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Exchange vs. Linux/390 Comparison

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the taking-a-close-look-at-it dept.

eclarkso writes: " The Consulting Times has done a quite even-handed study of the TCO for each platform in a fairly large (5000+) enterprise environment. The article is as much a commentary on the mainframe architecture as it is on Exchange vs. Linux groupware."

18 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Linux/390 manual by alewando · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some of the academic folks I know have had a bit of trouble installing Linux/390 (<----- ibm's linux/390 developer page), but linux390.marist.edu/ has a decent manual they've found helpful.

    Of course, it'll long be obsolete before I ever get my hands on one of these beasts. *sigh*

  2. Did I miss the hardware/software support costs? by OSgod · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Which traditionally are high for IBM systems and when you count up servers on the Intel side also count higher?

    Did we count the difference in functionality? Exchange vs. what on Linux?

    The mainframe may be back -- but make no mistake it is still the domain of the priesthood. The priesthood that the server architecture was to break up. Do Linux users really want that? A handful of techs who are well paid (the business people are cheering) but no need for the thousands of SA's and small shops can just buy time on a 390.

    1. Re:Did I miss the hardware/software support costs? by IntlHarvester · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason that Notes users use less e-mail is that most Notes shops have a plethera of other groupware applications that they've hacked together. That is actually a *good* thing because information is centrally managed and indexed, and not laying around people's inboxes.

      I've worked at several Notes shops. People have their nose in Notes all day long. Can't say that for the Microsoft shops I've worked at (where things are spread around between different VB and Access apps, and way way too much stuff is done in e-mail for the lack of a better way.)

      Exchange has most of the infrastructure, BTW. Just that Outlook is a real pile of shit from a programmatic standpoint (just as Notes is shit from a UI perspective...)

      --
      Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
  3. Re:Skewed Results by Zwack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not entirely...

    If this is a BIG IBM mainframe then it will take
    more floor space than a single rack of twin processor CPUs.

    I assume that VM programmers are in short enough supply that paying one $90k p.a. is reasonable. It's not far from what I get paid as a Unix SA.

    And the hardware is WAY more expensive.

    The second set of figures shows how much less you will be paying if you already have an IBM mainframe (for some other purpose) that you can use for a Linux partition (virtual machine, whatever you want to call it) compared to bringing in an NT server farm with exchange. You've already paid for the hardware, the floor space, the support staff. You're just pushing your hardware a little harder.

    Does it make sense now?

    Z.

    --
    -- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
  4. My experience with Linux/390 by isj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I jumped at IBMs offer for developers to try out Linux running on a z/Architecure thingy. My experience so far has been pleasant and "boring" (in a positive way). Pleasant because everything ported easily. Boring because I was expecting challenging porting problems. Everything worked.

    Now for the article about TCO and stuff... I believe that it is correct. For small installations use cheap hardware to bring down initial costs. But don't be afraid of mainframes when you business grows - they are not that different.

  5. What Email/Groupware software did they use? by Bass+Clarinet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What email/groupware software are they using on this Linux/390 machine? Is it some port of Lotus Domino server? I am only aware of Domino running natively on S/390 and on Intel x86 Linux, not on 390 mainframe Linux. Also bear in ming that there is no antivirus vendor supporting Domino on any Linux platform so that makes Domino on any Linux platform rather useless, doesn't it?

    1. Re:What Email/Groupware software did they use? by ninjaz · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It was likely Bynari's Insight Server - shown at Bynari's site. It's designed to be feature-complete for Outlook clients and also work with standards-based clients. That, of course, makes it especially plausible that Bynari was the software in question. Also, while the 5000 user license isn't mentioned in plain view on Byari's site, it's $19449 for 1000 users, which would put it in line with the $71000 for 5000 users mentioned in the article.

      Of course, Bynari also runs on Linux/x86 and Solaris/sparc, for folks with a more typical environment.

  6. Management Overhead. by Rimbo · · Score: 5, Informative

    "For the sake of simplicity, certain items such as depreciation and management overhead were excluded from the comparisons."

    It's kind of interesting, since management overhead is widely regarded as the main reason why people prefer Windoze systems to Linux systems. People believe that it costs less money to perform essential administration tasks in Windows than it does in Linux.

    I'm not stating that the costs actually are lower, but it's not a terribly informative article if they're going to eliminate that important bit of information.

    1. Re:Management Overhead. by isj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is my experience too. Some uninformed managers think that because WindowsNT/2000 has a familiar user interface it is easier to manage and can be done by less competent adminstrators (or even themselves :-)

      Let's face it: The major factor is the system administrator. If he/she is competent the system TCO will go down. If he/she is incompetent the TCO will go up.
      Good system administators are lazy and try to automate everything so they don't have to work. *nix systems are better at that than Windows (or OS/2, DOS for that matter)

  7. have you seen the new mainframes? by denshi · · Score: 5, Informative
    In this case, the S/390 series. The zSeries mainframes (12 CPUs) are about half the height of a rack and a bit wider. And the power requirements are way lower.

    Why do you need VM programmers? The port is already done, the logic for running Linux as a guest OS is there, and it's stable. Henceforth you should be coding on the Linux level, not the VM level.

