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Windows OS Coming To the Mainframe
msmoriarty writes "Following up on its May announcement, IBM has now confirmed that by December 16 it will support Microsoft Windows on zEnterprise via its zBX component."
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The botnet is now coming to the mainframe!
You poor IBM system admins...
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What in the Mainframe market sector is this the answer to?
Now when work calls me at 3AM because a mainframe job failed I will have to say "Please reboot the mainframe and call me back again if it still fails!" Then I can go back to sleep.
The summary misses something fairly important, which is that Windows isn't running on the z mainframe itself. This allows Windows blades to be inserted into an external chassis (zBX) and managed by a software component called the Unified Resource Manager.
From the article: "Make that Windows right next to the mainframe -- i.e., running on the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX), the mainframe/open systems sidecar...First, Windows-in-a-zBX isn't Windows-in-zVM. Still less is it Windows running in a special processor, a la IBM's Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL). So Windows won't be running on non-x64 -- i.e., Big Iron -- CMOS. Nevertheless, customers will be able to manage Windows from their zEnterprise 196 or zEnterprise 114 mainframes...
Advice: on VPS providers
This looks like a deliberate attempt to gain a small percentage of the general computers market share (yes, servers and mainframes included!)
LOL!!! Now IBM will be on the endless Microsoft virus/buggy money train. I think I will buy some IBM stock. This could also put thousands of unemployed programers to work. Constant buggy upgrades, crashing systems, crappy code etc... IBM's revenue should jump 10 fold.
Reading through the thick IBM-specific jargon, zBX is actually a blade server management system that places blade servers on a private network connected to the mainframe, with the mainframe managing them. It supports POWER7 (FYI POWER is a "big cousin" to the PowerPC chip) and IBM System x (x86-based) blades.
So, in actuality, this is Windows running on an x86 box, with the mainframe managing it -- it is not like mainframe Linux where Linux is truly running on the mainframe.
... Ferrari have just announced that they will be installing a 125cc engine into their 458 Italia. A spokeman said: "It works'a fine in'a the moped, whats'a the problem?"
IBM is in talks with Eset to produce cobol version of it's software.
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Why would anyone want to install Windows Desktop on a mainframe?
Of course, the mainframe is a marginalized beast these days. Why would Microsoft want space on there?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Devil sits on his throne in Hell. On of his minions comes running in.
"Sire! Sire! Microsoft has ported Windows to a mainframe!"
The Devil favors him with a surprised look. "Is it that time already? The end of the mortal world?"
The minion genuflects before him. "Yes! Yes! End of times, master!"
The Devil rubs his chin. "Windows on a mainframe?"
The minion nods emphatically.
The Devil considers it for a few moments, "Well, I don't think I want it anymore."
Truly, next year will be the year of Windows on the Mainframe!
Better yet, who still uses mainframes? (Haven't heard this posted yet so I thought I would)
Seriously though, windows blades are not new, they're just looking to do a little bit of cross compatibility here, it's always better that hardware supports the max # of software... right?
Mainframe market share is huge (about 3 billion a year in hardware sales) and growing rather quickly, especially since "cloud" and "virtualization" became buzzwords. It's the only part of the high-end non-x86 niche that's really having solid growth right now - SPARC and Itanium have been tumbling for a while, and Power has been more or less flat.
Only one of the last 6 companies I worked for DIDN'T have a mainframe.
Not only does my current company still have a mainframe- we're doing a major software upgrade on it next year.
The mainframe never died.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Some estimates have mainframes processing 80% of the world's data. http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/08/western-civilization-runs-on-mainframe.html Now I'm not sure how accurate that percentage is, but if you run an enterprise business and have thousands of servers to maintain, a mainframe still makes a lot of sense.
Mainframes are increasingly seeing competition from clusters of commodity machines running Xen or similar - the cluster is often less good, but at ten percent the cost of the mainframe it doesn't have to be to be tempting to a lot of users. This is an attempt to ensure that anything you can do with cluster of Xen machines, you can do with a mainframe (the converse is not true).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Now I can watch my expensive mainframe fail at windows activation! Brilliant! Seriously though, who did Ballmer pay-off for this shit to happen? -T
The era of 99.99999999999999999% uptime ends December 16.
