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

Re:"medial" tasks?

[Aladrin]

While it is quite possible they meant 'menial', as that is the common phrase, they might also have meant just what they said.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=medial
2. pertaining to a mean or average; average.

The Grid is used for complex, processor-intensive tasks, I'm sure. The regular daily cruft is probably still done on the old mainframe. Those would be 'medial tasks'. If they made it into a monitor instead of a system that does processing, that might be considered menial. (I'm having a hard time finding 'menial' tasks a computer can do...)

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=menial
1. lowly and sometimes degrading: menial work.

Sooo... If you're going to be grammar police, please do your homework first.

Re:Linux Niche

[Alioth]

The difficulty of desktop Linux is really a myth these days. I recently set up Fedora Core 6 on a laptop. Setting up FC6 as a desktop is now trivially easy. It roughly consisted of inserting a CD-ROM, booting it, clicking OK and Next a few times then feeding it disks until it finished.

Installing extra software was equally trivial. There is a GUI to start off the Applications menu for installing more software. It downloads and installs the software all as one step. No need to download it, run a separate installer or scroll through pages of impeneterable EULA.

To add extra applications to this GUI application installer - mainly multimedia applications - all it required was clicking on a link on Livna's web page to add the Livna repository. (Like Mac OS X, you're asked for the administrative password on application install).

Installing Fedora Core and extra applications and extra application repositories is actaully easier than doing the same on Windows, and about the equivalent difficulty of doing the same on Mac OS X.

For third-party applications, there is Autopackage: http://autopackage.org/ - which provides a distro-independent method of installing applications. It's reminiscent of things like the Mac OS X application installer (for apps you can't simply drag to the Applications folder) or the InstallShield types of installers for Windows. Except unlike InstallShield installers, it has the ability to resolve and fetch dependencies (ever tried to install Microsoft BizTalk? Complex and unweildy because you must manually install several dependencies, each with their own dependencies. Autopackage does away with this dependency hell).

What are they trying to prove ?

[Ksempac]

So a NEW system outperforms an OLD system. I fail to see how this is a news.

If they had compared a NEW mainframe with the NEW grid, then we would have been able to draw some conclusions about which one is better. But saying "We bought a new system, its better than the old one" proves nothing.

Re:What are they trying to prove ?

[Archtech]

Yes, you have put your finger on the glaring weakness in this story. Once you see that it was an OLD mainframe versus a PRESENT-DAY Linux grid, you realise that no useful conclusions can be drawn. (Although, as others have noted, the narrowness of the margin achieved suggests that the mainframe would win easily in a fair contest).

These "old-versus-new" comparisons are the stock-in-trade of marketing and PR departments, which are perpetually issuing press releases bragging that the latest Foowhatzit Humdinger 24-processor with thousands of GB of storage outperformed someone's 10-year old VAX or AS/400. To Slashdotters, that's a subdued "Wow!" (that they would attempt such barefaced trickery, that is) and on to something potentially interesting. But to the broad masses who know nothing about computers, it is quite impressive. PHB readers habitually skip over all the "techie details" anyway, so they probably come away with the desired message: "We need Foowhatzit Humdingers, and we need 'em now!"

People with arts degrees are big on quoting Mies van der Rohe's "God is in the details". Perhaps it's time they realised that "God is in the numbers" too.

Wow, I've got to check out these mainframes

[ggruschow]

The mainframe is many years old and they only managed to beat it by up to 70% with 120 machines? Either that thing is awesome or they suck with their grid.

Re:Wow, I've got to check out these mainframes

[Weedlekin]

The fact that they mention RedHat's ownership of JBoss as having been the deciding factor in their OS selection points to this being a cluster running distributed Enterprise Java Beans, which means it will probably compare poorly in terms of efficiency with their old mainframe applications that were likely written in heavily optimised FORTRAN, which would account for their having to feed data to it in batches. This together with an observed inability on the part of EJB programmers (as distinct from other types of Java programmer) to write even marginally optimal code explains why they get such crappy performance out of the cluster (farming EJBs out among several servers is _not_ grid computing, any more than using a clustered web server is grid computing).

