I can tell you why the Russians have such a great record- they make 'em simple and reliable, give it hordes of boost power, don't get fancy with the materials technology, and in general do things in the classic Russian engineering style.
Just ask the Nazis about T-34s- oh wait, you can't....
IBM mainframes have many things going for them. For one thing, they absolutely do not die (lost power in environment one time, after power was restored we reset the power switches on the mainframe and DASD arrays- it came up WITH NO RECOVERY, as though the power had never gone out).
This feature makes IBM money in that they can reduce maintenance costs to nothing yet still charge for coverage (we don't see engineers except for firmware upgrades).
They have incredible software reliability and backwards compatibility. This alone save companies millions in redevelopment/porting costs, not to mention the downtimes and unreliability of rolling out a new system.
The VM/LPAR/PRSM/WLM aspects of IBM mainframes are absolutely priceless. We can chunk around workload effortlessly to whatever physical or virtual machine we like (this involves architecture planning of course).
They have the Golden Screwdriver, in that mainframe models are actually delivered with more power then is initially activated. With a quick visit from IBM (and the requisite dough), your machine likely can be instantly upgraded.
We have recovery like nothing else. We backed up and moved a production mainframe environment that served 5 hospitals 40 miles away by tape and had it running from shutdown to startup perfectly within 9 hours. We have done DR where we have shaved it down to 8 hours from initial tape load.
The Z/OS-MVS mainframe does have weaknesses. As noted, the software costs are killer (mainframe software is charged by the MIP, and the pricing schemes are fast making it more expensive to get just the support software then all the IBM part of the contract, much less the app). We are literally using two machines instead of one simply due to insane licensing costs.
IBM is working on this by trying to force software vendors to go to a 'MIPS actually used' model rather then paying based on the whole machine, but it remains to be seen as to whether IBM can reign in this hideous cost.
The article is wrong in one respect, the 64-bit Z/OS has meant the end of Amdahl and Hitachi as vendors as they do not have the cash to reverse-engineer the firmware associated with Z/OS. So IBM's profit margins are going up thanks to no hardware competition, which in turn will make the mainframes a pricier item (and may lose IBM some customers if they are not careful).
Mainframes were never particularly designed to be webservers- they are designed for crunching databases and serving 1000s of terminal users. No reason they cannot be webservers, but the tools are more mature on Unix and MS platforms. That is one big reason why IBM is interested in Linux, the Linux webserver can be in it's little VM and pass queries at memory speed via hipersockets to the mainframe LPAR that can serve up DB2 database queries all day long.
That is what I see the future of mainframes being (beyond the pure Linux play to reduce those horrid software licensing costs)- part configured to be the DB gawd as nature intended, and part to serve it up to a GUI-based world. IBM is counting on the penguin to make it happen, but they would probably be just as happy with BSD. Just as long as there are plenty of webbies to make the server work and it cannot be sabotaged by Microsoft, any free Unix will do.
Unfortunately, the Ace's Hardware article is depressingly accurate about the state of the mainframe in 2002.
But once upon a time there was a company that beat IBM technology like a drum- Burroughs.
IBM invented hard drives (DASD). Burroughs invented multi-programming environments, virtual memory, the first OS written to a high-level language (ALGOL) and a host of other innovations.
Here is the best overview with plenty o' links, here is official Unisys propaganda if you want to poke around, and here
is a Multics guy giving props.
To give you an idea of how advanced Burroughs was, we were able to run DMSII database dumps to tape while the database was active and did perform successful recoveries off those dumps- in 1985.
The console was magnificent, the built-in system logging was a dream, we fired off batch backups and recoveries from plain-English commands at the console, CANDE is a near perfect development environment (I still laugh at Vi vs. Emacs- morons), and WFL makes JCL look like the silly resource batcher it is.
Unfortunately Burroughs never had a decent sales force, then they merged with Sperry to form Unisys (to enrich Blumenthal, May His Name Be Forever Cursed).
