7 Apr
2013
7 Apr
'13
12:55 p.m.
On 7-apr-2013 17:49, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
For those that say the mainframe (specifically IBM
360/370/390/z-series
architecture) is dead, I would say not.
For the record, /I/ didn't say it was dead; I was mostly quoting
others and also referenced an article.
I've mostly observed that it's, although perhaps not dead (yet?),
/rather invisible/ nowadays. I'm not sure what is worse.
Call me strange and unusual, but I thought a platform --- and any
platform, at that --- fared better with (well, you know) a solid
and sizable user/install base. That people at least know what it
(read: said platform) is, so they can mentally prepare themselves
with using it and not be totally flabbergasted and estranged by its
uses and purposes, when suddenly becoming acquainted with such a
platform.
Not only are they suited to do traditional
"mainframe" tasks but
they're *really* good at virtual hosting.
A bit too /virtual/ nowadays, like I said.
You know the virtualization stuff that's been
touted by the likes
of VMWare, Microsoft, etc on Intel platforms for the last few years.
I know, but where is IBM to remind people of its origins and to give
them the opportunity to get acquainted with the, I'll admit, impressive
looking z/VM platform(s).
Well, IBM's been doing that since 370 days (early
1970's).
The "since 370 days" bit confused me a bit at a first glance...
Linux has been ported to the z-series.
But very few flavors (i.e. distributions) seem to support it and I
wonder how many Linux people had even the opportunity to try it.
They stopped at 42,000 Linux clients running on a
*single* z-series.
Impressive, but what kind of workloads though?
They stopped not because the performance was
unacceptable or because
they ran into any limits...they got tired of adding VMs!
Do you remember where you read about this, out of curiosity? I would
not mind to read more into this myself.
I cast suspicion on anyone who says something is
"dead".
Why?
Not only have I been hearing that the mainframe is
dead since the
late70's, I've also been hearing that the disk drive is dead for
about thesame period of time. How's that going?
Actually, solid state/flash memory technology is beginning to make
inroads, especially nowadays. Is that what they were going on
about back then? (Or perhaps crusty tape zealots?)
Whether the mainframe is dead or not: How often do you hear about
it? Some school textbooks in the 1980s would still, even somewhat
colloquially, still mention the term "mainframe". How often does
that still happen nowadays?
Where are the future mainframe maintainers and developers supposed
to come from, IBM mystery land?
- MG