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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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What in the Mainframe market sector is this the answer to?
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.
... 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?"
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!
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.
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.
Are you kidding? This is the greatest job security coup of all time! World wide IT departments will have to start hiring around the clock. Think of all that buggy, crashing, virus invected software that will constantly require fixing. This will make all that Y2k hype seem like a walk in the park LOL!!!
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.
Windows does not run on the mainframe (z/Architecture engine). Windows runs on an Intel blade in a blade center connected to the mainframe with some high-speed links and is managed by the mainframe. The mainframe is still running z/OS, and will have the same performance and reliability characteristics it always had.