2025 OpenVMS Portsmouth Bootcamp Agenda

      Discover the full agenda below.

      Explore session tracks, speakers, and topics for this year’s Bootcamp.

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      Session Tracks

      Business

      System Management

      Programming

      Day 1 - October 22nd, 2025

      9:00 AM – 9:50 AM

      Main lobby: Registration

      9:50 AM – 10:00 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Day's welcome, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

      10:00 AM – 10:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Corporate Directions, Darya Zelenina, CEO, and Johan Gedda, Founder

      An overview of the trends in the OpenVMS ecosystem as well as how VMS Software fits in with its mission, goals, and past achievements.
      10:50 AM – 11:00 AM - Break
       
      11:00 AM – 11:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Migrations and Upgrades, David Sullivan, PS Manager

      Rather than showing slides like a conventional session, this session will be more informal and engage you by having VSI start by detailing a few migrations and upgrades and then see how that applies to your individual journey. We want to provide you information that can validate your journey, highlight any potential pitfalls and help you navigate the many possibilities. With Upgrades and Migrations there are so many choices out there, the more information we can provide around best practices will not only help you but others in the session as well. This session will discuss information on hardware/storage configurations and why they are more important now than ever. The goal is to create dialogue and Q&A amongst the attendees to put information into your hands quickly. Takes notes, listen and learn as a group. We must also plug that VSI Professional Services has the resources to help you navigate your journey ahead.

      Gardner Room: Improved visibility - getting more data out of your OpenVMS systems, Brett Cameron, Chief Application Services Officer

      The term "software telemetry" is used to define the automated process of collecting and analyzing data from software applications to gain insights into their performance, usage, and behaviour. This involves gathering data on various metrics including performance metrics, errors, user interactions, operational events, and numerous other data, which can then be used to improve software quality and operational efficiency, identify and resolve issues, enhance user experience, and so on. The OpenVMS operating system and the applications running on it can be a goldmine of such information that often remains largely untapped. In this talk, Brett will discuss how software telemetry techniques such as application instrumentation, agent-based monitoring, change data capture, and log mining can be readily applied to OpenVMS-based application environments to collect data from various sources such that it can be readily ingested and analyzed using modern off-platform services and tools to monitor and improve system operation.


       Lear Room: RMS - Functionality, Features, Fumbles. On disk, API, and tools., Hein Van den Heuvel, Consultant

      In the first part of the presentation we'll review the various RMS file organizations with most focus on Indexed files. Next we move on the the API (Programming Interface - FABs & RABs) and some language usage details such as DCL, COBOL. Finally a quick review of the tools made available to the users: FDL, CONVERT, SORT, SEARCH
       

      Amphitheater Room: OpenVMS DEBUG: A Powerful Tool for Sophisticated Debugging, Robert Gezelter, System Programmer/Architect

      OpenVMS DEBUG is a powerful tool for sophisticated debugging. Most users do not use the full capabilities. We will examine how to make use of some of the more powerful elements of OpenVMS DEBUG, including SET WATCH and DBG$INIT, to facilitate debugging.

       
      11:50 AM – 13:00 PM - Lunch Break

       

      1:00 PM – 1:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Oracle Rdb Update, Kevin Duffy, Senior Director

      This presentation covers support dates for the Oracle Rdb product family; a release history over the past year; details on the content of the new releases; an update on the progress of the x86 port; Oracle Rdb in the Oracle Cloud; current project priorities and product roadmaps. This talk also includes a Call to Action for those interested the Oracle Rdb product family on x86-64.

      Gardner Room: Common Porting Bugs for x86 and How To Find Them, Vadim Saifutdinov, Senior Software Engineer

      In this presentation I will show the most frequent issues we faced when moving legacy code to LLVM on x86. Code that seemed correct before often broke due to optimizations exposing undefined behavior or relying on platform-specific assumptions. The talk will cover real examples, typical patterns of failure, and possible ways to address them.


      Lear Room: Fibre Channel on OpenVMS using the KVM Hypervisor, Paul Jacobi, Software Engineer

      This session describes how to configure an OpenVMS Virtual Machine with Fibre Channel using the Linux KVM Hypervisor. PCI Pass-through can be used to provide the OpenVMS Virtual Machine with direct access to a QLogic Fibre Channel card enabling the creation of storage LUNs formatted in the native VMS file system. This session describes all the special Linux KVM Hypervisor settings that are required to enable PCI Pass-through. OpenVMS provides support for both 16Gb and 32Gb QLogic Fibre Channel cards. This is a new feature included in the V9.2-3 Update 2 kit.


