Linux On Big Iron

panker writes "eWeek is running an article about a company who converted their IBM mainframe into a Linux email server. "The technical support manager at Winnebago Industries Inc. recently oversaw the deployment of Version 7 of SuSE Linux AG's Linux operating system on an IBM zSeries mainframe to run his company's e-mail server supporting 700 users." "

Comments

I thought so too...

[WinPimp2K]

so I Read The Fine Article:

• he saved over 120K bucks vs an MSFT Exchange Server solution (for 700 users - what is Bill G smoking?)
• It is using less than ten per cent of the mainframe's capacity, they do plan to migrate other server jobs currently on discrete machines to the mainframe
• Yes they are already a mainframe shop. One mainframe is far more capable than a desktop server. Given a choice between supporting a single mainframe or a couple of hundred desktop servers, the mainframe costs less
• The article covers a lot more than just this one instance, but it has a nice number to start with - that big dollar savings

Re:Overkill???

[Garg]

It would be overkill if they were using the mainframe only for this. But they already had a mainframe. With these machines, you can create a logical partition and run Linux in it. That's what they're doing... just taking a few resouces away from their regular system.

Garg

Overkill? Not at all.

[Samarkind]

There are several posts that are wondering if this is overkill, so I'll respond to all. It's not since they already had the hardware and only added a single CPU to their existing mainframe. They got the whole nine yards for $26K, but they don't have to add a new server, license Exchange, hire a Windows admin if they don't already have one and, as the exec said, they don't want to use Intel hardware.

Re:MIPS??

[owlmeat]

I don't have a problem with it. If you need an automotive analogy, compare MIPS to horsepower and it makes more sense.

We don't seem to be the target audience here...

[glwtta]

"In other words, Linux has come a long way from being Linus Torvalds' student computer project. "

Oh shit, it has? I better get on that there Linux thing then! Is it just me, or did that whole article have the "this isn't going to teach me anything new" feel to it?

Re:A mainframe for 700 users?

[swillden]

My company is planning to purchase a quad Xeon CPU 4GB RAM server as part of our Exchange 2000 migration for over 1000 users at a fraction of the price.

How is buying a new machine, plus a bunch of commercial software, plus sending techs to classes to learn how to manage the software, going to be cheaper than free software that your people already understand on a machine you already have? They did turn on an additional CPU, so there's some cost there, but more than likely they were getting close to maxing out their current system anyway and will benefit from the additional horsepower.

Plus, your solution is going to be far, far less reliable. There are IBM mainframes that have been running continuously for decades, with no downtime at all even through hardware and OS upgrades. Not that e-mail really needs to have six 9s uptime, but if you can get it for no additional cost, why not?

Linux using ESCON?

[Steve72]

How does Linux for mainframe connect to mainframe DASD? Do you have device files for 3390-3 and 9's? Do they mask it as SCSI volumes? What about FICON?

-Steve

Sounds like a tremendous waste...

[jlockard]

What a complete waste. REALLY. I've got an old Dell server running an oldish version of RedHat and Cyrus, serving email for about 1200 users. The machine is far from taxed right now. I would say that the whole setup cost about $4000 when first purchased.

We're replacing that setup with a newish Dell 1U server running a newer version of RedHat and a newer version of Cyrus and making tweaks along the way. With being a school that has promised email accounts for life to alumni, we're planning for growth, but the server still cost around $4000 plus the cost of the RAID for email data store.

Re:Sounds like a tremendous waste...

[LinuxHam]

I've got an old Dell server running an oldish version of RedHat and Cyrus, serving email for about 1200 users. The machine is far from taxed right now

I think a lot of Intel-oriented people would be floored if they learned about the hardware reliability and flexibility that mainframes offer. Do you have dual power supplies in your Dell box? Can you hot swap them? Do you have hardware RAID? What about redundant hardware RAID attached to a dual-channel RAID storage box (also with dual hot-swap power supplies)? Can you hot plug your processors? RAM? RAID controllers?

A key feature of Linux is that it lets you select reliability and availability just by turning a dial. From handhelds to Intel to RISC to midrange and mainframe, you get to decide how mission critical your apps are. If you accidentally unplug your Dell box, your users are SOL until it reboots.

Re:MIPS??

[Corby911]

Ah, it was just a question of phrasing. The sentence I quoted was worded in such a fashion that I was confused. I fully understand the concept of MIPS and why it is often a better indicator of server capacity, I just read the text, and took the phrase "11 percent of the mainframe mips (million instructions per second) shipped" as "11 percent of the millions of instructions per second shipped", which makes a great deal less sense if you don't work with mainframes routinely(read: never). I probably would have put a footnote or something in the article explaining that, or tried to find a clearer wording (I've been trying for 5 mins or so, without luck).

(Thanks to all for the clarification)

Re:Picking up steam..

[Banjonardo]

Heh, your post just hit me with the full irony:

In the early 80s, IBM used MS-DOS because it thought hardware was where the money is. Now Microsoft is, well....Microsoft.

Now in the early 00s, IBM is using a free operating system and raking the big bucks in... you guessed it! Hardware!

Aahhhh, computer irony.