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IBM Announces First Linux-only Mainframes
Posted by
Hemos
on Fri Jan 25, 2002 08:02 AM
from the big-step-up dept.
from the big-step-up dept.
A reader writes "The new Z-series mainframe for Linux, which costs $400,000 and is aimed at processing transactions at large businesses, is IBM's first mainframe computer sold without IBM's traditional z/OS mainframe operating system. More info at the IBM zSeries page" This is something that IBM and others of Big Iron vendors of *NIX have said - as Linux grows in maturity, they want to replace their *NIX with Linux. However, there's still work to be done in that area.
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IBM Announces First Linux-only Mainframes
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Link to Sourceforge Foundry broken (Score:4, Informative)
url (Score:1, Informative)
(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!)
HOT SWAPPING!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I would think hot swapping would be one feature truely worthy of a mainframe operating system... especially if you can all of the different possible parts of a mainframe and still keep all of your applications running 24/7.
Relative costs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hardware Maintenance is irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
It's not the maintenance that is the problem, things like configuration management and data integrity are more important. If you have a hundred servers, then you have a hundred places to check that everything is in sync. If you are running a small shop with a dozen or so machines and one administrator then they can keep all the state in their heads. When you get up to hundreds then the state is larger than one person can easily cope with and you start having to communicate state to others. With hundreds of boxes, it is easy to overlook things, with fewer boxes, the communication is easier, and cheaper.
The other thing is CPU residency. Lots of small boxes wastes CPU power because they tend to be devoted to one task and are only capable of that task. The problem is, they are so small that you can't add other tasks to them so you need a new box... Generally, CPU residency on small boxes runs about 10%, with mainframes, this can rise to 90%. Take two tasks - one runs during the day, one runs during the night. Conventional wisdom would allocate two small boxes, one per task wasting them for most or their life. Mainframe usage would run them both on the mainframe - this gives each process more power when they run and doesn't waste the box when they don't. Most traffic tends to be peaky but only for a short period of time so if the box is large enough to hold them both, you get a saving whilst still making all the tasks faster.
Small boxes are good when you need maximum cycles per buck and the task is easily partitionable with minimal interprocess communication and the tasks are continuous. When the tasks are not easily partitionable, need lots of IPC or are peaky then larger boxes make sense.
The thing to remember is that where the scale is large, you need to make use of that scale to get maximum performance. You don't see chemical plants using hundreds of small vats, they use a few really big ones. With these systems they are used at a scale where communications and simply keeping track of what is going on is a major exercise and hence a major expense.
My Experience? Well - put it this way, the SunFire 6800 turned up a few weeks ago, the 4800 turns up on wednesday as part of a plan to replace a Tandem mainframe and they will be sitting next to quite a few racks holding Sun E3500s, E450s, E250s, t1s, HP netservers, IBM RS6000s and SGI Origin 2000s and indeed a MacOS server or twenty. A lot of our comms talk to Stratus mainframes and the machine room cooling plants are a more pressing problem than CPU speed.
Licensing discount? (Score:4, Interesting)
(nb: The last IBM big-box I worked on was a first generation AS400 so this question may be dated)
I recall licensing of IBM's OSs to be fairly expensive, have they cut prices at all to reflect the fact that a lot (the bulk?) of the vanilla Linux development happens outside IBM, therefore costing them nothing?
Re:Licensing discount? (Score:4, Interesting)
Acording to the article the answer seems to be yes. They said the $400,000 linux box was about equal in power to a $750,000 mainfraim. So around $350,000 in OS savings.
More... (Score:4, Informative)
No Unixes ran on zSeries before (Score:4, Informative)
And with Linux, you do loose a lot of the RAS characteristics that z/OS provides, as well as 40 years of compatibility with existing workloads. Linux is being sold as something to run new workloads on, workloads that z/OS previously wouldn't have been considered for.
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a step forward for Linux (although perhaps a smaller one that at first glance, because you already could get IBM servers with Linux--these are just the first Linux-only servers) but not a step backwards for Microsoft.
That seems to be the trend now, anyway--remember when Amazon said they saved millions of dollars by using Linux? Those Linux systems replaced Unix systems, not Microsoft Windows systems.
NO Z/OS? (Score:1)
Re:NO Z/OS? (Score:5, Informative)
z/OS is geared at high volume transaction, database, batch processing. it runs either z/VM or more typically natively or in an LPAR.
An LPAR is a 'logical partition', a way of dividing a m/f up into several virtual machines.
for now, these are static and implemented when a partition is 'booted' - IPL'd (initial program load) in m/f terms.