      Amphitheater Room: Troubleshooting AST Code, Robert Gezelter, System Programmer/Architect

      Asynchronous System Traps (ASTs) are a user-mode facility fundamental to OpenVMS. It is common to find AST usage in existing codebases, e.g., network, realtime. For those used to linux SIGNAL, while ASTs are used for similar purposes, the semantics differ significantly. This session will compare ASTs with linux SIGNAL, as well as examine erroneous code that the speaker has seen in his consulting practice.

       

      1:50 PM – 2:00 PM - Break

       

      2:00 PM – 2:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Cloud-native OpenVMS, Martin Schneider, Technical Support Specialist & Jonathan Bergdahl, Tech Support Specialist

      Having an OpenVMS system natively in the cloud removes the need for maintaining a host, be it Linux or ESXi, so you can spend all your time with what you really want: OpenVMS! In this presentation, we will showcase four different ways of setting up OpenVMS natively in the cloud, as well as cover its benefits and challenges.

      Gardner Room: Alpha performance case study, Dan Fleury, Owner

      How a system has been improved from "real" hardware to an emulated system from a performance perspective. What to look for in an emulated environment and how this prepares you for the move to the X86 platform.

      Lear Room: VMS Host-based Volume Shadowing, from A to Z, Robert Brooks, Engineer

      Curious about Shadowing? What's the difference between a copy and a merge? Why is a copy faster than a merge? What is a convertible bit map? Why is the Host-Based Minimerge DCL syntax so convoluted? These topics and many others will be discussed.

      Amphitheater Room: Using Git on OpenVMS, Dušan Dželebdžić, Lead developer

      Attendees will be given a basic tutorial on how to use GIT on OpenVMS as a source code management / repository application.  
       
      2:50 PM – 3:30 PM- Break

       

      3:30 PM – 4:20 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Data backup and recovery for IBM Storage Protect and Rubrik, Jeff Pearring, Sales Support Engineer and Steve Jensen, VP

      The Archive Backup Client™ (ABC) offers comprehensive backup, archive, and data management solutions tailored for OpenVMS systems across multiple platforms including VAX, Alpha, Itanium, and the latest x86 architecture. With ABC you can back up and archive data from an OpenVMS machine to an IBM Storage Protect or Rubrik server and restore and retrieve data as necessary. ABC is designed to easily replace existing backup regimens based on OpenVMS backup. Securely backup, archive, and retrieve critical data, ensuring seamless continuity and compliance.

      Gardner Room: Moving from Rdb to Oracle, PostgreSQL or SQL Server while on OpenVMS, Denys Beauchemin, Database Migration Specialist

      Moving the data storage of VMS applications from Rdb to something more mainstream like Oracle, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server has become critical with the Rdb knowledge base shrinking rapidly every year. The added bonus of moving the database workload from OpenVMS to dedicated database servers and thus providing easier access to the data for the rest of the enterprise, just makes the migration away from Rdb so much more attractive. This session will detail the various methods and techniques that can be used to automate this move at the database, and application code level. Once the database migration is completed, the application can remain of OpenVMS accessing the database servers. The presentation discusses the choice of databases (Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server), the movement of the data from Rdb to the selected target and the tools used to transform the application code access from Rdb to the selected database.

      Lear Room: Compiler Update and Calling Standard Overview, John Reagan, Senior Compiler Engineer

      This two part presentation will give a quick update on compiler releases and future work. It will also give an overview of the Calling Standard and what is different for x86-64 systems.

      Amphitheater Room: Enabling Single-Signon Using External Authentication, Paul Nunez, Technical Support

      Learn how the ACME Server LDAP agent integrates with Windows domains, allowing OpenVMS users to login using their Windows domain credentials - one (or more) less password to remember!
       