Contrary to the impression left by the misleading title, this is NOT Windows running on a mainframe. It is Windows running on a blade in a blade center attached to and managed by the mainframe. Using a Windows (or Linux, or AIX) box to perform analytics on mainframe data is not new. What is new is the methods for getting the data from the mainframe, and the fact that the whole thing is managed by the mainframe. And in the mainframe sector, management is huge.
I manage the storage for a mainframe environment for a large retailer. Our busy season is pretty much now through the end of January. Not only are we in a 'holiday freeze', but we procure additional resources from IBM during this season and then IBM takes them back when we no longer need the resources at the end of the holiday season.
On the other hand, my coworkers who work in open systems, install quite a bit new hardware every August/September in preparation for the holiday rush, and then it sits idle come February/March.
Why it may seem expensive, it is quite efficient to be able to have X number of CPUs in use, and Y CPUs physically installed but not leased, so that if we get crushed at 8am on 'black friday', the admins or our management software can enable those CPUs based upon load. We of course get charged for it. If our load doesn't need the CPU cycles, then we don't enable them and subsequently don't get charged for them.
Lots of companies use mainframes still. For tasks that require high availability and high I/O, mainframes are your best bet. While you can run a web server on a mainframe, it isn't utilizing the advantages. Running your financial systems where you get tens or hundreds of thousands concurrent users making transcactions is where mainframes have no equal. Also remember it isn't always an either/or situation. A company can use a farm of web servers to handle the front end while the backend processing is handled by a mainframe.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
FORCE WINDOWS, NOARM
NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe.
It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.
Any that runs windows and wants to move towards VDI without having to buy and maintain a bunch of x86 servers and esx ( or similar ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Good point. Medicare, Medicaid, and most (all?) private payers use mainframes for claims adjudication and record keeping; so, that's quite significant. Mainframes are huge, you just don't read about them as much.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Probably.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
The airlines reservation system and Insurance companies run the databases almost exclusively on mainframe systems.
Pretty much once you get to 10,000 concurrent users, a mainframe is the only way to go.
As another poster said, on top of Medicare/Medicaid; I would add pretty much all US housing/land development related loans, student/higher education related loans, stock/option transactions, and bank ACH transfers. They may not be directly processed on a mainframe, but eventually end up there. Mainframes do 3-4 things, do it well, and have been doing it for decades nonstop. They are so hidden, backended, dependable, and stiched into the fabric of IT that people just have forgotten that they exist.
That's the way I read it. It's Windows running on either Intel or AMD. We've had it with the Power Systems (iSeries, AS/400) for years. Other than system management (for a time, it was the only Windows server that could reboot itself when it crashed) the big advantage was disk management. Like a virtual environment, you could add disk at will and the disk performance was considerably higher than a regular Windows server. On Power Systems, each Windows disk drive is striped over all the disk drives which could be 40 physical devices.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
No no, your Main Frames will not start to blue screen, reboot twice daily for "Critical Security Patches", or need a Microsoft Certified *chuckle chuckle* Administrator. It's simply blade support which has been unavailable until now (for good reason IMO).
Big Blue is not in the Cloud game, but this does give a nice option for big iron selection from Cloud vendors. Since it's still the buzz word, IBM may as well cash in on it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You do understand that Microsoft is the one keeping Windows off the mainframe. I'm sure if Microsoft were to give its blessing, IBM would assign 300 programmers to port Windows Server to mainframes (System z) and midrange servers (Power Systems) in a heartbeat. I think Microsoft is afraid of IBM!
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Fisher-Price announced today that they will be producing a utility pickup vehicle. It will ship with a sonic lifeform identification unit, and a string-activated audible warning system. The power plant will be an aero-plastic bobble-bed reactor with a Kinetic Inductance Drive transmission and it will run on injection-molded run-flat composite tire-wheels.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Seriously, this is like announcing an iPod dock for MGB motor cars (only arguably less useful). It doesn't hold interest for that many people and the audience that it potentially COULD affect are not likely to install it...
you get a Big Blue Screen of Death?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
... that pig sure is pretty in lipstick.
Bad enough that Windows exists on mobile phones and has infiltrated Nokia, but to be allowed on mainframe kit would be horrible. I might tolerate my laptop running an OS I consider flakey, but can restart in 120s to clear the problem, yet mainframes promise an extremely high level of quality and assurance. Microsoft in my mind has failed to demonstrate that level of quality over the years.