They still make mainframes of a sort, A-series emulators that run on monster PC-cluster machines. These same machines are the cluster boxen for NT and Unix you may have seen around, and they are still big in banking, and make their money in services.
Just remember that IBM mainframes are not the only ones around, but they are dominant.
Your points are well-taken, but there is no reason why any PC/Mac/Unix/Windows application could not work that way. The issue is more cultural and standards based more then what the software will actually do.
Since mainframers culturally think in terms of building pyramids and the smaller machine cultures strike me as building strip shopping centers, it shouldn't surprise you but there is no reason you couldn't be as consistent with the mammal machines.
The MNBA computer site in town is allowed 15 minutes of downtime during Christmas Day. The rest of the time it MUST be up or millions are lost per minute.
Zathrus, I graciously accept your enlightened understanding of your place in the world.
Honor Harrington Shirts, Caps, swag, etc.
on
War of Honor
·
· Score: 2
I would be remiss if I did give unto all Slashdot Harrington geeks THE official Harrington swag website, Pegasus Publishing. This guy hits A-kon and several other cons, but has the lock on the Honor Harrington fanstuff contract, such as it is.
You can get a stylin' RMN jacket or cap, sport your love of all things treecat, or even have Harrington Steading towel sets.
Be sure to check out the other geekstuff there, especially all the bumper stickers you have ever wanted. The geekery goes on for days....
*Microsoft was just rolling out Win95, *the Newton fanatics were having their last lovefest, *Sony demoed DVD, *Novell told us our refrigerators were going to be hooked up to a network, *PowerPC had a tent with actual applications but an air of desperation about it, *Lotus Notes was pushing it's relatively new thing, *Citrix was trying to sell people on physical Winterms, *no one knew how to spell internet, *SSA disks were introduced, *the K-series of processors were coming, *the Alpha motherboard hackers held court, *and there was one teeny tiny Linux booth with the most kickass demo there.
So in other words Comdex is a place where you can see the past, present and future if you have the wits to look for and recognize it. But you will still get your butt kicked by surprises.
Yes this concept is Timesharing on Steroids, but check what this CEO guy has already done- sold the commodity hard-drive biz and gone for Linux in a big way. He is clearly not risk-averse and assuming we all agree Linux is A Good Thing (and certainly a way to beat on Sun and Microsoft) he is not stupid. So what is he doing here?
Posters who are focusing on the U-word (utility) need to see that IBM doesn't want Joe Citizen using this. The profit levels for dealing with the general public just aren't there for IBM- Big Blue is all about the corporate or government cash.
In a word, cost savings for premier customers, i.e. the kind of people who will run up huge MIPS but not on a constant daily basis. Scenarios that come to mind beyond the car engineering ones are banks/companies/bureaucracies who have monster End Of Month/End Of year processing but reduced needs otherwise, websites that have a lower average use threshold except when the Super Bowl commercial airs, and disaster recovery (keep your disks mirrored offsite, if a disaster occurs call IBM, get your virtual mainframe up and switch to the offsite array).
With IBM's sysplexing and workload algorithms in play, tying in 'outside' 'puters will waste few resources.
I suspect that IBM's ultimate goal is disk farms on user sites and CPUs at IBM's Grid Ranch. With the CPUs under IBM's care they can really drop the TCO for the machines themselves.
That reminds me, the real cost of operating mainframes nowadays beyond the staff is the third-party licenses for the support software- security, tape libraries, etc. That's because traditionally the software vendors license by MIPS on the machine, not MIPS actually used in your LPAR (logical partition, a carved out virtual machine on a mainframe). Whenever you increase the MIPS of your machine, the third-party vendors will bleed you dry (which ultimately loses IBM customers as they go to cheaper alternatives).
IBM is beating on these vendors by competing in their arena to drive TCO down, and is also trying to get them to meter their actual usage under z/OS. So this grid thing is just a logical extension of what they are trying to do to not get run over by Moore's Law and the cost of running The Big Box.