      4:20 PM - End of sessions
       
      7:00 PM - VSI Dinner
       
      8:00 PM - Partner bar

      Day 2 - October 23rd, 2025

      9:00 AM – 9:10 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Day's welcome, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

       

      9:10 AM – 9:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Technical directions, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

       

      9:50 AM – 10:00 AM- Break

       

      10:00 AM – 10:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: OpenVMS Layered Products Strategy, Nikita Grigorev, Product Manager

      VSI is working on multiple fronts right now. Please join if you would like to know more about the current development status, and of our planning and prioritization approaches for the future Layered Product development. Main topics:
      - What's in the pipeline right now
      - Priorities for the oncoming months
      - Development planning: decision making process
      - Supporting the OpenVMS ecosystem
      - Q&A, feedback on unaddressed needs

       Gardner Room: My system manager retired, Brad McCusker, VP OpenVMS System Services

      Your OpenVMS System Manager has retired and you can’t find a replacement. Now what? As the person now responsible for your OpenVMS systems, do you have Peace of Mind that you can reliable maintain and restore services for your users? In a complex environment, there are literally 1000’s of things that can go wrong, often the result of neglect, mismanagement or operational errors. While not all are likely to crash the computer or cluster, many of these problems can cause unplanned outages for portions of your application – or worse. Are you confident your systems won’t fall victim to one of these possible problems? This session discusses proven methodologies and best practice for VMS system management you need to make sure are implemented to insure your systems operate as expected.

      Lear Room: SharkSQL – Migration from Oracle/RDB to SharkSQL; report on a recently completed project, Wolfgang Burger, Managing Director

      Compinia GmbH offers a business email solution for one of Europe's largest telecommunications companies based on Oracle/RDB and is currently in the process of migrating its application from Itanium to x86. In June 2025, the end customer decided to discontinue the use of Oracle/RDB on x86 for this business email solution for various reasons. Consequently, Compinia had to find an alternative to Oracle/RDB and decided to migrate from Oracle/RDB to SharkSQL. SharkSQL is a brand-new relational database developed by the start-up company WDB Tech, based in Austria, and is available on all VSI OpenVMS platforms as well as Windows (Linux support is planned for the future). SharkSQL is an SQL-standard-compliant RDBMS and is characterized by easy administration, excellent performance, and it is 100% cluster-aware on OpenVMS. The database migration took place during the summer months of 2025. In addition to a brief introduction to SharkSQL, this presentation focuses on this migration project, the reasons why Compnia chose SharkSQL, the challenges encountered during the migration, and the effort involved in migrating from Oracle/RDB to SharkSQL.
       

       Amphitheater Room: How to talk to a Rest API, Jeff Murch, Managing Director & Dušan Dželebdžić, Lead developer  (110 minutes session)

      Attendees will be walked through incrementally building a Python / Flask web server on their laptop to communicate with our OpenVMS RMS Rest API.  As each functional part of the web server is built it will be visible on the users’ laptop via their web browser.  The initial framework will be built first and then the communication with the Rest API running in Arizona will be added.  First a simple query to show the contents of the RMS file, then added filtering via a web page submit.  Full Rest API functionality will be added incrementally (GET, ADD, DELETE, PUT and PATCH) with each piece of functionality explained as it is coded by the user.   By the end of the workshop the user will leave with a good understanding of how to interact with any REST API.
       
      Pre-requisite for the workshop is to have a functioning installation of Python on your laptop.
       
      10:50 AM – 11:00 AM - Break
       
      11:00 AM – 11:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Virtual Machines tools, Nikolaos Tavoularis, Software Engineering Team Lead I

      OpenVMS now runs on x86 architectures in virtual machines, supporting different hypervisors. While virtualization offers hardware abstraction, it also brings challenges like clock drift and graceful power operations. In this session, we will focus on VMWare and KVM hypervisors, and we will introduce a set of VM tools for time synchronization, guest to host communication and power operation. We will demonstrate the capabilities of the new VM tools suite and guide you step by step on how to run and configure it to fit your needs.

      Gardner Room: Inheriting and Structuring Logical Names, Robert Gezelter, System Programmer/Architect

      OpenVMS Logical names are unique. Logical names are a powerful way to create a context for both individual users and groups of users. This session will introduce how to use logical names at different levels to control user experience and context.

      Lear Room: TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS V7, John Gemignani, Consultant/Engineer

      The TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS began in 1986 as the Ultrix-Connection (UCX), providing support for IPv4, NFS V2 and FTP. Much of the codebase was shared with Tru64, but that project has gone the way of the Dodo and TCPIP's codebase is getting long in the tooth. To bring the product forward, a new release for x86 is underway that is based on a FreeBSD codebase. This will bring support for the latest networking code and APIs to OpenVMS, and offer greatly improved functionality and performance, as well as new, future capabilities as major portions of the product are redesigned.
       

