Last month I presented relative Performance/Price and Performance/Maintenance ratios of various VS models. Now I'd like to take a closer look at Wang's star performer, the VS6230, the smallest and least expensive of Wang's present model lineup. This budget-friendly little VS holds the potential to be the salvation of many older VS installations.
The accompanying chart shows Wang's FAST ratings for the high-capacity VS Models. Not shown are VS5000/6000 models no longer in production, which would place to the far left of the chart, and VS10000 models, also no longer produced, which correspond roughly to the 60, 70 and 80 models shown. Very small and very old VS models are not shown because they all fall below 450, where any upgrade will be a vast improvement.
The VS6230 and 6230T (which I will lump together as the VS6230 where the distinction is not required) clearly comprise the lower end of what are now the current VS models. They have very respectable performance ratings, particularly in light of the fact that all the other models shown are large cabinets with relatively high maintenance costs. Their performance offers an interesting option for certain VS customers whose systems approximate this profile:
No future requirement to upgrade to VS16000
Able to function in 64MB of memory or less
Fewer than 256 concurrent users
No SMD disks
Workstations mostly connected through gateways, not coax
No need for large-cabinet IOCs such as Telex reel-to-reel tape
Overall IOC count no greater than 8 or 18 when reconfigured
No peculiarly high IO throughput requirement
If a system can live within these limits, or can be changed to do so, a VS6230 may be an economical alternative to trying to justify the maintenance and operating cost of a large VS. The physical connectivity for which the large cabinets were designed is often unnecessary today, thanks to Wang and other LAN workstation options. This is especially true for the VS10000, which was designed with four processors in mind. With less need for IOC slots and backpanel space, today's VS does not always need to be in a large cabinet to get a large job done.
To be sure, there are customers who need the characteristics of the bigger models, and some others who don't need the top end performance but have unavoidable requirements to exceed one or more of the specific limits of the VS6230. All the large-cabinet models that are out of production, though, merit a look to see if they can live within these limits.
The benefits of moving to a VS6230 can be substantial, especially if the move is also used as an opportunity to modernize an old system laboring with SMD disks or native coax workstation and printer connections. The likely positives are:
Much lower maintenance costs
Much lower operating costs
Lower software licensing tier than VS300
Much smaller footprint
Reduced cost-based pressure to migrate from the VS
Upgradable in minutes to the Turbo version
Note that in most if not all cases this would be a licensing downgrade from a large-cabinet VS. Not just in Wang's licensing structure, but probably third-party software as well. That can mean lower software maintenance fees in addition to the hardware maintenance and operating cost savings. It also means that any new software is likely to cost a lot less, too. All of these positives can combine to substantially improve the cost-effectiveness of a VS system and reduce the internal pressure to migrate from the VS.
The essential nuts and bolts of the VS6230 packaging are:
10-slot new-style VS6000 cabinet with diskette, streamer tape
Basic configuration provides seven available IOC slots, three available async ports, five available SCSI unit numbers and internal mounting space for several additional SCSI disk drives
WS 0 is typically an async 2110A, but can be 42XX
Serial IOCs have eight ports on back, remaining 24 external
Typically operates on a 115V 15A circuit, doesn't require 220V
Additionally, WangBand, external CIUs and RSF are supported. If the present system(s) has several disjoint user populations and associated file sets, RSF may be a way to use multiple VS6230s to serve a total of more than 256 users.
Let's examine the limitations of the VS6230 and some possible ways to accommodate them:
Turbo is the limit
The VS6230 can be directly upgraded in the cabinet to the VS6230T, the "Turbo," but not beyond that. If there is any possibility that an upgrade to a VS16000 might be needed at some point in the future, it may be best to retain the present large cabinet VS and instead evaluate an interim processor board upgrade if the system is presently at less than an "80" level processor.
Systems to the left of the VS6230 in the chart can boost performance by going to the VS6230 and still have another roughly 70% as headroom in case the VS6230 is outgrown. Those systems at the 70 or 80 processor level can get at least a 35% boost by going to the VS6230T, but must be very sure there will be no further growth.
64MB of memory
VS6230 memory is very simple: it starts at 32MB, goes up by 32MB and tops out at 64MB. There are a lot of VS300s, VS7000s and VS8000s with those memory sizes supporting over 100 users. Some are operating comfortably but others may already be tight. Accordingly, analysis of memory utilization would be in order rather than presuming that the same complement of memory will be sufficient in a VS6230.
256 users
The VS6230 is licensed by the maximum number of users to be supported – 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256. The Turbo is always licensed at 256 users. Clearly, these systems are only an option if the user population, including possible growth, will remain within the top limit of 256. If the present system is lightly loaded it may be appropriate to license the new system at one of the lower user levels and upgrade the OS license when and if necessary.