We need to let this tech linger in the background for a good long while. Rumsfeld is wrong, other countries will steal this tech and duplicate it within a few short years (see Russia and A-/H-bombs). Then we will not be able to do airpower projection, and our ICBM nuclear threat may soon ring hollow because if you can mount it on a plane you can mount it on an AA vehicle and put more juice on the ground vehicle then the airplane.
Like Britain creating HMS Dreadnaught, this technology will be the seeds of our strategic decline.
One year at A-kon a fan artist drew a Dirty Pair vs. Predator picture. Adam Warren saw it and was apparently considering doing a Dirty Pair comic on it.
Who cares who wins? I gotta love seeing the DP live.
Microsoft was running that ad where the computers all get along during the merger even if the humans don't because it's all happy work-together Microsoft deals. Now they have shot that.
Watch some serious back-pedaling. Of course they wouldn't have to backpedal if they weren't constantly looking to shark someone.
You know, this was probably some VP trying to justify cash bonuses in a downward-trending stock option world. Almost any company has those, but few companies can screwover so many mergers as Microsoft can.
Dune (the board game version) had an interesting twist- everyone could win if everyone joined the same alliance during a nexus. Of course no one ever did, which just plays into what the thrust of this thread is about....
I'll say it before and I'll say it again- let each country have it's country TLDs and they can chose to impose their own stupid local laws (whether the stupidity is the PRC, France, or the US).
The French built the Maginot Line because WWI and the intervening years they had lost the demographic struggle with Germany and could not afford population-wise to go toe-to-toe offensively.
The real problem is that BEF and French operational doctrine only saw the tank as an infantry support tool and thus deployed in penny packets, rather then concentrated for overwhelming local superiority.
The Maginot Line channeled the Germans quite nicely into the Low Countries, the Allies just did not have the doctrine and firepower to defeat the Germans, and no one could have foreseen Eben Emael cracking like an egg from the paratrooper assault.
Your point however was why people use that term, which was correct even if the common usage stems from an inadequate understanding of the facts.
Appreciate the reminders from a man who obviously has been there.
Yeah the PK may be 20% per SAM against the West but do you wanna be the pilot up there with those odds?
Unfortunately you may have lost track in the late 90s, but the EF-111s have been deactivated. AEW is all Growlers now, and we have no replacement in the pipeline- insane, no? The USAF is willing to sell our present now for the F-22. I swear we are going to end up with the Last Starfighter scenario.
Yes the Mig-25 was designed to be an interceptor, specifically against the B-70 Valkyrie (the spiritual high-altitude predecessor of the B-1).
As BoneFlower points out 25s and 31s are not as maneuverable as purer combat craft such as Mig-29s, Su-27s, or our teen fighters- they aren't suppossed to be, their rightful prey are bombers and strike craft.
However, in the case of an F-117 matchup the F117 can have a survivable edge re: being a low-observable even if you know it's in the area, and unlike the B-2 may be carrying an air-to-air missile.
But again you could lose 3 chweap Migs for every F117 and still be winning handsomely in the military-industrial attrition sweepstakes.
Mig25s and 31s ARE vastly cheaper compared to Western designs. MiG25s for instance were built with titanium leading edges but steel wings making them far cheaper then F-16s.
The pilots may not be cheap depending on what level of combat ability you would like them to have. Gunning down a B-2 should be reasonably easy, an F-117 may be another matter.
Defending against stealth will never be as cheap as some posters suggest, I'm just pointing out that there is a raw numbers approach to take as well as the more high-tech solutions.
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I can tell you why the Russians have such a great record- they make 'em simple and reliable, give it hordes of boost power, don't get fancy with the materials technology, and in general do things in the classic Russian engineering style.
Just ask the Nazis about T-34s- oh wait, you can't....
I must disagree, we'll just have to model the hormonal system as input variables that affect entire subsets of processes.
Think of it as a virtual X86 emulator, we'll have to emulate all the 'firmware' issues our glands bring to the table.
No the big problem will be when no one wants to emulate us anymore because we are obsolete....
