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Year of the Mainframe? Not Quite, Say Linux Grids

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the big-iron-not-so-big dept.

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."

2 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Costs by Nerdfest · · Score: -1, Troll

    It would be intresting to see exactly what the cost to implement a new lameframe system with equivalent performance would cost. ANybody got some rough numbers?

    The sidebar on the article says that interest in some products has gone up, including their ZAAP processor. From what I've seen, the reason for this is to get around the outrageous licencing costs on some of the software that base cost on the number of processors. These processors only run java, and don't get counted as 'processors' apparently.

  2. Re:"medial" tasks? by kfg · · Score: 0, Troll

    "You say 'erbs', and we say 'herbs', because there's a fucking 'H' in it!"

    Cholmondesley.

    Duece.

    Eddie may serve again if he wishes, but I have a whole list of English place names here; starting with Birmingham, with a fucking 'h' in it!

    KFG