Letters So, the Tru64 era has ended at the hands of HP. Compaq/DEC's vaunted clustering and file system technology have been sent to the place where software dies, and Veritas has been adopted. HP's Inkvent agenda doesn't seem to support much Unix research and development these days - much to the dismay of the old Compaq hands and customers spread across the globe.

The great irony of this whole situation is that history is repeating itself in a big way. DEC bought a license for Veritas' file system many years ago in order to develop its own AdvFS (advanced file system). (Thanks for the reminder on that, Dave G.) Now HP is killing AdvFS and buying Veritas' file system again. This is a great business model for Veritas, and other ISVs should take notes on how they can best take advantage of the chaos that is post-Compaq merger HP.

Now to the letters. We asked for your feedback on HP's decision to let Tru64 customers down by reneging on past promises, and you provided said feedback with authority. We're going to take the unusual step of only using initials on these letters to protect those of you willing to speak out against HP. We hear that doesn't go over terribly well in Fiorinaville, and why punish the already punished.

Just to give you a taste of what is ahead, here is quite possibly the best reader statement we have ever received. "It’s a good thing that HP never acquired the rights to penicillin. If they had, mankind would have perished from widespread disease while HP tried to figure out how integrate it with anthrax."

Fat chance of getting Tru64 customers to migrate to HPUX now!

How can any half clueful HP decision maker expect customers to move from a great product with scu, advfs, lsm and cfs to an inferior one with expensive third party supported mission critical add ins - HPUX can't even multipath natively ?

I don't think so. I'd rather buy something else - if it has to be that big a change why not go the whole way. You don't keep going back to people who constantly lie to you and reward them, with repeat purchases being the other decision driver. 

From the best to nothing special at all in three short years. Go HP. 

DG

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How do I feel as a Tru64 Cluster administrator ? Shocked, stunned, let down, betrayed, ashamed .... well not really. After HP announced the takeover I predicted that it wouldn't go as smoothly as their marketing department predicted. I now have a very smug 'I told you so' feeling, the only really surprising issue with this announcement is that it took them so long to kill Tru64, I expected it a lot sooner..

Our plans are to move away from Tru64/Alpha/HP-UX, we just didn't believe in the HP-UX/Itanium combination. We have already migrated some systems to Linux and if we can find a decent cluster for a 800 user SAP system then we will probably move all our systems to Linux.

We actually like HP Intel hardware so they will probably retain our custom and to prove we like them we even bought 2 Itanium servers. We quite like them although the price was a bit steep and we probably won't buy any more unless the price comes down dramatically.

To summarise: this announcement confirms our suspicions about HP intentions towards Tru64 and doesn't affect our future plans as we didn't plan on migrating to HP-UX/Itanium.

FYI: We have 3 Tru64 Clusters, 9 other Tru64 servers and 10 Linux servers currently in use.

DC

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Well, I was pretty much sticking with Tru64 because the platform tied to my ArcInfo license. I would have to pay up to change platforms, and it wouldn't work any better. ArcInfo, like Tru64, is an end-of-life product.

That said, I'm not surprised at HPs latest move. They seem to be operating in a zone beyond logic, acquiring businesses that compete with their own lines, then throwing them away in spite of the tons of money they bring in.

If I were faced with migrating a clustered system, I would look at a better-established platform than Itanium/HPux. The alternative, keep running Tru64 on late-model Aplha hardware, looks pretty good, too. I hear David Turner at Island Computers is having a boom year selling refurb DS- and ES-series machines.

JN

Nice plug there for Mr Turner.

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How do I feel about this?

Totally betrayed.

TruCluster was the best thing going in UNIX cluster technology (can you say transparently decentralized high-availability file system) and AdvFS was a breeze to work with. HP-SUX would have finally been tolerable with this inclusion. As it is, they might as well migrate to Longhorn and complete the betrayal of their UNIX customers.

DR

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Actually, I'm no Tru64 user -- I'm an OpenVMS geek.

I'm befuddled by this announcement. I thought UNIX stuff was supposed to be "simple" and "portable". They slid the development schedule until they finally gave up on porting it? That doesn't mesh.

I guess I'm glad OpenVMS isn't based on any UNIX stuff -- based on this announcement, it would never have been ported to Itanium (never mind being ported on time, per the schedule established several years ago) had it been so!

I don't mean to be cruel, but permit me to say to all those VMS nay-sayers, "nyah nyah". Chalk up another in the long line of eunuchs that OpenVMS (you know, that "dead, legacy OS from the '70s") has outlived.

Pardon me while I go back to my research on the new features in the upcoming release of OpenVMS v8.2 for VAX, Alpha, and Itanium.

AS

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I guess I won 5 bucks... One of the HP Sales Engineers I work with and I made a bet at the time that Compaq was bought that none of the real important parts of Tru64 would make it into HP-UX. I've been a long terem HP-UX backer because of its stability and have been really looking forward to these new promised features. Guess we can count AdvFS and stuff like that as another example of cool technology that Corporate America has killed. Under current management, HP has turned from a technology driven company to just another PC manufacturer - guess in a few years printers will be the only thing we remember HP for...

PA

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To be honest I'm was amazed when Compaq didn't kill it off after buying from Digital. It's a shame there are a lot of really cool things about TRU64. My teeth were cut with Digital Unix 4.0 and that combined with 64 bit Alpha chips was a potent platform.

Without the investment in new Alpha chips continued investment in TRU64 seems a little futile. HP has stated pretty clearly that their intention is move their customer base from RISC to HP-UX (or Linux) on Itanium. Maybe not publically, especiallly not to the TRU64 users, but all the clues have been there.