IBM mainframes have many things going for them. For one thing, they absolutely do not die (lost power in environment one time, after power was restored we reset the power switches on the mainframe and DASD arrays- it came up WITH NO RECOVERY, as though the power had never gone out).
This feature makes IBM money in that they can reduce maintenance costs to nothing yet still charge for coverage (we don't see engineers except for firmware upgrades).
They have incredible software reliability and backwards compatibility. This alone save companies millions in redevelopment/porting costs, not to mention the downtimes and unreliability of rolling out a new system.
The VM/LPAR/PRSM/WLM aspects of IBM mainframes are absolutely priceless. We can chunk around workload effortlessly to whatever physical or virtual machine we like (this involves architecture planning of course).
They have the Golden Screwdriver, in that mainframe models are actually delivered with more power then is initially activated. With a quick visit from IBM (and the requisite dough), your machine likely can be instantly upgraded.
We have recovery like nothing else. We backed up and moved a production mainframe environment that served 5 hospitals 40 miles away by tape and had it running from shutdown to startup perfectly within 9 hours. We have done DR where we have shaved it down to 8 hours from initial tape load.
The Z/OS-MVS mainframe does have weaknesses. As noted, the software costs are killer (mainframe software is charged by the MIP, and the pricing schemes are fast making it more expensive to get just the support software then all the IBM part of the contract, much less the app). We are literally using two machines instead of one simply due to insane licensing costs.
IBM is working on this by trying to force software vendors to go to a 'MIPS actually used' model rather then paying based on the whole machine, but it remains to be seen as to whether IBM can reign in this hideous cost.
The article is wrong in one respect, the 64-bit Z/OS has meant the end of Amdahl and Hitachi as vendors as they do not have the cash to reverse-engineer the firmware associated with Z/OS. So IBM's profit margins are going up thanks to no hardware competition, which in turn will make the mainframes a pricier item (and may lose IBM some customers if they are not careful).
Mainframes were never particularly designed to be webservers- they are designed for crunching databases and serving 1000s of terminal users. No reason they cannot be webservers, but the tools are more mature on Unix and MS platforms. That is one big reason why IBM is interested in Linux, the Linux webserver can be in it's little VM and pass queries at memory speed via hipersockets to the mainframe LPAR that can serve up DB2 database queries all day long.
That is what I see the future of mainframes being (beyond the pure Linux play to reduce those horrid software licensing costs)- part configured to be the DB gawd as nature intended, and part to serve it up to a GUI-based world. IBM is counting on the penguin to make it happen, but they would probably be just as happy with BSD. Just as long as there are plenty of webbies to make the server work and it cannot be sabotaged by Microsoft, any free Unix will do.
Unfortunately, the Ace's Hardware article is depressingly accurate about the state of the mainframe in 2002.
But once upon a time there was a company that beat IBM technology like a drum- Burroughs.
IBM invented hard drives (DASD). Burroughs invented multi-programming environments, virtual memory, the first OS written to a high-level language (ALGOL) and a host of other innovations.
Here is the best overview with plenty o' links, here is official Unisys propaganda if you want to poke around, and here
is a Multics guy giving props.
To give you an idea of how advanced Burroughs was, we were able to run DMSII database dumps to tape while the database was active and did perform successful recoveries off those dumps- in 1985.
The console was magnificent, the built-in system logging was a dream, we fired off batch backups and recoveries from plain-English commands at the console, CANDE is a near perfect development environment (I still laugh at Vi vs. Emacs- morons), and WFL makes JCL look like the silly resource batcher it is.
Unfortunately Burroughs never had a decent sales force, then they merged with Sperry to form Unisys (to enrich Blumenthal, May His Name Be Forever Cursed).
They still make mainframes of a sort, A-series emulators that run on monster PC-cluster machines. These same machines are the cluster boxen for NT and Unix you may have seen around, and they are still big in banking, and make their money in services.
Just remember that IBM mainframes are not the only ones around, but they are dominant.
Your points are well-taken, but there is no reason why any PC/Mac/Unix/Windows application could not work that way. The issue is more cultural and standards based more then what the software will actually do.
