set on an AlphaServer 4100 5/400 system configured with four processors and 4 gigabytes of memory. In audited benchmarks, the performance results were 7,985 tpmC at $173 per tpmC.

Such outstanding results are achievable in a full 64-bit environment --- hardware architecture, operating systems, and applications such as Oracle's Rdb database. No other vendor today can deliver this power. In fact, Digital has two 64-bit operating systems: the OpenVMS and the Digital UNIX operating systems.

As noted above, Digital introduced the OpenVMS operating system with support for full 64-bit virtual addressing at the same time it introduced the Spiralog file system, in December 1995. The Spiralog design is based on the Sprite log-structured file system from the University of California, Berkeley. With its use of this log-structured approach, Spiralog offers major new performance features, including fast, application-consistent, online backup. Further, it is fully compatible with customers' existing Files-11 file systems, and applications that run on Files-11 will run on Spiralog with no modification. To deliver all of the features we felt were essential to meet the needs of our loyal customer base, the Spiralog team examined and resolved a number of technical issues. The papers in this issue describe some of the challenges they faced, including the decision to design a Files-11 file system emulation.

The delivery of the OpenVMS version 7.0 operating system and the Spiralog file system are part of Digital's continued commitment to the OpenVMS customer base. These products represent the work of dedicated, talented engineering teams that have deployed state-of-the-art technology in products that will help our customers remain competitive for years to come.

In the OpenVMS group as elsewhere in Digital, we are committed to excellence in the development and delivery of business computing solutions. We will continue to maintain and enhance a product portfolio that meets our customers' need for true 24-hour by 365-day access to their data, full integration with Microsoft Windows NT environments, and the full complement of network solutions and application software for today and well into the next millennium.