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Linux On Big Iron

Posted by Hemos on from the success-stories-abound dept.

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." "

4 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. I thought so too... by WinPimp2K · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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
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  2. Overkill? Not at all. by Samarkind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:A mainframe for 700 users? by swillden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

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  4. Re:Sounds like a tremendous waste... by LinuxHam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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