Since mainframers culturally think in terms of building pyramids and the smaller machine cultures strike me as building strip shopping centers, it shouldn't surprise you but there is no reason you couldn't be as consistent with the mammal machines.
Exactly- usually takes the little mammals between 7-15 years to catch up.
And if you try to eat our eggs we will feed you to our young.
You are exactly right.
The MNBA computer site in town is allowed 15 minutes of downtime during Christmas Day. The rest of the time it MUST be up or millions are lost per minute.
Zathrus, I graciously accept your enlightened understanding of your place in the world.
I would be remiss if I did give unto all Slashdot Harrington geeks THE official Harrington swag website, Pegasus Publishing. This guy hits A-kon and several other cons, but has the lock on the Honor Harrington fanstuff contract, such as it is.
You can get a stylin' RMN jacket or cap, sport your love of all things treecat, or even have Harrington Steading towel sets.
Be sure to check out the other geekstuff there, especially all the bumper stickers you have ever wanted. The geekery goes on for days....
I was at Comdex 1995.
*Microsoft was just rolling out Win95,
*the Newton fanatics were having their last lovefest,
*Sony demoed DVD,
*Novell told us our refrigerators were going to be hooked up to a network,
*PowerPC had a tent with actual applications but an air of desperation about it,
*Lotus Notes was pushing it's relatively new thing,
*Citrix was trying to sell people on physical Winterms,
*no one knew how to spell internet,
*SSA disks were introduced,
*the K-series of processors were coming,
*the Alpha motherboard hackers held court,
*and there was one teeny tiny Linux booth with the most kickass demo there.
So in other words Comdex is a place where you can see the past, present and future if you have the wits to look for and recognize it. But you will still get your butt kicked by surprises.
Yes this concept is Timesharing on Steroids, but check what this CEO guy has already done- sold the commodity hard-drive biz and gone for Linux in a big way. He is clearly not risk-averse and assuming we all agree Linux is A Good Thing (and certainly a way to beat on Sun and Microsoft) he is not stupid. So what is he doing here?
Posters who are focusing on the U-word (utility) need to see that IBM doesn't want Joe Citizen using this. The profit levels for dealing with the general public just aren't there for IBM- Big Blue is all about the corporate or government cash.
In a word, cost savings for premier customers, i.e. the kind of people who will run up huge MIPS but not on a constant daily basis. Scenarios that come to mind beyond the car engineering ones are banks/companies/bureaucracies who have monster End Of Month/End Of year processing but reduced needs otherwise, websites that have a lower average use threshold except when the Super Bowl commercial airs, and disaster recovery (keep your disks mirrored offsite, if a disaster occurs call IBM, get your virtual mainframe up and switch to the offsite array).
With IBM's sysplexing and workload algorithms in play, tying in 'outside' 'puters will waste few resources.
I suspect that IBM's ultimate goal is disk farms on user sites and CPUs at IBM's Grid Ranch. With the CPUs under IBM's care they can really drop the TCO for the machines themselves.
That reminds me, the real cost of operating mainframes nowadays beyond the staff is the third-party licenses for the support software- security, tape libraries, etc. That's because traditionally the software vendors license by MIPS on the machine, not MIPS actually used in your LPAR (logical partition, a carved out virtual machine on a mainframe). Whenever you increase the MIPS of your machine, the third-party vendors will bleed you dry (which ultimately loses IBM customers as they go to cheaper alternatives).
IBM is beating on these vendors by competing in their arena to drive TCO down, and is also trying to get them to meter their actual usage under z/OS. So this grid thing is just a logical extension of what they are trying to do to not get run over by Moore's Law and the cost of running The Big Box.
We need to let this tech linger in the background for a good long while. Rumsfeld is wrong, other countries will steal this tech and duplicate it within a few short years (see Russia and A-/H-bombs). Then we will not be able to do airpower projection, and our ICBM nuclear threat may soon ring hollow because if you can mount it on a plane you can mount it on an AA vehicle and put more juice on the ground vehicle then the airplane.
