HP OpenVMS Management Station Overview and Release Notes

This document is an "Overview and Release Notes" for HP OpenVMS Management Station Version 3.3, released in July 2006.

It describes OpenVMS Management Station as a powerful Microsoft Windows-based tool providing a comprehensive user interface for managing user accounts, printers, and storage across OpenVMS systems. It organizes systems into "OpenVMS Management Domains" which can include clusters, nodes, or other domains, allowing operations to be applied with a defined "scope" (inheriting down the hierarchy). The client runs on a PC (Windows 2000/XP) and communicates with servers on OpenVMS systems (various VAX, Alpha, and I64 versions from 6.2 to 8.3).

Key features highlighted for Version 3.3 include:

• Storage Management: Added in v3.0, it allows users to monitor, examine, modify, create, delete disk volumes, and manage configurations across reboots through an easy-to-use Windows interface. New in v3.3 is Fibre Channel disk device support and improved stability.
• Printer Management: Simplifies monitoring, creating, deleting, and modifying printers, queues, and print job attributes across multiple systems.
• Account Management: Provides a centralized way to create, modify, delete, and rename user accounts, managing related files like SYSUAF.DAT, rights lists, and disk quotas.
• Remote Management: Supports TCP/IP for client-server communication.

Important considerations and restrictions (Release Notes):

• Version 3.3 client must be used with Version 3.3 server.
• It supports HP OpenVMS for Integrity servers for the first time.
• Compatibility with previous versions requires domains created prior to V3.0 to be re-created, and V2.1 database updates are irreversible.
• The client uses Microsoft Management Console (MMC) v1.2, requiring Internet Explorer 4.01 or later. Saved console files from v3.3 are not backward compatible with earlier MMC versions.
• Management is limited to cluster-unique devices; privately mounted, foreign volumes, and SCSI disks on VAX systems are not managed.
• There are limitations on the number of members in bound volumes (28 for shadow sets, 42 for non-shadowed disks).
• Specific known issues include problems with DECnet Phase IV database updates, user mail count resets on rename, and occasional "Server Busy" messages.
• Version 3.3 fixes issues with external authentication flag modification, owner field updates in the client, and broken help links.