If one actually reads the article, it appears that this company has been well and truly hornswoggled by somebody or other, because nothing they say in the article makes any sense otherwise. Everything they cite as a benefit of "grid computing" versus a 20 year-old mainframe can also be claimed for modern mainframes (which have plenty of other features not found in their cluster), and I fail to see where they get their "65% hardware savings" from, because those PowerEdge 6850 servers (which are from Dell, and not Intel as the article claims) start at well over $17,000 a piece (including a $1,500 discount) with dual 3GHz Xeons, so 50 of the things would cost nearly $900,000, compared with an entry-level price for the z9 of about $100,000, meaning that you'd get a pretty capable one for $900,000 that would comfortably exceed their system's quoted 100 TPS whilst taking up less space and consuming less power (both space and power cost money, and must therefore be factored into the cost of a system over its projected life span).

Note also that they don't say how much it cost to rewrite all that software in Java, but the fact that it took 14 months during which time they were paying their own people, CapGemini, and "several smaller local boutiques" to do it means that it was probably a very costly exercise indeed, and you have to add the price of RedHat Enterprise (not cheap), JBoss Enterprise, and whatever database they're using (they don't say which one, but I reckon there's at least a 90% chance its name begins with "O", and it's produced by a company whose CEO is called Larry, and has a taste for antique Samurai swords and expensive sailing boats).

So the real story is this: for a total system cost that exceeds that of a modern mainframe, they've now got something with less performance and less features that takes up more space, uses more power, will become obsolete a lot sooner, but padded out CapGemini's pockets nicely, contributed to the local economy by putting money into the bank accounts of several local software boutiques, and allows them to use modern buzz-words such as "grid computing", albeit inappropriately.

What they wanted to prove.

[Shivetya]

the consulting group or whomwever spun up the new project wanted a paticular result so they aimed for it.

Most likely they didn't know how to program the mainframe to get the results they wanted but they did know how to use the solution they came up with

or

they knew how to do the mainframe side to the fullest potential of the machine but that wasn't cool enough so they redefined what good results were.

Sounds like underperforming software

[16Chapel]

It sounds like a Linux grid is an excellent solution here - however, it also sounds like their software is not exactly performing perfectly:

This was especially the case when the IT staff had to accommodate new business requirements such as a car dealership adding a new type of vehicle to its inventory. Each update required a major rework of the program

Really?

Frankly that sounds like the software is in severe need of reworking! If their machines are 20 years old that's bad enough, but if they have 20 year-old software that needs to be rewritten every time a new type of car is added, it's time for a redesign.

Re:Linux Niche

[PhotoGuy]

The difficulty of desktop Linux is really a myth these days. I recently set up Fedora Core 6 on a laptop. Setting up FC6 as a desktop is now trivially easy. It roughly consisted of inserting a CD-ROM, booting it, clicking OK and Next a few times then feeding it disks until it finished.

And then you want to get your sound working on your newer laptop? Well, go find the brand new beta development source code for your driver and compile that up (oh yeah, install the compiler and dev kits first). Do I want ALSA or that other sound system, can't remember its name? Which one should I choose? Then configure conf.modules (or is it modules.conf?) to load the driver automtaically upon startup.

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

Hmmmm, how do I suspend this and hibernate it properly? I know that was trivial under windows. Can I even do that under Linux?

Hmmm, where did my scrolling regions go on my trackpad? You know, the edges that let me scroll easily under Windows. I have to do *what* to get that working?

Now, time for a presentation; install openoffice, that works fine, good. Okay, now to switch to external monitor. Hmmm, Fn-Monitor doesn't work. Time to google. WTF? I have to edit xorg.conf to enable the external monitor, and then hack mode lines to get it working for my projector? (Reaches for Windows XP CD...)

I love Linux, and *I* personally will suffer those problems; but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else who isn't an expert (and even wouldn't for some of those), as I'd end up with a lifetime of this type of support on my hands.

Year of the Mainframe?

[dbneeley]

As others have pointed out, the comment left a great deal out.

For example, any mainframe that can be replaced by 120 PC compute nodes isn't well utilized and/or is completely outmoded.

I had a chat with a gentleman once who participated in a replacement of multiple PC servers with a mainframe--but it entailed replacing 7,000 servers with a relatively high-end machine.

The result was that power and real estate savings alone paid for the mainframe--which had more capacity for future expansion as needed.