      Amphitheater Room: Hands on workshop - How to talk to a REST API., Jeff Murch, Managing Director & Dušan Dželebdžić, Lead developer (110 minutes session)

      Participants will code a lightweight web server on their laptop in Python to demonstrate how to communicate with a Rest API. PRE-REQUISITE: Install and test Python on personal laptop.

       
      11:50 AM – 1:00 PM - Lunch Break

       

      1:00 PM – 1:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Tips and Tricks for Managing your Hypervisor (KVM), Lucas Hartfiel, Support Engineer (110 minutes session)

      One half of an x86 hypervisor series, this presentation focuses on tips and tricks for working with your KVM hypervisor for your x86 VMS machines. Topics covered include adding additional disks, common errors in set up, and more.

      Gardner Room: Performance Investigations and Results, Clair Grant, OpenVMS Researcher

      VSI engineers are investigating various aspects of system performance. Some of the work has already resulted in system improvements in the V9.2-3 Updates and in future releases. Also, much of the work provides information that may be useful for configuration planning purposes when moving to x86 virtual machines. This presentation describes the tests performed, the data gathered, the changes made, and how they relate to application environments on x86.


      Lear Room: Replicating Rdb Databases to Oracle 23ai, Keith Hare, President

      The JCC LogMiner Loader is a utility that replicates committed transactions from an Oracle Rdb database to a variety of targets. This presentation introduces the JCC LogMiner Loader capabilities and provides an example of replicating Rdb committed transactions to an Oracle 23ai database. It also provides an introduction to using property-graph queries on SQL tables.


      Amphitheater Room: OpenVMS Admin - Day 1 (for Linux admins), John Seder, Support Engineer (110 minutes session)

      In the event an OpenVMS Admin is no longer available, this presentation will help prepare a Linux administrator to take over the tasks. While not a full lesson on all OpenVMS topics, the presentation will introduce a Linux Admin to OpenVMS by "translating" Admin concepts from Linux to OpenVMS.
       
      1:50 PM – 2:00 PM - Break

       

      2:00 PM – 2:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Tips and Tricks for Managing your Hypervisor (KVM), Lucas Hartfiel, Support Engineer (110 minutes session)

      One half of an x86 hypervisor series, this presentation focuses on tips and tricks for working with your KVM hypervisor for your x86 VMS machines. Topics covered include adding additional disks, common errors in set up, and more.

       

      Gardner Room: Effortless migration from Oracle Rdb to Mimer SQL on x86-64, Bengt Gunne, CTO

      The presentation will demonstrate how to migrate from Oracle Rdb on IA-64 to Mimer SQL on x86-64 with minimal effort. Discover Mimer’s automated translator tool for schema, SQL dumps, and Embedded SQL in COBOL and FORTRAN, enabling seamless application migration with little to no manual intervention. Future-proof your systems effortlessly!

      Lear Room: Benefits of VSI OpenVMS for Alpha systems, Dan Fleury, Owner & Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

      If your AlphaServers are still on a Digital, Compaq, HP or HPE version of OpenVMS, you're missing out! In this presentation, Dan Fleury and Camiel Vanderhoeven will take you through the key benefits of running VSI OpenVMS on Alpha systems, talking from both the VSI and the user perspective. They will cover why upgrading to a VSI-maintained version brings value—even without plans to move to x86. The session will end with Q&A for questions, feedback, and suggestions.

       Amphitheater Room: OpenVMS Admin - Day 1 (for Linux admins), John Seder, Support Engineer (110 minutes session)

      In the event an OpenVMS Admin is no longer available, this presentation will help prepare a Linux administrator to take over the tasks. While not a full lesson on all OpenVMS topics, the presentation will introduce a Linux Admin to OpenVMS by "translating" Admin concepts from Linux to OpenVMS.
       
