AWS Mainframe Modernization - Virtualization for SPARC

I have been migrating a lot of OpenVMS servers in Stromasys Charon on the Cloud products, and recently I have migrated two of Stromasys Charon on the Cloud products on the Azure cloud. I have been mostly working with Stromasys Charon on the Cloud directly and completing the migration for them from the organization point of view.

Stromasys Charon on the Cloud is able to emulate the hardware which is not in the live, real world. That is a real advantage. Additionally, they have managed to survive in this business for the last 20 years.

I am getting a good response from them, so I do not think there is anything to be improved.

As part of this modernization, every organization wants their environment to be put up on the cloud. Legacy operating systems such as Tru64, HP-UX, and OpenVMS cannot be ported on a cloud directly. We need a product such as Stromasys Charon on the Cloud to help us, and Stromasys Charon on the Cloud is also available on all major clouds including Azure, Oracle, and Google Cloud as a software as a service. This is a good move.

Every organization is moving towards the cloud as part of modernization, and legacy operating systems pull organizations to stay on-premises. Since Stromasys Charon on the Cloud is available, it provides good solutions that allow moving all legacy operating systems without any recompiling of the legacy code on the cloud, which is a positive thing.

Recently, I started to use Linux, but before it was primarily Windows.

Recently, it was Azure.

Scalability is based on the license that Stromasys Charon on the Cloud issues to us. They provide licensing based on recommendations. It is not the cloud where we can scale up on the fly. We have to bring the systems down.

23 years.

Challenges were present maybe six to seven years ago, but they are trying to fix them one by one. I have not recently encountered any challenges. All my feedback is from the technical perspective, not from the product or customer side. I was dealing with these teams from a technical standpoint.

Reliability and stability are good. They wanted to ensure that any scanning and any new level of security scanning is not affecting any of the ports they are using. For example, security scanning can crash the emulator services. They need to look into this.

I do not face anything because Stromasys Charon on the Cloud is a lift-and-shift solution for legacy operating systems. There are only very minor changes to be done at the operating system level as part of migration. There will be no major coding rewrites and other things. I have not encountered anything till today.

Scalability is based on the license that Stromasys Charon on the Cloud issues to us. They provide licensing based on recommendations. It is not the cloud where we can scale up on the fly. We have to bring the systems down.

The technical support of Stromasys Charon on the Cloud is doing good. Even if we have any problem on the operating system, since they have a good rapport, they are trying to help us with it. This does not mean whether they actually signed for that particular support or not. They are trying to help us until it comes to an escalation. Their technical support is very good for us.

I have used other products such as AVT and free AXP which was provided by some other vendors. I could say the competitor is AVT. They are good enough with that. The cost compared to Stromasys Charon on the Cloud, compared to the cost for free AXP and SimH as well as AVT is very much less, and the provided solution is also good. This could become a major criteria if Stromasys Charon on the Cloud continues to raise their prices.

I am the one deploying Stromasys Charon on the Cloud. I get a product from them, and I enforce my organization to sign up with an agreement with them. I deploy it myself since I have enough knowledge to do so. When any new features come in, I read it and determine whether it is really required. I have deployed Charon-VAX and Charon-Alpha.

Setup depends on where the customer wants it. If they want to put it on physical hardware, they have to get one of the operating systems, whether it is Windows or Linux. I have to get ready with the configurations for Stromasys Charon on the Cloud product, whether it is an Alpha or VAX. Based on the hardware types, I can relate it, and I can do all my customizations in the configuration file. I can get all the data disks into this configuration file and boot up the VMS, Tru64, or HP-UX.

Return on investment is based on the license that Stromasys Charon on the Cloud issues to us. They provide licensing based on recommendations. It is not the cloud where we can scale up on the fly. We have to bring the systems down.

Before it was good, but recently, I heard that Stromasys Charon on the Cloud products which were recently migrated to some other organizations have been changed a lot in pricing, and the price has been increased significantly. From my perspective as a technical person, this is not acceptable because before they used perpetual licenses, but now their perpetual license has also been stopped. These kinds of things make customers reconsider whether they have to start using Stromasys Charon on the Cloud again or look for any other virtualization solution. Because of pricing, they may move out of it.

Recently, Stromasys has gone through penetration testing and has been certified for it. Previously we had a hard time, but now Stromasys Charon on the Cloud has gone through a penetration test and they have documented it. We can show the document to the customer wherever they go for security reasons. That helps now. Before it was not there, but now I can see they have done some security vulnerability assessments for their own products. That is a good move that happened very recently.

Recently, I started to use Linux, but before it was primarily Windows.

I have no idea on that topic.

Maybe not with Tru64 and OpenVMS. Maybe on Charon-SSP, they wanted to look in. I have no idea, but some of my colleagues are talking about it.

There were a few bugs, but those were very old histories and have already been fixed. Now recently they have also started to upgrade all the virtualization NICs which are latest available in the market. If they want to really improve, they want to improve on their storage area. They have to attach the storage directly and that has to be converted. They have to work with the modernized storage to get it converted to HP-UX as well as for OpenVMS.

Storages can be too technical, but my statement is the following. Stromasys Charon on the Cloud has to work on the storage part. If I am going to have any storage at any level, that has to be communicated with the guest operating system, which is for example OpenVMS, without any issues. While configuring, I will make sure that only HPA card has been in the configuration. New storages should also be supported. They have to write an algorithm such that any IDs which come into the emulator have to be converted to VMS language or Tru64 language. That will rule out the major portion of the storage issue. The rest of the parts are pretty good.

I give this product a rating of 9.5 out of 10.