VM on the other hand supports hundreds, even thousands of dynamically generated virutal machines. You can run VM inside an LPAR providing two levels of partitioning. I expect VM and LPAR technologies will converge at some future point.
meanwhile everyhting can talk to each other over 'hipersockets' - memory to memory pipes that looks like a tcp/ip network to your software - blindingly fast
Story on ZDNet about Linux + zSeries (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't touched an as/400 for years (Score:2)
This is great, Big Blue rocks.... (Score:1, Flamebait)
There is an OLD addage, noone ever got fired for buying IBM, it has held true for decades as well, Many others have tried and failed to compete with IBM in the mainframe market, BIG companies, that are alas no more, I am sure this is what will happen with HP/Compaq too, Burroughs , Honywell, where are they now ?????
IBM has made some bbbbbaaaaaadddd choices in software on the desktop over the years, but will stick linux to the forefront, they are advertising the hell out of it and this is good, it gives managment a confidence in Linux that would be nearly IMPOSSIBLE to gain elsewhere.
My sincere hope is that IBM contributes what it should to Linux as a whole. Big corporations can be stingy IBM is no exception, I just hope the people there dont think Linux developers will forever develop for their platforms with no return, I hope that they dont se the contributions of linux coders as a "bottomless well" , I dont think this will happen they have contributeed code to other projects, good code. Apache etc....
GO BIG BLUE CRUSH THE MS INFADELS !
I wonder what MS woulda said if Ibm came to them again and said , yeah we need and OS for this mainframe, (MS REPLY. Well we have the blah proccesor liscencing on Windows XP, it
It's where Linux should stay for now. (Score:1)
-Dean
AS/400 to Linux? (Score:1)
Will IBM be making any considerations to those companies who have a lot invested in AS/400's in helping them convert all of their in-house applications to Linux? Or is this going to be used to fill a separate niche?
Marketing check (Score:2, Funny)
Choice is good (Score:1)
Getting a z series does make some sense in cases where a company could consolidate hundreds of PC's into fewer z series mainframes.
Can it be... (Score:3, Interesting)
Replacing that with Linux would be a nice start!
For those that do not have the benifit of a 390 sitting behind them, it is very disconcerting to have that big black IBM monitor on top of it, because it is running OS/2 on a Celeron board inside the mainframe to control the whole show.
Replace unix with linux? (Score:1)
Have IBM and other big iron vendors actually said this? Of course the linux community speculates about it, and there are good arguments both for and against it, but I am not aware of any official IBM or other source saying "we're phasing out this OS in favor of Linux."
Is that wise? (Score:2, Informative)
Finnaly a subject I can talk about (Score:4, Informative)
Only recently (last 7 years) has speed been a considiration, and that was thanks to the PC revolution. But again, you were alwsys dealing with two camps: Mainframe guys, and PC guys.
So all this means is that there is another choice for people who want the " 5 9's",the holy grail of computing, and not Windows, Unix or any other platform other than the mainframe can deliver that.
Idea for IBM TV Ad "Size matters" (Score:5, Funny)
ANNOUNCER: "If you think we're overcompensating for something with our really, really big mainframe running linux..."(Cut to shot of a dozen small servers being carted off) "...You're absolutely right."
Because they can (Score:1)
I don't mean that as a negative, btw, its just good business sense. Every server I own is IBM (small stuff). Now I have more reason to keep it that way. I am NOT a programmer or kernel hacker, but even I can see the advantages for the switch.
Imagine a... (Score:1, Troll)
That's funny... (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess 400k$ is a little expensive for a toy!
RMS better get busy... (Score:2, Funny)
Linux as VM guest still rocks (Score:2)
Is WLM support working yet?
Have they licked the scheduler problem yet? That was an inherent problem of the Linux kernel expecting to be the only OS instance on the hardware and constantly grabbing the clock to do more or less nothing.
Next stop - Checkpoint firewall code on a Linux instance on the mainframe and goodbye to that gated-ipchains crap.
Datacenter in a box (Score:4, Interesting)
The system uses VM as a base but has multiple instances of SuSE running. It is able to run up to 10000 instances of Linux which makes it a data center in a box.
There is no bus and the communication between the processor banks, memory,
First time I've seen it my eyes jumped out of the sockets.
Good Job IBM
That's not what they said... (Score:2)
In addition, AIX never ran on the zseries computers. So it has nothing to do with a mainframe running linux. The two are separate issues.
This is good news for Linux; but its not accurate to say that it has anything to do with linux displacing AIX, or any other unix.
Mainframe? (Score:1, Troll)
So if I want to learn more about mainframes... (Score:1)
- An overview of mainframe architecture and operations, not too "marketing like", one that assumes a basic computer science background but not mainframe
- A kind of basic "how to" for someone who is starting to program on these beasts. Cover basic JCL, TSO commands, file (oops, dataset) management, etc.