Maybe HP could do us all a favor and open source TRU64 if they are done with it.

PR

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Why not? When you’ve got an operating system and file system that nears the functionality and robustness of OpenVMS, why not kill it? Tru64 got it clustering and CFS from the some of the engineers that brought us OpenVMS. With the most reliable technology in the world, it only makes sense that you dump it because you can’t shoe horn it into HP-UX. HP would have been far better of trying to shoe horn HP-UX into Tru64. There’s not a lot to do compared with going the other way. Bob Palmer didn’t know how to sell it, and Carly doesn’t know how to sell it. HP should just concede the race to MS and IBM now. They make great OSs (OpenVMS, Tru64), great servers (Proliant, Alpha), and great storage (Storageworks). It’s time for HP to dump it all, focus on printing (a market soon to be owned by Dell), and suck up to Bill G. or IBM in hopes of a buyout. The Digital marketing folks were useless, and they were apparently the only folks to be retained by Compaq and HP. It’s a good thing that HP never acquired the rights to penicillin. If they had, mankind would have perished from widespread disease while HP tried to figure out how integrate it with anthrax. HP has burned its die hard supporters for the last time. Goodbye HP, hello Dell, IBM, and MS. Rest in peace HP! By the way, I’m not bitter.

TD

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Hi, I spent years on the Tru64 Customer Council listening to HP make promises about the future of Tru64 and in particular, the promises from HP that TruClusters would be ported to HPUX. After the last such occasion that I was able to attend, I came away with the firm impression that in order to maintain use of cluster technology, customers would be better off porting back to OpenVMS rather than await the port to HPUX with any certainty that such features would arrive in a timely fashion. OpenVMS has had clusters since 1980 and it remains the best implementation of such technology. OpenVMS is itself in danger of course – the best option for the future in my opinion is for HP to donate Tru64 and OpenVMS to the Open Source Foundation.

AL

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A sad day indeed.. This is what happens when you have suits in charge who don’t know what an Alphaserver is until someone drops one on their heads.. One has to cling to the slim chance that they will donate the source to the OpenSource community. Never liked HP/UX and can’t really see us migrating to that without the benefits of Tru64 UNIX features. Not idea at the moment what this will mean for us but we have our quarterly meeting with HP next Wednesday. They will have some explaining to do I guess..

ES

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Hi

As both a tru64 and Hp-ux 11iv2 user. I found tru64 5.1x to be a far more advanced operating system of two. After hearing this announcement I am shocked to say the least with the latest installment in the NEW HP's "damm the customer" attitude. I have to say that tru-cluster and advfs some of the most advanced stuff I have seen in the unix world. And when I have shown some sun admins what trucluster could do they were quite amazed. So now that these concepts are at a technological dead end. I can only hope that HP does the right thing and throws the source code for advfs and trucluster to the open source community. I get the feeling that both my employer and myself have been had.

GR

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That's really bad..

Since DEC was sold good technology is being discontinued, Tru64 Unix and Alpha systems are the next ones. In my opinion Tru64 is better than HP-UX, and HP will never admit it.. the policy is: "if we could not be better than they, buy their products and get rid of it".

I think in the near future my Alpha Systems will turn to FreeBSD..

AV

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How does this Tru64 user feel? We've been using Tru64 on Alpha for ten years as the basis of our Web and file service. Within six months, all of that will be on Mac OS X running on IBM CPU's.

I could rant on about all of hp's stupid, customer-unfriendly decisions, but what's the point? Actions speak louder than, as Anthony Burgess so succinctly put it.

JG

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Hi,

last time we bought DEC/Compaq/HP-Machines was 11.2000.

Now we are on Linux and buy Dell or other Hardware - never HP-Computer (only Printer).

advfs is the best filesystem - if HP decide no advfs - no HP anymore.

HB

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Having been a victim of Tandem Non-Stop UNIX, Compaq Non-stop Clusters (SCO UNIXware 7 clusterized which was the biggest load of bollocks in the industry) Then a brief encounter with True Clusters before my company was acquired by Texas oil barons, it comes as absolutely no surprise that Carly is shit canning Tru64. By the a way I now have a collectible Tru64 "Live Free or Die" license plate from a past conference. I would imagine that the Gates/Fester loving folks at HP/Compaq will be slowly winding down HP/UX in favour of more Intel/Windoz platforms

CC

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In a few words, I feel bitter and misled. My loyalty towards DEC and their advanced technology finally rewarded with a cold shrug from HP. This is a move that I will not forget! Veritas after all will run just as good on Solaris and AIX boxes. Weird to see an once innovative company that HP was, choosing every path they can to make sure they kill themselves.

HJ

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Predictably, finally betrayed. After being dragged along in this adventure all this time, HP finally confesses the truth: it's trashing a terrific technology and operating system (IMHO) and to hell with us all.

CD

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I am very upset about HP's duplicity. If HP had any sense, they would drop their HP-UX operating system and rename Tru64 UNIX as HP-UX. They would have a better operating system if they did that! Unfortunately, market share usually triumphs over quality.

CW

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Screwed, blued, and tattooed...

RS

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How does this make me feel? I'm certainly not getting a warm fuzzy from the $700K+ we've spent in the last year on HP SAN & Cluster products running Tru64. We saw this and other changes coming though and we've already converted a significant portion of our UNIX services to other vendors over the last two years :-) This at least affords us some level of control. Whether we spend any more money with HP depends on a couple of our software vendors. If there are alternatives, we will certainly be evaluating them. How does this make me feel? I kinda miss DEC :-)

MB

Well, that's what you call venting. Thanks for all the letters. Sorry to those who didn't make the cut. ®