IBM Announces First Linux-only Mainframes 218
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.
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
Re:Can it be... (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd be quite bored to notice that things keep running just like normal.
The only purpose of the controller computer is to configure the mainframe, provide quick access to load information, etc. The mainframe is entirely self-reliant, and does not need the controller for normal operation. (It does communicate with the controller frequently during normal use, but none of that communication is mission-critical.) The sole time that the laptop is required in order for the mainframe to be even operational is to load the bootstrap, and for that purpose I could care less if the thing ran DOS.
Re:Relative costs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, it better replace hundreds of servers, because you could theoretcially purchase hundreds of cheap rack-mounted boxes for a similar amount of money.
It's got to pay off in a different way than providing equivalent computing horsepower to hundreds of PC servers.
Is it in reduced hardware maintenance headaches, easier to manage than a crowd of servers?
Is someone out there with experience in managing racks of PCs and mainframes for a while able to tell us how much of an incentive there is to use the mainframes instead of racks `o PCs?
Re:A step in the right direction... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. The point that most
A good engineer picks the best tool for the task at hand. Depending on the computing task, the best computer could be a mainframe, a MPP supercomputer, a commodity SMP server, a cluster of desktop PCs, or some other specialized architecture.
Commidity x86 hardware is great, and can do an acceptably good job on a wide variety of tasks, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of computers. Just because you haven't worked on anything else doesn't mean that other computer architectures are outdated crap.
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)
That's funny... (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess 400k$ is a little expensive for a toy!
Re:Finnaly a subject I can talk about (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Actually Scott might be... (Score:1, Interesting)
Look for a massive new outpouring of FUD from the Redmondians - this news has to got to have Ballmer, Gates & co. shitting their pants...