That will make a great rig for playing games! Now taking it to LAN parties will be an issue...
IBM used to support Windows NT on their Risc/6000 stations (selected models only). It was a big disappointment, and IBM lost quite a lot of money with that stunt. (Including very high support costs).
Now they are at it again. Seriously ? Won't they ever learn ?
morcego
Mainly because we mostly hear about stuff when they break down/don't work.
Mainframes are extremely reliable and, if you really need them, cost effective.
morcego
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Mainframes.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I really see this as clusters taking over a niche where there was no real competition. People would use either mainframes or some kind of distributed solution for that, but that was mostly because it was the best alternative. "If all you have is a hammer, you should treat everything as a nail" and all that.
Of course vendor will fight back, since it will cost them profits. But I simply can't see clusters taking over the real mainframe market.
morcego
The ZBX is designed to replace Racks of X86 servers. The shops that want this either already have a big backend Mainframe - for DB2/ADABAS/IMS with midrange Window/Unix servers or they process everything on the mainframe and FTP down to Windows/Unix boxes (last place I worked FTPed Terrabytes every night down from the mainframe to servers).
The ZBX has a high speed bus connection between the Mainframe (Z196/Z114). This speeds up the network lag for large MQSeries systems, FTPs, etc. Also the ZBX is managed/upgraded by IBM Customer Engineers so the firmware will be IBM supported. They also integrate the ZBX into the Hardware Management Console to have a single point of control. I believe the ZBX can also take advantage of Server Time Protocol so the mainframe can be used as a time source for all the ZBX blade servers.
Shops that currently do not have a mainframe probably won't be interested in the ZBX and the ability to run Windows on it. The ZBX has been out for a year or so but was Linux only until this announcement.
Seriously, why would this be needed?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
BLUE. SCREEN. OF. DEATH.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It is 2012-DEC-20 00:00:00 UTC
The same people who have always used mainframes -- governments, big universities, and large corporations. Kind of hard to keep a five million row table and associated related tables on a PC.
And like always, today's mainframe will be on your desktop in 20 years. Who needs THAT kind of power? Uh, you will.
Free Martian Whores!
IBM'll support anything as long they can flog their overpriced CPUs together with the pitch that it eventually is cheaper considering rack space and personnel.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Thanks, Microsoft.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I wonder how long it takes a modern mainframe to do it's IPL (boot)? I know that your not loading from tape anymore, but still Windows?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Lack of knowledge among younger programmers about mainframe programming languages. A client server application can simple be ported to mainframe with the mainframe either playing the roles of the clients and virtualizing or just the server. It allows people to consolidate and migrate Windows server and server applications off the physical hardware.
Microsoft should know the principle of network externals better than anyone. In computing you often can't dethrone the status quo with a better product, much less an inferior one (and I'm going to guess the Windows solution is inferior in this case if, for no other reason, lack of access to the source code). It is this principle that keeps Windows alive on the desktop in the face of better solutions - and it is what allowed IE to hang on as long as it did.
Microsoft would be better served trying to make some presence on the phone market before it is too late. iPhone and Android are already entrenched to the point that where phones a traditional market Microsoft would be utterly doomed. But they get a saving grace in that phone contracts and devices tend to rotate about once every 2 years. That rapid rotation might give them a chance, otherwise they are shackled to their desktop market - a market that is now just as irrelevant to the future as the mainframe market that IBM lorded over the computing world with back in the 1980's, until Microsoft themselves dethroned Big Blue.
This doomed foray into big iron isn't any more likely to succeed now than it was in the 1980's. IBM has most of the share and none of the players in the field want to have anything to do with Microsoft. These machines are being used by engineers who want total control over the hardware they own and expect nothing less - which is why Linux is the dominant OS and the other major OS'es are open source. I doubt Microsoft really even understands the market they are trying to enter. On the whole its a waste of their time and resources.
They are so hidden, backended, dependable, and
yeah, nowadays if you aren't on the daily highlights you barely exist. sort of hidden.
so stiched into the fabric of IT that people just have forgotten that they exist.
beautiful. william gibson? :D
+1 Agreed
And it causes problems - Windows device drivers aren't as flexible as Unisys ones. And for that reason the latest Unisys Clearpaths have lost the Microsoft layer entirely - run on Firmware that runs on the chips. Safer, more controllable, in-house. So, IBM are following Unisys by about a decade... ho hum.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Mainly because we mostly hear about stuff when they break down/don't work.