Like Britain creating HMS Dreadnaught, this technology will be the seeds of our strategic decline.
One year at A-kon a fan artist drew a Dirty Pair vs. Predator picture. Adam Warren saw it and was apparently considering doing a Dirty Pair comic on it.
Who cares who wins? I gotta love seeing the DP live.
Now that's entertainment....
Microsoft was running that ad where the computers all get along during the merger even if the humans don't because it's all happy work-together Microsoft deals. Now they have shot that.
Watch some serious back-pedaling. Of course they wouldn't have to backpedal if they weren't constantly looking to shark someone.
You know, this was probably some VP trying to justify cash bonuses in a downward-trending stock option world. Almost any company has those, but few companies can screwover so many mergers as Microsoft can.
The arrogance knows no bounds.
Dune (the board game version) had an interesting twist- everyone could win if everyone joined the same alliance during a nexus. Of course no one ever did, which just plays into what the thrust of this thread is about....
Okay, so these things aren't into speed. They could work great for storage though.
I'll say it before and I'll say it again- let each country have it's country TLDs and they can chose to impose their own stupid local laws (whether the stupidity is the PRC, France, or the US).
Fine if you live exclusively on TSO/ISPF or one app- we have 38+ possible selections, so multisessioning is beautiful.
Incidentally we use ESC for ATTN and swap through sessions, or PA3 back to the session menu.
Certainly the whole swing wing thing is a costly tech to maintain and I'm sure they have aged.
My objection is not necesarily taking out the Electric Foxes, but that there isn't an equivalent replacement in the pipeline.
The French built the Maginot Line because WWI and the intervening years they had lost the demographic struggle with Germany and could not afford population-wise to go toe-to-toe offensively.
The real problem is that BEF and French operational doctrine only saw the tank as an infantry support tool and thus deployed in penny packets, rather then concentrated for overwhelming local superiority.
The Maginot Line channeled the Germans quite nicely into the Low Countries, the Allies just did not have the doctrine and firepower to defeat the Germans, and no one could have foreseen Eben Emael cracking like an egg from the paratrooper assault.
Your point however was why people use that term, which was correct even if the common usage stems from an inadequate understanding of the facts.
Mgs, starting to get IR capability? Oh dear, please look up the following on Google-
Sidewinder
FLIR
Note in-service dates.
There will be a test.
Appreciate the reminders from a man who obviously has been there.
Yeah the PK may be 20% per SAM against the West but do you wanna be the pilot up there with those odds?
Unfortunately you may have lost track in the late 90s, but the EF-111s have been deactivated. AEW is all Growlers now, and we have no replacement in the pipeline- insane, no? The USAF is willing to sell our present now for the F-22. I swear we are going to end up with the Last Starfighter scenario.
Yes the Mig-25 was designed to be an interceptor, specifically against the B-70 Valkyrie (the spiritual high-altitude predecessor of the B-1).
As BoneFlower points out 25s and 31s are not as maneuverable as purer combat craft such as Mig-29s, Su-27s, or our teen fighters- they aren't suppossed to be, their rightful prey are bombers and strike craft.
However, in the case of an F-117 matchup the F117 can have a survivable edge re: being a low-observable even if you know it's in the area, and unlike the B-2 may be carrying an air-to-air missile.
But again you could lose 3 chweap Migs for every F117 and still be winning handsomely in the military-industrial attrition sweepstakes.
Spaceflight, let's do a parade of dinosaurs up and down right in front of all these penguin serverheads. Then we'll eat THEIR eggs.
Mig25s and 31s ARE vastly cheaper compared to Western designs. MiG25s for instance were built with titanium leading edges but steel wings making them far cheaper then F-16s.
The pilots may not be cheap depending on what level of combat ability you would like them to have. Gunning down a B-2 should be reasonably easy, an F-117 may be another matter.
Defending against stealth will never be as cheap as some posters suggest, I'm just pointing out that there is a raw numbers approach to take as well as the more high-tech solutions.