      2:50 PM – 3:30 PM - Break

       

      3:30 PM – 3:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Running OpenVMS x86 on Single Board Computers, James Preciado, Owner & Senior Systems Engineer (50 minutes session)

      This session details methods for choosing single board computer systems and installing OpenVMS x86 on them. The difficulties and solutions of doing so are detailed. A running usage case will be shown and other potential uses will also described. Some business challenges of OpenVMS on the Single Board Computer environment will also be discussed

      Gardner Room: Driver Modernization for OpenVMS x86, Dimitrios Kalogeropoulos, Software Engineer Team Lead

      One key aspect of OpenVMS evolution is the modernization of some legacy device drivers by transitioning them from VAX MACRO to C implementations in alignment with the OpenVMS x86 features and supported hypervisors. In parallel, new drivers need to be designed for better integration with current hardware and virtualization environments. This session will explore both the modernization of existing drivers and the design challenges of new ones that are optimized for the x86 platform. It will also address the distinction between hypervisor-independent drivers and those tailored to specific hosts. Attendees will gain insight into the principles and technical challenges involved in porting drivers to OpenVMS x86, ensuring compatibility, performance, and long-term maintainability.

      Lear Room: How to use UIC Groups and Logical names to keep users apart, Dan Fleury, Owner

      Use the power of OpenVMS to separate applications and users into their own environments. A real case study of this in use.

      Amphitheater Room: Running a VMSCluster on a Kubernetes Cluster, Kyle Brown, OpenVMS Ambassador

      In this presentation I would like to go over the initial setup/configuration of an OpenVMS cluster inside of Kubevirt which enables running virtual machines inside of Kubernetes like any other container workload. The underlying technology is QEMU, which is a hypervisor supported by VSI. For customers who are currently running OpenShift by Red Hat this will provide insights to anyone who would want to migrate to x86 VMS in this sort of environment. At a high level, a discussion of Kubernetes requirements will be gone over, how to upload your installation medium, and a demonstration of a VMSCluster that is running inside of this environment. I would then go over some reasons as to why you would build your environment like this (Show internal cluster communication, taking advantage of cloud/Kubernetes backups, container lifecycle, and a running application having traffic stay internal to Kubernetes)
       
      3:50 PM – 4:00 PM- Break

       

      4:00 PM – 4:20 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Running OpenVMS x86 on Single Board Computers, James Preciado, Owner & Senior Systems Engineer (50 minutes session)

      This session details methods for choosing single board computer systems and installing OpenVMS x86 on them. The difficulties and solutions of doing so are detailed. A running usage case will be shown and other potential uses will also described. Some business challenges of OpenVMS on the Single Board Computer environment will also be discussed.


             Gardner Room: VMS Software ISV Program: Collaboration Opportunities, Nikita Grigorev, Product Manager

      We are striving to support third-party software vendors, and while many Bootcamp participants know about the program, let's review the basics of what we are offering, and what is expected from program participants. We'll cover:
      - Overview of the ISV program
      - x86 porting status
      - Benefits of program participation


      Lear Room: VMS through the years - A walk down memory lane to today, Dan Fleury, Owner

      How has VMS changed from the beginning to now. A walk through 4 architectures.


      Amphitheater Room: iSCSI on OpenVMS, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

      As we're working on implementing support for iSCSI storage on OpenVMS, we offer this presentation to explain what iSCSI is, what it an do for you, and what the iSCSI implementation on OpenVMS is going to look like.
       
      4:20 PM - End of day

      Day 3 - October 24th, 2024

      9:00 AM – 9:10 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Day's welcome, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

       

      9:10 AM – 9:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: VMS Cloud Offering, Jacqueline Tressler, Account Manager, and Rafael Martins, Chief System Services Officer

      Latest developments in deploying openVMS in the x86 cloud, including native virtualized solutions removing the need of managing a host system

      Gardner Room: VMS/XDE - the next-gen development tool, Vadim Ilves, Chief R&D Officer

      Meet VMS/XDE, the latest development environment from VSI. No hypervisor required, runs on any x86 platform, containers, cloud. Develop OpenVMS apps using git and VS Code, deploy using CI/CD.

      Lear Room: Group and Application-specific Login Profiles, Robert Gezelter, System Programmer/Architect

      OpenVMS has provisions for a command file to be executed upon login. This file is specified in the SYSUAF, generally as SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM. is a foundation for invoking the individual user’s LOGIN.COM file. This foundation can be extended with additional group and application profiles to centralize maintenance for group and product required baseline settings. This session will examine how to streamline baseline standard baseline settings.
       
