Year of the Mainframe? Not Quite, Say Linux Grids

OSS_ilation writes "IBM touted 2006 as a resurgence year for the mainframe, but not so fast. At R.L. Polk and Co., one of the oldest automobile analytics firms in the U.S., an aging mainframe couldn't cut it, so the IT staff looked elsewhere. Their search led to a grid computing environment — more specifically, a grid computing environment running Linux on more than 120 Dell servers. The mainframe's still there, apparently, but after an internal comparison showed the Linux grid outperforming the mainframe by 70% with a 65% reduction in hardware costs, Polk seemed content banishing the big box to a dark, lonely corner for more medial tasks."

Comments

right tool for right job

[r00t]

You use the mainframe when you want error recovery at every step of the way. One of them even runs two CPU pipelines in lockstep so that a failing CPU can be safely isolated without crashing the app that was running on it.

The mainframe also gives you nice IO and super-efficient virtualization.

Workload doesn't need all that? Gee, maybe it's not a workload for the mainframe.

Re:right tool for right job

[mwvdlee]

You are thinking of the old Tandem machines, I think they're called Himalaya now, or whatever. Those are failsafe machines which are supposed to have zero downtime on hardware problems.

The Mainframe discussed in the topic is an IBM one, most likely a predecessor of the current zSeries machines (OS/390).

So Linux beat it. I guess they just had tasks which weren't fit for large scale processing behemoths like mainframes anyway. I dare bet the Linux grid would be a lot slower if it had to batch processes a few hundred MB worth of data. And despite all the claims about Linux stability, mainframes boast far superious uptime (a few minutes of scheduled downtime a year and no unscheduled downtime; everything can be hotswapped, including CPU's and memory). Although the increase of real-time processing decreases the need for mainframes a bit, the ever increasing processing load still makes them invaluable to large companies.

Re:What are they trying to prove ?

[arivanov]

Besides, performance has never been the strong point of a mainframe. In fact most mainframes performance is laughable (a while ago IBM had to ask Seti@Home to remove the results for the early Z series because they were comparable with a 386SX. The primary selling points of a mainframe are the resource control and reliability.

Does the grid mentioned in the article offer the same level of PHB friendly resource control (CPU, IO, etc) for multiple concurrently running applications? Doubt it.

Does the grid mentioned in the article offer the same level of reliability and reproducibility of the result? I have some doubts. Most mainframes have 2+ CPUs doing the same task and either flagging a fault on differences or deciding who is right using a "voting" system. This is done on a per instruction basis and cannot be directly simulated in a grid. At best you can do per-task/procedure result comparison which is not the same as it will flag errors considerably later and has higher probability of overall error when using the same number of components.

Someone is either comparing apples and oranges, or being a fanboy or not knowing what mainframe is for or all of these at the same time.

Re:Linux Niche

[hanssprudel]

I just recently installed Ubuntu (Edgy Eft) on a brand new laptop. I found no previous testimonials or guides about the model I chose, but googling seemed to indicate that all the components had drivers. While I did have a couple of issues that made installation not quite as painless and grandparent, your post severely understates how far Linux has gotten.

And then you want to get your sound working on your newer laptop?

Worked with ALSA out of the box.

Okay, where do I set the wireless password? I know I saw that somewhere before.

Using Network Manager, there is a wireless icon in the top right of the window with a list of accessible networks. Selecting an encrypted one brings up a prompt for a password (the first time you use it).

Oh, the Dlink-chip-du-jour isn't supported out of the box, I have to go find some more development drivers for it, if I can.

Unfortunately, some hardware manufacturers give no Linux support at all, but in fact almost all wireless adapters work. Go with Centrino, and you will be fine.

Hmmmm, how do I suspend this and hibernate it properly?

Both worked perfectly out of the box.

Hmmm, where did my scrolling regions go on my trackpad?

They were enabled and working out of the box.

Now, time for a presentation; install openoffice, that works fine, good. Okay, now to switch to external monitor. Hmmm, Fn-Monitor doesn't work.

The hotkey for switching to external monitor worked out of the box, with all three modes (internal, external, both) working.

To this I can add (in response to others) that both my iPod and my Camera worked straight out of the box, as did Internet access over my bluetooth phone. The only thing I have run into which didn't work was an HP scanner - it turns out that scanners are a real quagmire with no uniform drivers and that HP give lousy support, a little Googling told me this and that an Epson would have worked...