No SMD Disks
While GENEDIT shows an SMD controller configurable, carrying those old, cranky disks to the sleek, efficient VS6230 should probably be punishable by flogging. If the present system has older disk drives, they should be replaced with SCSI drives (see my column in February, 1988 ATW for compelling reasons). In some cases there may be sufficient operating cost savings in the replacement of old-technology disk drives to pay not only for the new SCSI drives but for the VS6230 as well.
VS5000/6000 SCSI IOCs have only one device chain, so they can support seven, not fourteen drives each. In most cases this is not a problem. Although SMD controllers were once available for up to 16 drives, I have yet to see one in use, so my guess is that going from four-port SMD IOCs to seven-port SCSI IOCs will ease the IOC count, not aggravate it. If the present system has many SCSI drives, there is still a strong probability they include many of the older, smaller sizes, so a consolidation of the number of drives may still be possible. Also SCSI is so concurrent that the old advantage of distributing drives across more controllers than necessary no longer applies.
Although the VS6230 has the built-in SCSI IOC that all VS5000/6000 models have, heavy throughput is best located on caching SCSI IOCs, which can also support external as well as internal drives.
Workstations via gateways
While the VS6230 supports 32-port Serial IOCs and it would certainly be possible to load up a cabinet with coax-connected terminals, it is probably a better idea to plan on LAN workstations connected by means of gateway PCs. Wang and Lightspeed each has products to do this. Gateways connect 32 or 64 LAN workstations at a time using a single Serial IOC port (Lightspeed can even do this via SCSI, without using any Serial ports). The old way, seven IOC slots can disappear quickly when Serial IOCs are used to support large populations of native VS workstations or WLOC PCs. If it's really necessary, though, the expansion cabinet can bring the slot total to 20, which is greater than the capacity of a VS300.
Special IOCs
There are a few IOCs unavailable for the VS6230. Chief among them is the tape IOC for the reel-to-reel Telex 1600/6250 bpi tape drive. If this old-style tape drive requirement is truly unavoidable, perhaps there is another VS at the same site to which the present IOC can be moved? On the other hand, if the requirement is for 1600 bpi only, there is a VS reel-to-reel tape drive that connects to a Serial IOC port. It is slower, but it may be sufficient, and, like a workstation, it works on any VS.
IOC count within 8 or 18
The VS6230 has 10 slots, 20 with the expansion cabinet. Subtract one for the processor and one for the RCU. The remaining 8 or 18 slots are available, typically to be used for Serial, SCSI and TC IOCs. RSF, if used, takes one slot.
IO throughput
While many of the larger VS models utilize 64-bit system and memory bus widths and the VS10000s have a 128-bit memory bus, the VS6230 is 32-bit throughout. Will this make a difference? In most cases, I suspect not. It's probably true that under some circumstances the models with wider bus paths can move more data into and out of the memory, but I think there would have to be an awful lot more going on than I've ever seen on a production VS for this to be a serious factor.
Summary
The VS6230 is a viable alternative to older, large-cabinet VS models that no longer need to support hundreds of coax-connected devices and large numbers of SMD disks. It offers substantial maintenance and operating cost savings while still offering greater performance than the VS300 and VS7000/8000/9000 up to the 60-level processor. The VS6230T (Turbo) does even better, beating everything below the VS12650/16750 level, including all VS10000 models.
For smaller systems anticipating Year 2000 and the necessity to upgrade to a model supported by OS 7.53, the VS6230 at a modest user license level is an excellent choice because it is current and because it provides headroom for additional expansion to just under the performance level of the VS16750. Once you are at the VS6230 level, all license and performance upgrade through the level of the Turbo is trivial and done without processor board changes or other significant disruptions. The Turbo option is itself a software upgrade, and probably available for free 30-day trial if you ask for it.
If you're not in the big-VS league, the VS6230 is the ideal machine to be using.
Unsure of your processor model? Ask your Customer Engineer to look. Cabinet labels often fail to reflect subsequent processor board upgrades. If you have network computers that are not easily checked or if you don't presently have a CE, contact me for assistance in identifying your processors by benchmark. I have a program that can measure your CPU and tell you its true CP type and FAST rating.
Anyone interested in constructing trial configurations of their hypothetical VS6230 can do so any time in GENEDIT by creating a new configuration based on any of the VS6000 models. This will only work, of course, if the DEVLIST is recent enough to contain the CP9E family. In GENEDIT, the model numbers include the maximum number of users as the last three digits. Of course, save your trial configurations under names that don't conflict with your present config files.
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Thomas Junker is a VS software developer and consultant in Houston, Texas. He may be reached by email at
His well- known Unofficial VS Information Center website may be found at www.tjunker.com.
