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US House Decommissions Its Last Mainframe

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-go-office-space-on-it dept.

coondoggie writes "The US House of Representatives has taken its last mainframe offline, signaling the end of an era in Washington, DC computing. The last mainframe supposedly enjoyed 'quasi-celebrity status' within the House data center, having spent 12 years keeping the House's inventory control records and financial management data, among other tasks. But it was time for a change, with the House spending $30,000 a year to power the mainframe and another $700,000 each year for maintenance and support."

5 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Someone updated computer hardware! Film at 11. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really? This is a story? They were running a server from 1997, and now they're running a server from 2009. Really guys?

  2. 12 Year Old Mainframe = 20+ Other Servers by BBCWatcher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article notes that the House of Representatives took at least 5 years to replace the applications on its 12 year old mainframe. The costs (i.e. taxpayer funds) to perform this migration work were not disclosed, but it's a pretty safe assumption those costs dwarfed any others. Moreover, the article seems to suggest that it took at least 20 other servers to replace a single 12 year old mainframe, and that's even using virtualization on the new servers. One wonders how many (more) servers the House could have replaced with a single new mainframe.

    But here's a more profound question: why is the House of Representatives running its own, separate data centers (primary and disaster)? Couldn't they at least consolidate with, oh I don't know, the Senate?!?! And, a related question: for all those 12 years, why didn't the House simply move its comparatively tiny mainframe workload to a bigger mainframe anywhere else in the federal government? (Yes, they can do that without also delegating any security control. Mainframes do that.) Quite simply, it sounds like the House was, and is, wasting a lot of taxpayer money. (Shocking, I know.)

    1. Re:12 Year Old Mainframe = 20+ Other Servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      But here's a more profound question: why is the House of Representatives running its own, separate data centers (primary and disaster)? Couldn't they at least consolidate with, oh I don't know, the Senate?!?!

      I'm pretty sure there's something in the constitution about separation of data centres...

  3. $700K/yr not out of line by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    $700K/yr for software support and hardware maintenance isn't really out of line for a high-capacity system with 99.999% uptime.

    Maybe they don't need that level of reliability, but if they do five-9s, they will probably find that whatever system or group of systems replaces it will have similar support costs.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  4. Units by Random+Destruction · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The mainframe was consuming 10,000 to 15,000 watts an hour

    Uh... what? No wonder they had to pull this thing offline, that's 1.68 - 2.52 GW per week!

    It's been online for 12 years, so by the time it was shut off it must have been using at least 1.57TW.

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    :x