I have known Keith Parris since the 1990s when I was consulting for a semiconductor manufacturer in Silicon Valley and Keith came in to evaluate some performance issues we were having. Keith was "commuting" between the San Jose area and his home base in Colorado.

Keith had worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for a while when I had met him, just as I had, and was an independent consult at the time, also. Along the way he has consulted for some very high profile customers including eBay. He still lives in Colorado and is back with "Digital", now spelled Hewlett-Packard. His expertise in systems, storage and disaster recovery is hard earned and anyone having a chance should take the time to attend one of his talks and if possible chat with him.

On Wednesday, 10 February 2010 and 11 February 2010, Keith is present two webinars. They are the same content but are spaced to help people world-wide may attend.

The webinar is entitled: "Achieving the Highest Possible Availability in your OpenVMS Cluster". The outline of the webinar is:

Is there a single point of failure hidden somewhere in your OpenVMS Cluster? Is your OpenVMS Cluster really configured for the highest possible availability? Do you know what techniques to use to minimize the impact of cluster state transitions?

This webinar provides details on potential failure sources in an OpenVMS Cluster configuration, and discusses available techniques, tools, configuration modifications and operational procedures you can use to eliminate or mitigate these risks. It will also describe how to minimize the impact of potential delays to application processing that are associated with cluster state transitions.

Attendees will learn:

* Best practices and application of the available technologies in an OpenVMS Cluster to provide maximum high availability

* Available methods of providing redundancy and resilience within an OpenVMS Cluster

* Sources of potential failures that are not commonly understood, and how to get around them

* How to minimize the impact of potential delays to application processing associated with cluster state transitions

As mentioned above webinars are at two different times:

10 February 2010 15:00 GMT: Keith Parris will present a webinar on "Achieving the Highest Possible Availability in your OpenVMS Cluster". Registration is open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/466770737.

11 February 2010 02:00 GMT: Keith Parris will present a second "copy" of the webinar on "Achieving the Highest Possible Availability in your OpenVMS Cluster". Registration open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/394479824.

Pick the time that is convenient and plan to attend.

See you there!

Keep spreading the word.

Bill.

Since being thrown into this coordination role with the others on the "Committee" things have been moving VERY quickly with many presentations, seminars, whitepapers and webinars coming together to kick off OpenVMS Month. With the great participation we have been getting we are starting to plan on more events on a regular schedule throughout the year - more on that in a coming blog.

As of now here is just a glimpse at what is coming in the next month:

Feb 8 13:00 PST: You can watch the Intel ITANIUM 9300 “TUKWILA” LAUNCH EVENT at http://www.hp.com/go/integrity

Feb 10 15:00 GMT: Keith Parris will present a webinar on "Achieving the Highest Possible Availability in your OpenVMS Cluster". Registration is open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/466770737.

Feb 11 02:00 GMT: Keith Parris will present a second "copy" of the webinar on "Achieving the Highest Possible Availability in your OpenVMS Cluster". Registration open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/394479824.

Feb 12 10:00 GMT: Colin Butcher will present a webinar on "Networking with OpenVMS" Registration is open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/557231985.

Feb 12 16:00 GMT: Colin Butcher will present a second copy of the webinar on "Networking with OpenVMS". Registration is available at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/968614105

Feb 18 17:00 GMT: Pieter Hintjens and Martin Sustrik of iMatix and Brett Cameron from HP will present a webinar entitled, "Low Latency, High Throughput, Durable, RESTful, Open, Standards, ...: What is messaging, where does it fit, what does it today?". This webinar is about 90 minutes planned length.

Feb 22-26 in Granville, Ohio: Keith W. Hare of JCC Consulting is presenting a week long RDB DBA Seminar entitled "The Care and Feeding of Production Databases". You can get more information at http://www.jcc.com.

Feb 22: Brad McCusker will present a webinar on "OpenVMS Integrity Migrations - Real World Experiences"

Feb 23 17:00 GMT: Attunity will present a webinar on "OpenVMS - Keep It. Modernise It. Integrate It". Registration is open at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/410322825

Feb 24: Barry Kierstein will present a HOW TO oriented webinar on Availability Manager

Feb 26: Nemonix will present a webinar on "Extreme Encryption devices for OpenVMS".

Mar 4 09:00-11:00 GMT: John Egolf, HP Office of OpenVMS Programs - OpenVMS Update & Roadmaps + 8.4 FT Update. This is being coordinate with Chapters, LUGs and SIGs world-wide for local events, including:

* HPUG (UK) Ltd
* HP-Connect Sweden

Mar 4 13:00-15:00 EST: John Egolf, HP Office of OpenVMS Programs - OpenVMS Update & Roadmaps + 8.4 FT Update. This is being coordinate with Chapters, LUGs and SIGs world-wide for local events, including:

* Cactus Chapter, Phoenix, AZ

As you can see a lot of activity this month. More details will appear on the VMSblog and the Connect Event Calendar over the next couple days so you can have more information about the webinars and other events. If you have any questions or which to be involved send us an email at participate@viavms.com!

Spread the word!

Thanks,

Bill.

