IBM Saves $250M Running Linux On Mainframes

coondoggie writes "Today IBM will announce it is consolidating nearly 4,000 small computer servers in six locations onto about 30 refrigerator-sized mainframes running Linux, saving $250 million in the process. The 4,000 replaced servers will be recycled by IBM Global Asset Recovery Services. The six data centers currently take up over 8 million square feet, or the size of nearly 140 football fields."

Comments

A pleasure to work with, as well..

[bigattichouse]

We (Bigattichouse's Vectorspace Database) went through their Linux certification (as well as Grid cert), and they were a pleasure to work with - providing expert advice and patience in every step of the process. Not exactly on topic, I guess, but I thought I'd share. They really seem to embrace the engineering and spirit of Linux.

Re:System z Mainframes

[BrynM]

It's kinda hard to find technical specifications on these mainframes beyond marketing fluff.

Part of that is because IBM will customize the machines to your heart's content. The sky and your budget are the only limits. They leave a good many of the loadout details (xGB/TB of RAM, DASD storage size, # of CPUs per card, # of CPU cards, even number of mainframes - they can be chained in parallel). You should look at the Z series hardware specs for the general details and look up what details you don't know.

If you're looking for benchmarks or comparisons to x86/x86-64 or other commodity architectures good luck - they are nearly impossible to find. This is due to the implementations being on entirely different scales. The best comparison you an find is the MIPS per CPU. You can find some slightly stale numbers here (BTW: an LPAR is something that's been around on mainframes for several decades - one LPAR can run up to several hundred x86 VMs concurrently).

Re:$250M??

[Anonymous Coward]

They're probably computing cost over the expected lifetime.

Combine IT salary for 3-5 years, power over 3-5 years, etc. etc. and that number makes sense.

Re:single points of failure

[Strider-]

Now when something goes wrong, 133 server apps go down all at once! I know, Linux is stable, but a machine hosting 133 apps just sounds like a recipe for a molly-guard type disaster.

These are machines that don't break, period. We're talking the types of machines that run the major banking systems of the world and the like. They simply do not go down. In this situation, if one of the 133 apps buggers up, it's only that VM that's shot. You just nuke it and restart it, the rest of the machine just keeps ticking along.

Re:$250M??

[thedarknite]

According to another article it is saving the $250M over 5 years, predominately from reduced running costs

Re:IBM's been doing this for-ever, dude.

[tuomoks]

Hi, yes and no. 370 runs 360 code but, as too often even today, people coded to bypass the OS. Old devices, drums, paper / magnetic card readers, terminals, channels, etc. Even todays systems have the idea, VM especially, of 80 column cards, punches, readers, etc and if used correcly they work wonders, trust me, 360 architecture is one of the best even today. The problems is that not too many people any more want to learn the basics, i.e. Priciples of Operation ( any 3xx, a good book to read, required reading, IMHO ). Search on which OS version macro libraries Linux ( 370 HAL ) was first compiled on 360/370, you will be amazed. Emulations in 360-xxx mostly mean address space differences ( 24/31/32/64/.. ) and some added machine code / functionality, done by OS/hardware. And of course a long time trapping the floating point was/is(?) one if you didn't have the fp hardware installed.