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NY Stock Exchange Moves To Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Even the old mainframe strongholds, the financial markets, are moving away from big iron. The New York Stock Exchange is one of them, as it's leaving the mainframe for AIX and Linux. They're doing it to save money; it seems that transactions are going to cost half as much on Unix and Linux as they did on the mainframe." The first phase of the transition happened last Monday.
In Soviet Russia, Linux-running, chair throwing, Beowulf clusters of shark overlords with laserbeams on their heads welcome you, you insensitive clods!
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Wait, what are we talking about again?
I hate printers.
Anyone reminded of that ad about the guys printing the newspaper that says they use Windows because its more reliable and stuff? That wasn't for the NYSE was it? I see that ad all the time on Slashdot and roll my eyes every time :-p
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
The bulk of the savings seem to be coming from reduced hardware and maintenance costs by getting rid of the mainframe and the savings are the reason they are doing it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
What about stability issues? I'd think that these machines would have to be a little bit more robust than linux is capable of being at the moment.
Nothing to do with MS in this.
MS will be affected only when the wall street firms stop using MS Excel, and that may not happen in my lifetime unfortunately.
Thats one small step for penguins, one giant leap for penguin kind. Now I can invest in Linux companies while I am doing it on a Linux machine and the transaction being processed by Linux :)
This Will Not Bode Well For Microsoft
Why? As far as Microsoft is concerned this is either a non-event (they weren't using microsoft before, they aren't now), or a slight move towards using Microsoft (going from a Mainframe to PCs moves them closer to the potential to use Microsoft software).
AccountKiller
ctrl-f tells me they didnt mention microsoft or windows. if it wasnt on *nix before, what was it on?
In my brief experience with an IBM AS/400 (before it was renamed), it seemed like my old company was paying as much annual licensing and support fees as the system originally cost. The software we ran got more expensive as the system went faster. I never quite understand that pricing scheme, since the software didn't actually do anything NEW.
Good move for the NYSE.
Bearded Dragon
In case anyone needs to look it up, Linux is in Eastern Europe between Serbia and Romania.
Happy to help.
Well, the migration strategy seems interesting, although not especially surprising; they've eschewed emulation strategies that might incur a performance penalty in favor of some company that actually recompiles the old COBOL and IBM JCL code for modern architectures and does a lot of in-house QA (and, one assumes, has really good support...). They're using smaller IBM AIX servers to actually run the code in the new system, with the HP Linux machines basically doing all the I/O and general feeding of data.
I'm a little surprised that IBM didn't manage to sell them on a new mainframe, or at least on its own clustered solution; or that they didn't ditch IBM completely and go with somebody else (what I'd suspect if somehow someone at IBM had really stepped on the wrong foot).
There's not a whole lot of information in TFA about their old system, which actually sounds like it must be fairly neat; it's only described as a "1,600 MIPS mainframe" and then from context it's clear that it's an IBM of some sort. Another surprising thing is that they complain that the software licenses for it, among other things, are prohibitively expensive -- you'd think that IBM, in danger of losing a mainframe customer completely to commodity kit, would cut them some sort of a cheap-or-free deal on the software just to keep them around and on the support contracts. (I really gotta wonder if someone really boned this up; I mean, if you can't keep a mainframe contract at a place like the NYSE, really, what are you doing?)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Microsoft says New York Stock Exchange infringes on Microsoft's patent "Letter C in System". Microsoft broad patent invoking the use of the letter C on a file system has some industry experts worried. "We were completely unaware that Microsoft had the rights to the letter c on any operating system. This is going to cost us enormously. We thought we would save twice as much money, but with this frivolous lawsuit pending, we stand to lose four times as much" stated an anonymous expert at the NYSE." Microsoft's shared plummeted after an irrate Linux developer injected a logicbomb code on NYSE servers.
Infiltrated dot Net
The article makes it sound like transactions are on a cost-per basis, "[Francis Feldman] estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions" -- does that make any sense?
I think the author of the article got into a tangent with him about how many transactions they do, and what their operating costs are and then incorrectly made the correlation that there is a cost-per-transaction from a computing stand-point. That can't be true. You don't insert fifties into the A: drive.
