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By Michael Neubarth
CIOZone recently spoke with David Rhoderick, mainframe evangelist in IBM Software Group's System z Competitive Project Office, about the state of the IBM mainframe, its value proposition, and its prospects going forward.
The mainframe has been called a dinosaur and its extinction predicted. Why has it persisted?
"Mainframes, and IBM, have bent over backwards to ensure compatibility with old executable code," said Rhoderick. "This is one of the most important reasons behind the mainframe's survival. How many Windows 3.1 programs now run under Vista? Typically System 360 programs still work on z10 without recompiling."
"The mainframe has persisted," explained Rhoderick, "because it adapted to new technological capabilities as they become available -- including Java, TCP/IP, Ruby on Rails, AJAX, virtualization, data warehousing, and the latest silicon technology and processes. It has adapted to new workloads like Linux and WebSphere."
"The mainframe also became a lot more open. IBM adopted all major open standards -- TCP/IP, Java, CORBA, etc." Openness made it easier to move applications from other platforms, including DB2 and WebSphere, he explained.
"The real dinosaurs are the DEC Vax, Wang, Data General, Tandem, Honeywell, Hitachi, Stratus, Univac, Amdahl, Burroughs, etc." said Rhoderick. "These are products that can be truly claimed to be dinosaurs, while the mainframe keeps on truckin' or evolves."
The Modern Mainframe
"The modern mainframe is a high-speed, flexible networking hub," said Rhoderick, explaining that mainframes now incorporate high-bandwidth 10Gb Ethernet cards for the fastest network connections, and are able to attach to a variety of storage area networks (SANs) and disk subsystems.
"Virtualization is another important factor," said Rhoderick. "The mainframe has had virtualization since the 1960s. The first virtual machine OS was CP-67 in the '60s. VM was the first virtual environment. Linux breathed new life into VM and you can now run Linux on VM. You can run thousands of virtual Linuxes on a mainframe. On each core, you can typically run 30-40 Linux instances. And mainframes have quad cores. So there are a maximum 64 useable cores, and you typically can run 64 x 30-40 Linux instances."
The customer has extreme flexibility in the way LPARs (logical partitions) can be divided to run applications, said Rhoderick. "You can carve up your LPARs on all 64 cores. You can carve an LPAR for z/OS, another for Linux, all on the same box, elegantly, and with high speed. There are HiperSockets for TCP/IP that are very high speed. These are internal links for distributed servers, Linux to legacy z applications, inside the box. Many customers are running Linux plus mainframe applications in one box."
The mainframe is a consolidation hub, said Rhoderick. "You can put hundreds of separate servers on a mainframe," he said, adding that "many customers are running Linux-only machines." The mainframe hypervisor that controls all the partitioning and virtualization is called PR/SM, he said.
Specialty chips are another key advance, said Rhoderick. "zIIP is a data specialty engine, and zAAP is a Java specialty engine. IFL, the Integrated Facility for Linux, is a Linux special chip. These look the same as a mainframe CPU physically."
"In each of these specialty engines," noted Rhoderick, "the microcode is written specifically for these functions. They accelerate processing, just like math coprocessors. You offload the processing of these workloads to the specialty chips so the regular processors don't need to do the work."
Mainframe TCO
Mainframes have a reputation as being expensive, and companies like Hewlett-Packard claim their servers offer a less expensive alternative. How does the cost of mainframes compare today with an HP system?
"The mainframe is cost competitive," said Rhoderick. "The price point is set to ensure it is competitive. Price/performance continues to come down. When you do a cost analysis vs. HP Superdome servers, the IBM mainframe is cheaper or within 20 percent of the price of the HP solution."
"A new release of z/OS is coming out with new features," said Rhoderick. "There are new lost-cost solutions that stack up well vs. HP and other competitors. For a 20 percent cost difference versus a comparative HP solution, you get more power and flexibility."
The economics are even more favorable for customers with existing mainframes, said Rhoderick. "Customers can trade in their old mainframe for a new one, based on the number of MIPs," he explained. "For example, if you have 500 MIPS, you get credit for 500 MIPS, and you only pay for the additional MIPs you buy, the extra capacity."
There also are trade-in benefits for the specialty chips, said Rhoderick. "In a System z9 to z10 upgrade, you can trade in your zIIP, zAAP and IFL specialty engines to the new versions of the processors that are twice as fast. They were a great deal in the first place and are a super deal when you trade up."
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