OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

VMS Software Inc. has announced the release of OpenVMS 9.2, the first production-supported release for commercial off-the-shelf x86 hardware.

The expectation is that customers will deploy the new OS [PDF] into VMs. Most recent hypervisors are supported, including VMware (Workstation 15+, Fusion 11+ and ESXi 6.7+), KVM (tested on CentOS 7.9, openSUSE Leap 15.3, and Ubuntu 18.04), and Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.

The next version, 9.2-1, is planned for November or December 2022 and will add support for Microsoft's Hyper-V. VMS Software Inc. (VSI) is looking into adding support for deployment onto Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

VMS was originally developed at the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1977, long before Compaq bought the company. Then in 2001 HP bought Compaq. In 2013, HP announced it was killing VMS off, then changed its mind and spun it out to VMS Software Inc, which then announced it was porting it to x86.

VMS was originally known as VAX/VMS as it was the native OS of DEC's VAX 32-bit minicomputer. In 1989, DEC began porting version 5.4-2 to its Alpha AXP 64-bit RISC processors. The result, OpenVMS AXP, shipped in 1992, with a confusing version number of 1.0.

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