Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!mejac!gryphon!crash!jeh
From: jeh@crash.cts.com (Jamie Hanrahan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VMS 5.0 upgrade or new installation?
Message-ID: <3067@crash.cts.com>
Date: 4 Jun 88 03:16:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: crash.3067
References: <8806022153.AA23820@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: jeh@crash.CTS.COM (Jamie Hanrahan)
Organization: CMKRNL Press, San Diego, CA
Lines: 20
Summary: Whatever way you want it!

In article <8806022153.AA23820@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> CHIAM@OUACCVMB.BITNET writes:
>Is VMS 5.0 rolling upgrade or a new installation? That is, do we have
>to reformat the system disk when installing VMS 5.0?

You can do it as an upgrade, or as a new installation.  

Two terminology quibbles:  "Rolling upgrade" is what you might call a 
reserved word in VMS.  It refers to upgrading an entire VAXcluster from
one release to another, one system at a time, maintaining the rest of
the cluster for use by users.  It's a tricky business because the VAXcluster
software normally wants to see the same version of VMS on all cluster
members, but it does work, and, yes, you can do the 4.7 (or 4.6) to 5.0
upgrade that way.  

The other quibble:  One rarely, if ever, has to "reformat" disks in the
VMS world.  The correct term for what I think you are thinking of is
"initialize", which is what BACKUP does to a target Files-11 volume
as the first step in an image-mode restore operation, which is the first
step in a new VMS installation.  But, no, you don't have to do that for
the 5.0 upgrade.