Re: Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving • The Register

On Apr 7, 2013, at 3:16 AM, MG <marcogb at xs4all.nl> wrote: More nails... This one for fun: mainframe[1]: n. 1. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year's run twice as fast as last year's. n. 2. A large PC peripheral [1] The Devil's IT Dictionary The following is from a white paper written by Atos Origin: The mainframe platform has a reputation for its extremely high level of quality but, amongst those who do not use them, for being expensive, monolithic and inflexible (that would be you Marco). Yet it can be very cost-effective compared to a proliferation of smaller systems, can be flexibly configured and re-configured. There is further irony in any resistance to the use of mainframes, because everyone in IT is talking about virtualisation and utility computing (see Introducing Utility Computing, Atos Origin, October 2006). But both concepts have been around in the mainframe world for 30 years or more. By providing virtualisation, VMware is doing for Intel platforms what VM/370 did on mainframes in the 1970?s. Mainframe is a utility service, and has almost always been so. Many advocates of utility services are actually ?reinventing the mainframe? in many aspects of what they seek to achieve. Another interesting statistic is average capacity utilization: Wintel-based servers: 8-15% Unix/RISC: 28-45% Mainframes: 65-75% It's also noted that mainframes (zSeries) can and do run at 100% utilization for long periods quite happily. Try that with a non-mainframe! TTFN - Guy