      Amphitheater Room: LAN, PEDRIVER – What’s New x86, Dick Stockdale, R&D Developer, and Tim Ward, Support Engineer
       
      Review new features in the LAN drivers and PEDRIVER for x86.
       
      9:50 AM – 10:00 AM - Break

       

      10:00 AM – 10:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Leveraging cloud-based services with OpenVMS, Brett Cameron, Chief Application Services Officer

      Cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI, Google, and others offer a wide variety of useful services, ranging from relatively simple services such as object stores for file storage, through to powerful SQL and no-SQL databases, message queues, streams, and event hubs, AI, data analytics, Internet of Things, and many more. Additionally, for most of these services cloud providers are able to offer users various service level options and guarantees with regard to service capacity, performance, availability, security, and government and regulatory compliance. Facilities for service monitoring and alerting are generally also available. Whether you are using VSI OpenVMS on x86-64 or otherwise, there are often relatively few technical impediments to OpenVMS being able to leverage many of these cloud-based services. In this talk Brett will discuss how VSI OpenVMS-based applications can utilize some of these services. Specific examples will be given and common approaches to service integration will be discussed, along with some of the challenges that can be faced.

      Gardner Room: Everything you always wanted to know about the port but were afraid to ask, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

      Some of the senior engineers involved in the port of OpenVMS to x86 are ready for any questions you may have about the port. We come prepared to spill the beans about the good, the bad, and the ugly; in return, we ask that you come prepared with your questions.

      Lear Room: TLDR: Guide to OpenVMS File Applications, Hein Van Den Heuvel, Consultant

      The OpenVMS Guide to OpenVMS File Applications manual supposedly describes how 'drives', directories, and files are organized and implemented. Not nearly enough folks have read this, and frankly, it is stuck in the past with rotating disks and does not really tackle directories and file concepts deep enough. The OpenVMS UserGuide Chapter 4. Organizing Files with Directories explains more. This presentation will fill in some of the blanks on how files and directories are organized under the OpenVMS F11 file system and the critical role 'file-ids' play in it all. We'll address some of the strengths and weaknesses as we go. In contrast, The Guide to files does do fine job on the RMS Record Management System - read it! The seconds part of this presentation will give you the highest level overviews of 'records' within files and the workings of the various types of RMS file organizations.

      Amphitheater Room: Data Storage, Caches and Buffers Review, Norman Lastovica, CTO

      Where is my data?  Why is it there?  How long will it be there?  This session discusses various data caches and buffers available on modern OpenVMS systems. Topical areas include device, controller, operating system and database caches and buffers and implications on performance and data protection within each and provides an interactive discussion opportunity.

      10:50 AM – 11:00 AM - Break
       
      11:00 AM – 11:50 AM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Round Table: OpenVMS in a modern environment, Nikita Grigorev, Product Manager

      In today's complex IT environments, OpenVMS is usually not alone in a company's IT infrastructure. How does it fit into the picture, what challenges does this situation create, and what solutions have worked for you?
      Let's talk about this. To begin with:
      - What part do OpenVMS systems play in your current infrastructure now? 5 years ago? 5 years into the future?
      - Are you happy with what you have now, or is there is still something to do?
      - Best of both worlds: Using VMS-based software to manage other systems, and the other way around. Do you have an interesting case of achieving good results by using software available on different platforms?
      - Areas for improvement: tools, protocols, or configurations that need work, and what can be done.

      Gardner Room: VSI Performance Series products, Dan Butterworth, Developer

      Describe the features and benefits of VSI's Performance Series products - Job Management, Console Management and Performance Management.

      Lear Room: Software is Eternal, Camiel Vanderhoeven, Chief Architect and Strategist

      While a modern data center might look very different from a computer room from 40 years ago, it might surprise you how much of the software running in that datacenter goes back to the previous century. Well, given the line of business you're in, it probably won't surprise you. Some of this code runs in the form of unchanged binaries, some of it has been recompiled, and some of it has been translated into a different language, sometimes automatically. Through some anecdotes, we will explore the different ways in which legacy code is still running today, and the advantages and drawbacks of these methods.