HP Connect is sponsoring "OpenVMS Month" and it is NOW, February 2010!

We are looking for people in the OpenVMS Community as well as any vendors who have something to share with the rest of us and would like to do it YESTERDAY! That's right NOW! HP Connect is looking to host webinars, develop and distribute podcasts and provide forums for videos all focused on OpenVMS and its associated products, services, uses and operation.

If you have a presentation ready to go and are just in need of an environment we need to talk to you so you can present this information next week or maybe in two weeks.

If you can bring together a presentation or webinar in the next week or so come talk to us as well so we can schedule you before the end of the month!

Yes, this is short notice. Hey, we at least have had a bit of time to pull this together. HP-UX hardly got any notice and January was their month.

Contact us to help move this along! Send email to us here.


Thanks,

John Apps
Kees denHartigh
Tom Heim, Jr.
Bill Pedersen
Michelle Popejoy
Bill Thomas

The "unofficial" OpenVMS Month Coordinating Committee.

On 3 February 2010 the HP Office of OpenVMS Programs will present: “GNV". This will be delivered by HP's OpenVMS engineering team. This is the fourth in the current series of webinars being presented by the HP Office of OpenVMS Programs and kicks off "OpenVMS Month" sponsored by HP Connect and the OpenVMS SIG.

GNV stands for "GNU is NOT (Open)VMS". GNV provides the important subset of UNIX/Linux/POSIX software to port UNIX open source applications to OpenVMS

The agenda is:

1. What is GNV?

2. Differences between GNV and Unix Environments

3. How to Use GNV

4. How does GNV work

5. Tips and Tricks


The HP Office of OpenVMS Programs is conducting these webinars in two time zones to cover all of you across the globe. The procedures are the basically same for connecting to either webinar but the links go to different "events" so pick the time you want to attend and follow the link of your choice.

The first webinar is at 08:30 UTC/03:30 EST.

The two step procedure to join the webinar is:-

1. You join the virtual classroom by going to this web page.

2. The telephone bridge line details are available here and you can dial the line that is relevant to your country and join in the audio. The conference code is 3467391155

The second webinar is at 15:30 UTC/10:30 EST.

The two step procedure to join the webinar is:-

1. You join the virtual classroom by going to this web page.

2. The telephone bridge line details are available here and you can dial the line that is relevant to your country and join in the audio. The conference code is 3467391155

To test your setup ahead of your event, please use the following link:

https://www.rooms.hp.com/testsetup

The HP OpenVMS Programs Office looks forward to seeing you in the virtual classroom on the 20th of January. If you have any queries, please write to OpenVMS.programs@hp.com

=====================================

This is a great webinar to kick of the HP Connect OpenVMS Month. Watch for more announcements SOON regarding OpenVMS Month events. We are working on many webinars to be delivered this month by HP, the OpenVMS Community and OpenVMS Partners.

Keep spreading the word! Support and use OpenVMS!

Thanks,

Bill.

This page was updated on 31 January 2010 to reflect a change in the key for the webinar at 08:30 UTC. All other details remain the same.

On the 20th of January HP Office of OpenVMS Programs in conjunction with Mimer Information Technology present:- “The Mimer SQL DBMS on OpenVMS". This is delivered by HP's OpenVMS Partner Mimer. Many of you may already be aware of Mimer as many of HP's customers are using this database on OpenVMS. The presenter is Stephen Eck. The agenda for the presentation is below:-

Background

The Mimer company
VAX => Alpha => Integrity
Mimer SQL: “Born VMS”

Some Mimer customers on OpenVMS

Cross platform

Enterprise & desktop
Mobile & Embedded

Some Mimer SQL features

100% standard SQL
Zero maintenance
Non-locking concurrency control
Automatic database reorganization
Heterogeneous client/server
Multi lingual support
Immediate restart

Mimer SQL on OpenVMS

Multi threaded server
Database cache
Client/server
Disk I/O

The HP Office of OpenVMS Programs is conducting these webinars in two time zones to cover all of you across the globe. The procedures are the basically same for connecting to either webinar but the links go to different "events" so pick the time you want to attend and follow the link of your choice.

The first webinar is at 08:30 UTC/03:30 EST.

The two step procedure to join the webinar is:-

1. You join the virtual classroom by going to this web page.

2. The telephone bridge line details are available here and you can dial the line that is relevant to your country and join in the audio. The conference code is 3467391155

The second webinar is at 15:30 UTC/10:30 EST.

The two step procedure to join the webinar is:-

1. You join the virtual classroom by going to this web page.

2. The telephone bridge line details are available here and you can dial the line that is relevant to your country and join in the audio. The conference code is 3467391155

To test your setup ahead of your event, please use the following link:

https://www.rooms.hp.com/testsetup

The HP OpenVMS Programs Office looks forward to seeing you in the virtual classroom on the 20th of January. If you have any queries, please write to OpenVMS.programs@hp.com

=====================================

I look forward to this next webinar in the current series of OpenVMS Technical Webinars being presented and coordinated by the HP Office of OpenVMS Programs. I have found the previous sessions interesting and informative and hope you participate here as well.

Keep spreading the word!

Thanks,

Bill.