I've been trying to find something like this, as I've had to pick up this topic quickly. All I can find are the IBM manuals on-line (too detailed, and assume lots 'o prior MF background) or some rather superficial marketing type books (e.g. "Exploring IBM S/390 Computers") with little practical technical meat.
Can you Mainframe guys help a poor suffering UNIX-type get up to speed on z/OS, OS/390, MVS or whatever its called nowadays?
More detail in the specs... (Score:1)
Anyone have any light to shed on this?
What is the performance like? (Score:1)
Mistyped.... (Score:2)
Check out this page for a laugh... IBM says that their new servers will let you run 31 bit applications!
At $400,000 a pop... (Score:1)
IBM says: "The world's first dedicated Linux mainframe server!"
I say: "The world's first dedicated Linux server requiring a 30-year mortgage."
Other company software licenses (Score:1)
Re:Somebody Stole Our Server!! (Score:3, Funny)
> what's a server?
A person who if you don't tip them when you leave the restraunt the next time you visit will spill soup all over you?
Or the pile of junk in the corner of the office that makes alot of noise, has various people standing over it and muttering dire curse relating to bill gates and all in the computer industry (assuming os = Windows) or in the case of linux... now where did I leave that boot stone-slate as its so rarley needed...
Actually Scott might be... (Score:1)
Eventually it may affect Bill -- after it's killed proprietary Unix development.
Re:A step in the right direction... (Score:5, Informative)
Architecture is the key. What's the difference between a 120 MIPS mainframe and 3000 MIPS desktop, and why is the 120 MIPS mainframe faster in mainframe type applications?
Architecture. Specifically, things like I/O, process handling, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer that "desktop" type hardware can compete with the big boys, especially considering the cost diferences and the extra speed, boxes, redundancy, etc that you can buy with all that cash you save. But... there are times when the big mainframe architectures really do have a reason for being.
Just my $.05 (inflation, you know).
Uptime, uptime, uptime (Score:2)
Not only does downtime mean lost transactions, it could also mean lost customer confidence.
Also, your $2000 estimate is off. A $2000 pc server, WITH a backup unit?
The mainframe CPU is not slow (Score:5, Insightful)
The mainframe is MIPS per CPU, so the 16-way box is 16*120. Also, 120 MIPS is slow these days for a mainframe.
Write a simple memory intensive program and try it on a mainframe and try it on a PC. I guarantee that you won't get 3000 MIPS out of a desktop, even if the data fits in cache. Many reasons for this....
The s390 ISA is definitely CISC, you can copy a whole string with MVCL, that count's as one instruction. Do this on RISC machines and it might take a loop and execute dozens of instructions. Hence "Meaningless
About 2 years ago I wrote some C code to recursively quicksort 20M random integers and tried it on a bunch of platforms. A mainframe that was about 1 cycle behind fastest available gave me about the same single processor performance as a 1GHz PC, both a little slower than Alpha.
The big differentiator is memory architecture. How much time do you lose for a cache miss? Most processors only operate at 20-30% of theoretical maximum speed on big problems.
Memory speed has not kept up, that 2GHz box you dream about is not twice as fast as a 1GHz box, particularly if you're crunching a lot of data.
Re:A step in the right direction... (Score:1)
Reliability (Score:2)
Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Mainframes run up to about 200 MIPS per processor and with multi-processor overhead a 16-way zSeries tops out somewhat below 3,000 MIPS. These are mainframe MIPS, not what you get as BogoMIPS out of Linux at boot (AFAIK, this is some quick integer timing loop calculation). There's a reason it's called BogoMIPS, troll.
IBM has successfully run over 40,000 Linux images on a mainframe (under VM). Try that on your 1.5Ghz desktop. Ever heard of Transactions Per Second (TPS) in four and five figures, I/O rates in GB/sec, multi-terabyte databases, 99.999% uptime for years? That's mainframe territory, and I sincerely doubt that you've ever seen it, or ever will.
Re:A step in the right direction... (Score:1, Interesting)
Why? We needed the reliability. We ran mock disaster drills where we simulated a disaster which destroyed our whole data center. IBM was able to restore the complete operation within six hours by using their own remote, secure fallback site hundreds of miles away, including restoring lost data. We actually tested this many times, pulling the plug on everything in our data center and seeing how long IBM could have us up and running again. It is friggin amazing.
VF is a multi-billion dollar company with operations on almost every continent. If we lost our data center, we would have been screwed. IBM was worth evey penny for the amazing security which they provoided for our operations.
m$ hurt as well (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:aimed at Sun (Score:2)