Quotations

''OpenVMS is probably the best designed and most robust general purpose operating system in existence,'' says Colin Butcher, a systems architect with XDelta Limited, a systems integrator based in Bristol, England with 20 years experience on OpenVMS. ''If you want serious uptime, you don't use anything else.''

 

Swoosh

 

Defcon Logo

The DEFCON experience
COOL AND UNHACKABLE

DEFCON is an annual computer underground conference for hackers held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Hackers from all over the planet attend to meet others into hacking, hangout with old friends, listen to speeches or just hack on the network.

An OpenVMS team (known as The Green Team) attended DEFCON9 to demonstrate the industrial strength and competitiveness of OpenVMS as a Web and application server and for key mission-critical operations directly connected to the Internet without a firewall.

The team’s goal was to install an OpenVMS server, running Telnet, FTP, WEB and Personal WEB services and maintain availability and integrity during attacks to any of the previously mentioned services. It also needed to prevent hackers from gaining access to unauthorized files and consequently to avoid hackers from Capturing the Flag. The Capture the Flag contest is designed to emulate real world Internet security scenarios. The goal is for teams to compromise other teams systems and place a file "flag" in other teams’ root directories. After about 52 hours of playing, the DEFCON judges (a.k.a. Goons) placed a note in the Scoreboard file that said that the Green Team’s OpenVMS box was "Virtually Unhackable" and that hackers might want to move on to another target.

The Goons pronounced that the OpenVMS system was "Cool" because in addition to being unhackable it had the best web content and services on the floor. They also noted that the OpenVMS system provided continuous service of those applications during the entire event despite all the hacking attempts. Thus the OpenVMS server came away from DEFCON9 with the title of "Cool and Unhackable".

 

 

 

 

OpenVMS Shark

OpenVMS is the best designed computer operating system in the world !

It represents the "Gold Standard" in environments where stability, reliability,high performance, disaster tolerance, security, scalability and clustering are required.

Here are some facts

OpenVMS has more than 450,000 installed systems with over 10 million users

OpenVMS is the #1 rated operating system in the healthcare industry

More than 80% of the world's CPU chips are manufactured on lines running OpenVMS

More than 50% of the world's cellular phone billing systems run OpenVMS

More than 95% of the world's top stock exchanges run on OpenVMS or Tandem systems

For these reasons OpenVMS is used in many production environments and financial or medical institutions where non-interruptability and continuous computing (24 x 365) are an important issue. Military contractors also accept it as the one and only operating system for providing maximum security with maximum numerical throughput. Continuous OpenVMS system uptimes of over ten years are not unheard of.

Key Features

ServerCurrently runs on the latest 64bit Integrity server product family from Hewlett-Packard with full Operating System and hardware support from a single source. HP is one of the largest and most respected technology names in the world. Eighty percent of all Global 100 companies already use Itanium based servers

Huge system performance and application scaling with 64-bit flat virtual addressing

Support for systems with 256 gigabytes of physical memory

Support for symmetric multiprocessing environments of up to 32 CPUs in a single system (and up to 96+ nodes in a cluster)

Robust file system with individual volume limits circa one terabyte (and thousands of volumes)

Built-in tools for local backup and recovery

Built-in high performance data management support (RMS)

Built-in highly sophisticated batch command processing language (DCL)

Built-in multi-user security and auditing

Built-in multiple and mixed-language programming capabilities

Support for modular coding and distributions

Built-in application debugging and application dump tools

Built-in system tuning tools

Multi-user interactive user support

Full shared-resources clustering

Supports a variety of networking protocols including COM SMB NFS IP DECnet X.25 http

Process and engineering that targets the avoidance of introducing security problems and typical virus infection paths.

A philosophy that assures upward-compatibility of user-mode applications and tools over OpenVMS releases

Powerfull and easy to use no-nonsense user interface

The Shark

John P. Smith (OpenVMS Systems and Servers Group) created the OpenVMS Shark logo. He also made the following comments about the significance of choosing the Shark to represent OpenVMS

  • They have both been around forever.
  • They are extremely fast and flexible.
  • They never stop.
  • They will take on (eat) anything and continue to operate.
  • They operate in packs/clusters.
  • And although they will never be cute they are the most efficient and effective machines in their environments.
HIS TAGLINE WAS....

"In an ocean full of guppy operating systems, wouldn't you want to be the king of the seas?"