Slashdot Mirror
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." "
As someone who oversees an email system with close to a million addresses (in various states of utilization from heavy to "what account?"), I'm kinda interested in how this works out. Has anybody done high-load stresstesting of these yet?
-- F.S.
By the way, if you are thinking of taking the RHCE course 300 (fast track for UNIX proficient people), I really enjoyed it.
Click here or here.
It's frequently said that Linux is not stable enough for mainframe systems. It's also frequently said that mainframes have been obsoleted by smaller, more powerful computers.
I am quite relieved to see that Winnebago has challenged the "norms" and put Linux to use on a mainframe. Linux is commonly used for mission-critical software, like the Linux server sitting next to me that handles our company's mail, but to see it doing something mission-critical on a mainframe is quite impressive.
Good work, Winnebago.
Perhaps it's just me, but that makes no sense whatsoever. How do you ship a measure of speed? "Shipping" millions of instructions per second seems to me to be the same as "shipping" miles per hour. It just doesn't make sense. My guess is that the author of the article got some terminology wrong.
Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
Well, it has to be a very very big acquisition... A couple of year ago I set up a qmail server for handling the mail of a local ISP with about 30000 users (that's right, 30 thousands), and we used a dual cpu DELL poweredge, with only one cpu installed. The idea was to see if the box could handle the load, and eventually install the second CPU. Well, the load never got above 0.30, so we saved the money for the second CPU. And we are speaking of a PIII-500, no more.
In TUX we trust
In the end you have a couple of boxes that runs E2K.
Yes, that was a full stop.What these guys are doing is running Linux under a single VM instance. It will cost them serious money because Linux for these boxes isn't cheap. However, they pay only for the first instance at their shop.
I have gone through the price options on W2K Enterprise Server, Advanced Server and Professional with Exchange Server and so on. There is *no* way that we are not talking serious cash here and that is for s/w alone. MS recommends that you dedicate particular systems for certain functionality like E2K - which is great but this costs.
The end result here is that you say that your company is planning to purchase. Come back when everything is working and tell us how much it really cost.
IBM has consistently given me the best support I've found anywhere. They're patient, competent, and skilled.
The CE's I've dealt with have all been very professional; and have displayed none of the behavior you saw.
In one case, I even had a tech from supportline call me back weeks after he'd already solved a problem for me, to tell me about an alternate method he'd picked up from one of the more senior people. He'd used it on another customer's problem, and called me back to let me know it was an option that I might prefer if it came up again. Now that's service.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
It could be. But probably not.
We have a HPUX box in a 30ishU rack that is a big waste of space in our lab area. It would draw tons of power (you need a 30amp 110v twist lock socket for it, IIRC), it has raid - a raid of 2 gig disks, and its hpux isn't y2k compatible - it accepts 70-99 as valid years, IIRC, and onlyhas 128 megs of ram.
Honestly, for general unix stuff, mirrored 7200rpm drives and intel hardware would probably draw a fifth of the power, and be at least as quick (I would think it would be orders of magnitude quicker). I haven't bother pricing out HPUX upgrades for this nightmare. It just isn't worth the time or effort.
ostiguy
if you are thinking of taking the [fast track] RHCE course I really enjoyed it.
Same here, last June. And when I took my Linux on S/390 training in December, I was in class with people from a major online bill payment company, a major auto insurer, Canada's DOD, and many others. Most had already deployed it and wanted to see what they hadn't figured out for themselves yet.
In August, 2000, I sat next to an IBM'er by coincidence on a flight. He saw I was reading the "Linux for S/390" RedBook. He said I'd become a "demigod" if I get into that. I've already gone thru one consolidation project, starting a second one on Monday in NYC, and have a third one queued up, waiting for me to finish up in NY. It seems we recently gave a customer a server upgrade plan, and they replied, "what, no Linux?" So we're redoing it as a consolidation plan for Linux on S/390.
I'd say Linux on S/390 is picking up steam big time. When I spoke to a friend about this setup, he replied, "Wow, you finally sound like one of those mainframe IBM'ers we used to make fun of!" Of course, he still has no reply to the argument that I can reduce just about any single data center to a couple of 48U racks, and give all the servers five nines.
Intelligent Life on Earth
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...
And that's what I think the earlier posters were talking about, and what still hasn't been answered.
It makes sense to spend $26,000 on a zSeries/Linux solution over "spending $150,000 on new hardware and software for a Microsoft Corp. Exchange upgrade."
But why spend to the $26,000 at all if you can support 700 users on a $5,000 semi-high-end traditional Linux x86 email server?
Is it worth the $26k to not have to worry about an extra physical box? The administration is the same, it is just running Linux on a zSeries for $26k vs. running Linux on a x86 SMP for $5k.
What am I missing? Does the $26,000 include a bunch of consulting services that they needed? $26k to have the IBM name and support?
So how much does an entry level z800 cost? I know the number would be wildly innaccurate, but say something to replace about 40 servers performing mail, web, dns, dhcp, etc.
Any ideas?
.
load "linux",8,1