As always, proper implementation of the right equipment for the job is always crucial--and a shallow analysis that doesn't cover all the variables is simply misleading at best.

Photoshop?

[amyhughes]

How easy is it to install Photoshop on Linux? MS Office? iTunes? Logic? Vienna Symphonic Instruments?

Okay, so if I don't want to use the most popular online music store, never google for a tutorial on how to accomplish ___ with my graphics tools, don't like books, and don't need to exchange files with people who work for a living, there's always GIMP, OO and some programmerware media app I could use, and why would I want to compose music for orchestra on my computer?

Re:Linux Niche

[William_Lee]

As an admittedly non-initiate in linux (I run osx), this seems very much what linux is good for, rather than for a desktop os, where difficulty of setup would be a severe handicap.

You should really try looking at a modern linux distro before making a blanket statement about the difficulty of setup for a desktop machine. I've installed Ubuntu and OpenSUSE at home recently, and as long as the hardware matches up ok (which it often times does, at least on desktops), there is little manual configuration to contend with.

The support community for Ubuntu is excellent, friendly, and helpful for times when things don't go smoothly.

Linux isn't perfect on the desktop, but with a little elbow grease (much less than my previous experiences with older versions of distros years ago) it comes together pretty nicely.

Re:The dirty litle secret about Mainframes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Update you skill set and get out of the way of progress"

Update your brain and start to understand that replacing one unique computer with 30 of them is not progress....it's just because it cost less....

Re:Linux Niche

[Mung Victim]

The difficulty of desktop Linux is really a myth these days

Yeah, bollocks is it.

It's a myth until you want to use an iPod or a digital camera, surely two of the most popular consumer devices today after mobile phones. I have tried and failed to get both working on my desktop Linux system. If I can't do it, there's no way my Mum could. In the end I just bought a MacBook, and put my Linux machine in a cupboard.

Yes, I know that both of these things can be made to work, but honestly, most people just don't have the time or inclination to invest.

Neither of these problems with device interoperability is the fault of the Linux community, but it's hard to deny that they are problems. Especially as the number of such consumer devices can only increase.

Mainframes are not for everyone

[TheSuperlative]

It sounds to me like a mainframe is still probably the best fit for this organization. Few solutions can match the efficiency, streamlined-goodness of an IBM mainframe. Where I work, a city government, we run two fairly beefy iSeries (AS/400s), one that runs accounting, utility billing and operation, and income tax operations, and another that runs public safety operations. I love them. No down time - ours are brought down about once a year, and usually that is because the power is out and our generators are about to run out of juice. Hands down the most stress-free aspect of our operation. That alone is worth something. The users also love it for the most part. While IBM's client access can be intimidating for most users at first (text!?!? what is this, the 70's?), once they adjust to it they tend to love how quickly one can skate through repetitive tasks. Nevertheless, it is not for everyone. If you don't have tons of data that needs to be reliably and efficiently accessed all day everyday, then you're probably better off going elsewhere. If anything, because most users, who can barely log in to windows reliably, find client access to be something of a magic black box that they cannot begin to comprehend (my favorite help desk call: "can you flip the magic switch for me?"). At the same time, I've seen the same users who can still barely operate a mouse, open a AS/400 session and go to town like a computer virtuoso. I guess what I'm trying to say is, IBM mainframe solutions definitely have their ups and downs, but for the right applications, they are irreplaceable.

This is news?

[twbecker]

Comparing a Linux grid system with a mainframe is comparing apples and oranges. The mainframe's strength has never been raw computing power. Mainframes have practically zero downtime and massive I/O capabilities. If you can swap a Linux array in for a mainframe and have results this good, you were using the mainframe for a task to which it wasn't suited to begin with.

Wait a minnit - this is a Grid how?

[SecurityGuy]

I know Grid is the buzzword of the day, but this isn't a grid. It's a cluster, or perhaps a beowulf, but it is not a grid. Buying a bunch of identical boxes and installing identical software on them doesn't make a grid.

One of the key features of a grid is that it "coordinates features that are not subject to centralized control". (What Is The Grid, Ian Foster, ANL). Grids by definition cross organizational or management boundaries. You can't buy a grid any more than you can buy an Internet. You can buy a network. You can buy a cluster. You can't buy a grid.