OpenVMS is a category of operating system from the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that works in its VAX, Alpha and Itanium based computers. Earlier it was known as VAX-11/VMS and VAX/VMS. OpenVMS basically developed from VMS, which introduced itself as the operating system for the VAX in the year 1979. VMS came up with the idea of virtual memory. It is not open source software still purchase of source listings are available.
OpenVMS is capable of handling multiple tasks and multiprocessing operating system based on VMS; it was renamed OpenVMS when it was redeveloped for the Alpha processor. The ""Open"" suggests the added support for the UNIX-like interfaces the standard of POSIX. POSIX standard is followed to write the programs, which include a set of standard programming functions in ‘C’ language. It can be easily ported to any computer platform supported by POSIX. OpenVMS can be used with special software that facilitates its use with Windows servers.
OpenVMS advertise of features that are now considered standard requirements for any high-end server operating system. These are as follows:
- Unified computer networking
- Symmetrical, asymmetrical, and NUMA multiprocessing, including clustering
- Dispersed file system
- Combined database features such as RMS and layered Rdb databases
- Multiple computer programming languages support
- Regulated interoperability device for calls between different programming languages
- An extensible shell command language
- Hardware subdivision of multiprocessors
- Security level is high
OpenVMS I64 V8.2, OpenVMS I64 V8.2-1, OpenVMS I64 V8.3, OpenVMS I64 V8.3-1H1, and OpenVMS I64 and Alpha V8.4, are the latest OpenVMS I64 releases. Moreover, few of the standard applications and tools supported by OpenVMS are: Samba (CIFS), Apache Tomcat, Zip/Unzip (Info-Zip), GNU Privacy Guard, and Perl.