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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."

11 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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...

  8. 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.
  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. 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.