      Amphitheater Room: BLISS Primer, Norman Lastovica, CTO

      BLISS Compiler is a high-performance, systems programming compiler available for OpenVMS on Alpha, Itanium, and x86-64 platforms.  As the language used to build much of the OpenVMS operating system itself - including the kernel and core system utilities - BLISS is optimized for low-level operations, precise memory control, and efficient performance.  Its design provides powerful features like atomic operations and detailed memory management, making it an ideal choice for developers working on system-intensive applications.   This session covers the origin and history of BLISS, language features and capabilities, and provides an interactive discussion opportunity.

       

      11:50 AM – 1:00 PM - Lunch Break

       

      1:00 PM – 1:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Tips & Tricks for managing your Hypervisor (ESXi), Kobe Smith, Support Engineer II (110 minutes session)

      A live session complete with demo machines for customers to try the topics spoken about. We'll go over managing virtual machine configurations and new x86 features.

      Gardner Room: RMS Change Data Capture (Introduction to RMS CDC), Brian Schenkenberger, VMS Kernel Mode Hacker

      This is an overview of what RMS Change Data Capture is on OpenVMS and what it can do for event driven architectures.


      Lear Room: Introducing LegacyMap - Automatic documentation of your OpenVMS application, Jon Power, CEO

      Sector7 USA LLC has launched LegacyMap, an innovative tool that automates the preparation of application code for Doxygen, enabling comprehensive cross-referenced documentation. LegacyMap scans your source code and formats it for Doxygen to generate detailed documentation, including call hierarchies, subroutines, procedures, and other code elements. While Doxygen natively supports C/C++ and Python, LegacyMap extends compatibility to COBOL, Fortran, their embedded SQL variants, and SQLMODs, ensuring these legacy languages are seamlessly processed by Doxygen. With LegacyMap, Doxygen produces visual maps illustrating program and subroutine linkages, as well as database interactions down to the table level and access type. Say goodbye to the tedious task of creating and maintaining critical documentation. LegacyMap simplifies the process, making it effortless to keep your documentation up to date.


      Amphitheater Room: Introduction to OpenVMS Clusters, Keith Parris, Senior OpenVMS Support

      This session is aimed at people new to the OpenVMS world who want to know how OpenVMS Cluster technology works inside. It presents an overview of the internals of OpenVMS Clusters in an easy-to-grasp format.
       
      1:50 PM – 2:00 PM - Break

       

      2:00 PM – 2:50 PM

      Whipple & Robert Rooms: Tips & Tricks for managing your Hypervisor (ESXi), Kobe Smith, Support Engineer II (110 minutes session)

      A live session complete with demo machines for customers to try the topics spoken about. We'll go over managing virtual machine configurations and new x86 features. 

      Gardner Room: Benchmarking Virtualized Mass Storage Systems, Robert Gezelter, System Programmer/Architect

      Benchmarking answers seemingly simple questions often asked by management: How long will a task take? With physical, dedicated hardware the answer was often relatively straightforward: Run a test. In a virtualized, often non-dedicated environment, e.g., clouds and shared storage, reliable benchmarks can be a challenge. Even with dedicated hardware, enterprise storage arrays with multilevel caches can complicate the process.

      Lear Room: Tips, tricks and tales, teaching new dogs old tricks, Nic Clews, Senior Systems Engineer

      If you're new to VMS, or have been using it for years, this has something for you. For the new users to VMS, come and see those undocumented solutions to common issues, for the old users find out what caused these 'solutions' and the sometimes funny story behind it. How to make your life easier based on occasionally painful challenges encountered over 40 years of system management. Everything from some useful DCL and command procedure tricks, environment customisation (and PuTTY) to system management tips from booting to clusters to volume shadowing. It's like an FAQ where you didn't know the Q. It'll be accompanied by (sometimes funny) stories of when and why it was important. So for the newbies that want to minimise their 40 year career pain, or even for the old timers who want to sail effortlessly into the final years to retirement, this is for YOU!

       Amphitheater Room: OpenVMS Performance in Multi-Site Clusters, Keith Parris, Senior OpenVMS Support Engineer

      This session describes performance considerations and techniques for geographically-dispersed OpenVMS Clusters. Topics to be addressed include locking and Host-Based Volume Shadowing, the relative impact of different inter-site distances, and methods to mitigate that impact. 
      2:50 PM – 3:30 PM - Break

       

      3:30 PM – 4:20 PM

       Whipple & Robert Rooms: VSI Panel

       

      4:20 PM - End of day

      See you there!