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IBM Announces First Linux-only Mainframes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-step-up dept.

A reader writes "The new Z-series mainframe for Linux, which costs $400,000 and is aimed at processing transactions at large businesses, is IBM's first mainframe computer sold without IBM's traditional z/OS mainframe operating system. More info at the IBM zSeries page" This is something that IBM and others of Big Iron vendors of *NIX have said - as Linux grows in maturity, they want to replace their *NIX with Linux. However, there's still work to be done in that area.

3 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Licensing discount? by grub · · Score: 4, Interesting


    (nb: The last IBM big-box I worked on was a first generation AS400 so this question may be dated)
    I recall licensing of IBM's OSs to be fairly expensive, have they cut prices at all to reflect the fact that a lot (the bulk?) of the vanilla Linux development happens outside IBM, therefore costing them nothing?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Licensing discount? by bmongar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I recall licensing of IBM's OSs to be fairly expensive, have they cut prices at all to reflect the fact that a lot (the bulk?) of the vanilla Linux development happens outside IBM, therefore costing them nothing?
      Acording to the article the answer seems to be yes. They said the $400,000 linux box was about equal in power to a $750,000 mainfraim. So around $350,000 in OS savings.

      --
      As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
  2. Datacenter in a box by ehiris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My company purchased one for web hosting

    The system uses VM as a base but has multiple instances of SuSE running. It is able to run up to 10000 instances of Linux which makes it a data center in a box.

    There is no bus and the communication between the processor banks, memory, ... are switched.

    First time I've seen it my eyes jumped out of the sockets.

    Good Job IBM :)