And also because a lot of them have been re-labeled to "cloud" to make them buzzword compliant.
*disclaimer*: I work at a mainframe shop (not IBM though), but I come from a Linux background and I loath Windows :)
The ZBX is designed to replace Racks of X86 servers.
And replace racks of pSeries servers. And to support certain accelerator appliances, e.g. for XML processing or DB2 workload.
The ZBX has a high speed bus connection between the Mainframe (Z196/Z114). This speeds up the network lag for large MQSeries systems, FTPs, etc.
I'm always astonished when somebody brings up this point. The reason being: Nothing keeps you from installing another OSA adapter today and connect it via a not-shared link to you favorite Open Systems (AIX, Solaris, Linux, Windows..) box. You'll get exactly the same benefit, so this is not a bonus you get from running an ensemble.
Also the ZBX is managed/upgraded by IBM Customer Engineers so the firmware will be IBM supported.
Which is also what you get today in a Power box (and maybe even xSeries).
They also integrate the ZBX into the Hardware Management Console to have a single point of control.
"Single point of control" sounds nice but you need to know what you do. And today there are still not that many people who know enough of both the Mainframe and the Open Systems to handle both with the same level of sophistication. So yes, single point, but two different people. Additionally I'm a little worried, that the HMCs might get overloaded, once you allow access for all those decentral guys (you know, there's a lot more of them).
I believe the ZBX can also take advantage of Server Time Protocol so the mainframe can be used as a time source for all the ZBX blade servers.
STP == NTP and you can already do that today.
The ZBX has been out for a year or so but was Linux only until this announcement.
Not quite true: You can also get AIX and the DataPower XML Appliance. And since the zBX frames are just plain old blade centers with p- and x-blades (power and x86_x64) you can put any OS that supports these architectures on a blade. So OpenBSD now also runs next to the Mainframe.
So while this is nice, the only non-IBM OS that runs _on_ a real zArchitecture machine (e.g. z196 and z144) today is Linux.And only with that you get some of the benefits of the hardware (e.g. KVM works on s390 too, although the user-land stuff is currently very rudimentary).
Awesome!
//
//STEP01 EXEC PGM=/WINDOWS/SYSTEM/WIN32.EXE
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT = *
//SYSPRINT DD SYSPRINT = *
//
//SYSUT DD DSN=ENTPRI.SEYC.DRV=SHR
//* Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York! And all the clouds that lowr'd upon our house, in the deep bosum of the ocean, buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths. Our bruise'd arms, hung up for monuments. Our stern alarums, changed to merry meetings. Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. And now, instead of mounting barbed, is this enough yet?
Plan My Week for iPhone
What does any of that have to do with this article? This has zero to do with a mainframe running (or, god forbid, ON) Windows. This is about giving a Windows server a high-speed, secure, interconnect to mainframe data (DB2, IMS, etc), and having the mainframe provide management of the Windows blade.
The ZBX has a high speed bus connection between the Mainframe (Z196/Z114). This speeds up the network lag for large MQSeries systems, FTPs, etc. Also the ZBX is managed/upgraded by IBM Customer Engineers so the firmware will be IBM supported. They also integrate the ZBX into the Hardware Management Console to have a single point of control. I believe the ZBX can also take advantage of Server Time Protocol so the mainframe can be used as a time source for all the ZBX blade servers.
It probably also allows the applications to communicate with and share data with the crypto coprocessing facilities available on the z/Enterprise platform.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
... although no other blade chassis can run zOS.
In other news, Is this the year of Ubuntu on the Mainframe?
also, the connection to the mainframe from the blade (the zbx with x86-64 processors) is 10 gigabit ethernet. Sure, there are all kinds of software to manage and provide special services such as db2 connectivety, but it's really no different than accessing some windows server over a network.
Nice.
I'm heard that rumor before, but never saw any confirmation about it.
I mean, I can see companies doing that for "marketing" reasons, but wouldn't be kind of be a problem for them ?
Unless they get a mainframe backend + Intel frontend and call that a cloud, who knows.