  8. Cost per user seems high, what about Opensource... by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Has anyone tested opensource freeware for 25K users? You could save money on different designs, but this really isnt the meat of the article.

    I know it can be done cheaper, we have designed email/groupware for millions of subscribers cheaper than that, all are webbased with oracle/ldap on sun equipment, with network load balancers.

    I like how Exchange looks like a cheap solution, untill you grow past your user base, then costs sky rocket.

  9. Re:Comparison by swordgeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now that's an interesting point! My experience has been that when overloaded...

    1) mainframes and real Unix servers (Sun, HP, etc.) slow down instead of crashing.
    2) Linux (and NT) crashes hard.

    So the question is, does the OS crash on a given platform because of the hardware, the software, or a combination of the two? What will Linux on a Mainframe do when hit with an enormous load?

    Unless the kernel has been rewritten extensively to deal with the hardware, I suspect it would crash just as effectively on an S/390 as on a stack of Pentiums. I'd love to find out for sure, though.

    --

    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  10. Re:11 servers for exchange by SClitheroe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's no way Exchange2K could handle 50K users on a single box.

    First, you've never obviously worked with Fibre Channel on the kind of scale that 50K users would require (ie. a big EMC box)...that many users pounding the same box will easily chew up 50% or more of your CPU power on I/O alone. Fibre is fast, but it is so fast that it can easily swamp Xeon CPU's. I know, because I did the benchmarking at my company.

    Second, connection limitations in Win2K and Exchange alone mean that you are running very close to the theoretical maximum the OS supports..not a good idea.

    Third, running that many users off of a single box is suicide. And if you've ever watched Exchange2K failover on a Win2K cluster, you'd know that it can take several minutes for everything to come up on the second node, if you've got a lot of users.

    Finally, a 100GB array for 50K users results in a 2 megabyte mailbox..that's freaking ridiculous!

    In short, you're either running a 50-user shop, or you have no idea what you are talking about.

  11. Why a mainframe and not intel boxes??? by loony · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Somehow those numbers look pretty high - especially if you look at the solutions other companies run...

    3 6xXeon systems 2 to 1 failover $80k
    1 Linux retail box $75
    2 Admins @ 75k/year $150k
    -----
    $230.075

    Well, dont know but somehow this whole linux on mainframe seems like overkill for me - especially since the mainframe CPU's arent all that impressive and the linux vm's dont profit all that much of the datatransfer rates a mainframe offers...

  12. Re:11 servers for exchange by Quikah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Um, don't get too excited about this report:

    The custom test was designed by eTesting Labs to simulate from 33,320 to 83,300 POP/SMTP users that checked their mail every 60 minutes and sent a single 10K byte message to three recipients every 60 minutes.

    Honestly, if you are using your Exchange server as a POP/SMTP server only you are wasting your money. Exchange is groupware, you do not use it as a POP/SMTP server. Save your money and just run sendmail on Linux, BSD or Solaris. Exchange is for calendering, scheduling, messaging, etc. This report is pretty much worthless.

    --
    Q.
  13. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  14. Re:One thing I noticed... by sheldon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's incorrect.

    At a minimum every company I have ever encountered with Exchange, Lotus Notes etc has used it for email and scheduling. Most critical is the scheduling of conference rooms and other resources.

    I agree that there are a great many features that are not used routinely, but in the companies where they are used they are absolutely critical.

    Many companies have built solutions for ordering office supplies, computers, move/add/change requests, etc. using automated message forms. I've seen these in both Exchange and Notes.

    I think you would have a hard time walking into any major corporation and telling them. "Look, we know you use groupware. But we are a lot smarter than you and we know that all you really need is just simple email."

  15. Exchange Functionality.. by scooterbooter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Folks,

    You're missing the entire point of deploying a messaging system in a corporate environment. This is what messes Linux up. It's nice that you can run SendMail, popD and whatever on the big hardware.. but.. for my corporate end users, this isn't adequate.

    Here are my criteria, sorted in no particular order, for a system that I would be happy to deploy to my 700+ users:

    1) Reliable: No loss of data (no PC storage, backups are centralized). [admittedly, tough to maintain with exchange, in the field]

    2) Useability: (l)Users can find their info quickly and easily. (search via header, sender, date, text in body, text in attachments, etc..)

    3) Manageable costs associated with the above two criteria. I'm not claiming $0 cost -- but predictable and manageable costs.

    That's it. Exchange rules at meeting those criteria. I don't want to backup 700+ PC's -- I don't run an ISP! .. In the corporate world, you have to be able to do things such as "recover" a significant (L)user deleted email. If the CEO says "whoops, I poo-poo canned it accidentally", you're expected to fix the situation..

    Which is quite common, for the market that Linux is "trying" to target -- except that most implementers assume there is a *nice* SLA in place.. the small/medium size market is not ready for the lack of end-user features that are present in the *VAST* majority of the distributions.

    gimmie M$ Small Business Server vs. a Linux/POP3/IMAP solution and I only have to wait until the first end-user "OOPSIE" as a sysadmin, before I toss linux out the window..

    Cheers,
    Scoots.