Look at it this way: If they make the big switch, and all of a sudden they can handle double-the-transactions per day - that would halve the cost of transactions. Only there's not going to all of a sudden be double-the-transactions. They're still working with the same number of transactions.
If they halve their staff, and they do the same number of transactions than that halves their costs. But what if tuesday is a slow day, and they only do 60% of their normal business? They're still paying for all the staff, electricity and third party support.
Am I wrong, or is it unlikely they can correlate a cost per transaction in this case?
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This is completely free.
Ace
No, he just wanted to use the word 'bode'.
The NASDAQ also uses Unix. They use fault-tolerant Unix boxes from HP (formerly Tandem).
[Insert pithy quote here]
Now that's service. I realize it's only compiling one code into another form but being able to take the code, compile it into what you need AND still have it work correctly in a 24 hour period is no easy feat.
If nothing else, other firms will look at this migration to an aix/linux platform and see the cost benefits of doing so. After all, if the NYSE has done it, it can't be a bad thing.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
the trades will be managed by aix and linux will just be used for "ftp transfers on the front end." this would be bulk data transfers, not data feeds and all i/o as other might have suggested. i can pretty much guarantee you that the nyse is not processing trades and sending out live market data (to bloomberg, retuters, etc.) by ftp.
also, i am somewhat concerned by this move in light of the trading disruption at the end of february where the existing (mainframe, i presume) trading systems could not handle all the trades and the data feeds were way behind the actual prices of the securities. i know the nyse is a public for-profit company now, so it's silly to talk about "public interest" but shouldn't there be some regulation about the capacity of their IT infrastructure to make sure that their cost-cutting doesn't cause another 4% decrease in stock market value on an abnormally high trading day?
...that the OS so many think of as some kind of IP-lethal, grubby commie hippy project is now running a goodly part of Capitalism Itself. The worm has turned, and eats itself!
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
I know that it's optional around here to RTFA, but the original poster is wrong to title this entry as a move to Linux: this is a primarily move from mainframe to AIX on pSeries, with a few other tasks (FTP) being tossed to Linux like you'd throw a dog a bone. Using this lack of logic, it would be plausible to suggest that the NYSE is "moving to Mac OS X" because a few people in the advertising and marketing department use Macs for their jobs. I realize this isn't Rolling Stone magazine, but the lack of journalistic quality control here at /. is pathetic.
I signed up for a slashdot account just to post this screenshot: http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=realityvs adlt1.jpg
- Linuturk
> Linux is not a replacement for Mainframes
Well, that's because Linux is an operating system, and a mainframe is a big computer. In fact, Linux runs on some mainframes. Maybe you meant a cluster of PCs running Linux can't replace a mainframe? In that case, it depends on the mainframe and application, but quite often a Linux is up to the job.
> They made a bad financial desicion.
You're right, NYSE and IBM know nothing of financial management. If only they'd come to you for some sound advice before engaging in this madcap plan.
while i might be willing to grant you that for individual trading firms, speed is more important than stability, you cannot make that argument for the whole stock exchange. when morgan stanley or some hedge fund loses connectivity, they stop making money for a few hours. no big deal really. if the NYSE goes down, it's a major economic catastrophe. stability and capacity are the most important things! obviously they need speed to keep up with the demands of the traders, but that just translates to high volume for the NYSE's servers.
Because it puts (another) large dent in the 'linux isn't ready for prime time' and 'OMGLOL its for lusers in thier mommies basement' and 'it's just not a professional choice' and an EXTREMELY large dent in the 'linux security is unproven in the wild' argument (which should by all rights be a joke by now, and an old joke at that).
Did I miss any, that's right off the top of my head.
OK the good PR for Linux might be damaging for MS, but it is a lot more damaging for both mainframe sales and proprietary Unix.
Incidentally, I used to work for a vendor of trading systems to stock exchanges. They went from being Solaris only, to any Unix or Linux. In practice, everyone goes for either Solaris or Linux. The smaller new clients all go for Linux.
At the same time they have been getting bigger and bigger clients, so they may now be displacing mainframes as well. My clients were all small, so I am not sure what is happening at that end of the market.