Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IBM's Newest Mainframe Is All Linux

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-great-taste dept.

dcblogs writes "IBM has released a new mainframe server that doesn't include its z/OS operating system. This Enterprise Linux Server line supports Red Hat or Suse. The system is packaged with mainframe management and virtualization tools. The minimum processor configuration uses two specialty mainframe processors designed for Linux. IBM wants to go after large multicore x86 Linux servers and believes the $212,000 entry price can do it."

1 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Grammar by SEE · · Score: 5, Informative

    Never mind the grammar (I can hardly believe that I'm saying that), I thought that operating systems were designed to work with the processor(s). When did it get to be the other way around?

    Lots of apps for IBM mainframes are per-processor licensed. This caused a problem for IBM in trying to sell mainframes to run hybrid workloads; the customer would say, "But those extra processors to run Apache on Linux are costing me money in licensing fees on my mainframe apps. It's cheaper for me to buy a smaller mainframe and a bunch of PCs."

    So IBM put together a bunch of processors, hardware-identical with normal mainframe processors, but including extra microcode that limits them to running Java/XML (z Application Assist Processor) or Linux (the Integrated Facility for Linux). These units don't count as processors for purposes of licensing mainframe apps, since they can't run mainframe apps.