Do you have any more specific info on this ?
morcego
Only one of the last 6 companies I worked for DIDN'T have a mainframe.
Not only does my current company still have a mainframe- we're doing a major software upgrade on it next year.
The mainframe never died.
Mainframe computers were designed around the idea of doing a large volume of repetitive transactions... and mainframes do that very well. If that's what you need done, a mainframe is actually quite a good choice if you can deal with the operational and maintenance costs.
OCO is Loco
Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that running a GUI on a server is NOT what people want to do, and still don't provide a usable shell interface (PowerShell is made for scripting, not user-interactivity).
God can take me now.
I can tell peat.
How many Windows Images you got there and cics regions.
Punchline is in the subject.
I call hoax. But man its funny even if its serious.
Hello...This is news? We can run Windows in an LPAR already as well as Linux. Its a lot easier to just have an external server. Who wants your CPU time drowned by crappy windows? Plus your disk and IO resources sucked away too.
It would be different if you could run a game on it. Now that would be worth it. WOW brought to you by your zSeries mainframe. On second thought, it would be slower than an AT. Maybe Apple Panic then.
And like always, today's mainframe will be on your desktop in 20 years.
Well, yesterday's mainframe is on my laptop today. I just installed MVS 3.8j running under Hercules emulation on a MBP this weekend. Seeing the MVS console running in 3270 emulation (via TCP) again on my laptop screen after all these years was really something. Not useful, mind you, but damn cool.
My favorite job of all times was being a mainframe computer operator in the 80s. Once the suits went home, we'd lock the computer room doors, go pass around a fat one in the decollating room, queue up all of the evening's batch jobs and then watch the tapes spin and feel the floor shake from 40 washing-machine sized hard drives hammering away at the work.
We had a laser printer the size of a small truck that could empty a box of 4400 pages of paper in about six minutes or less.
Oh, and we restarted the system about twice a year - it was so reliable, the sysadmins could halt the processor, apply system patches directly in RAM and pick up exactly where they left off.
The company I worked for leased the whole setup for about $85,000 a month (including an on-site IBM engineer who was there from 8-5 M-F and could arrive on premises within 30 minutes during off hours).
Now I'm running it on a Mac for free, and it's about a thousand times more powerful than that room full of equipment.
Amazing.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
-1 Disagreed.
Mainframes don't really do anything well, except maybe for hardware reliability. 10000 concurrent transactions can be processed on stock x86 server hardware right now. The hardware reliability can be substituted by software reliability (replicated databases, etc.) which is cheaper, faster and pretty reliable by now.
And there's nothing magical now about 'doing a lot or repetitive tasks' - we don't need hardware acceleration to parse CSV files or deal with BCD arithmetic anymore.
The only major reason mainframes are used is tradition and a lot of legacy code. Quite a lot of systems were first started in 80-s or early 90-s when mainframes were the only game in the town for business applications.
Well, most of that depends on how "Cloud" and "Mainframe" are defined.
IBM for example is pushing their Mainframes to do Cloud services (zEnterprise etc, as mentioned in the Article or here for example)
"Mainframe" is basically a definition of Hardware/OS for me. "Cloud" on the other hand is more the Network/Software layer.
There is no real reason why http/soap/whaterver "Cloud" services have to be served by Intel hardware, they can just as well be served by mainframes. And just as the "Cloud" connect traditional software and applications from PCs onto mobile phones and more and more different "client" devices, it can also use more and more "server" devices.
Well, I guess it is time to update xbill, adding mainframes to the list of computers to protect...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Nope, I work with all kinds of software and hardware.
And you don't know what you're talking about, x86 is no more 'serial' than z/Architecture. Both essentially are cache-coherent NUMA on large servers with each CPU having its own personal cache and RAM affinity. If you want to look at less constrained architecture, then check the (now dead) Alpha architecture.
z/OS servers and high-end x86 servers also use the same hardware for high-speed interconnections (actually x86-based servers are usually a couple years ahead of z/Arch).
That's why IBM sued Hercules - the mainframe customers are switching to x86-based servers because they are faster than IBM hardware and much cheaper at that.
I imagine if you are spending that kind of money and have to support a variety of platforms, including legacy software, why not just blow your load on a single mainframe built for that kind of load, rather than a bunch of blades?