Mainframe Linux

Thu Jul 19 09:57:23 CDT 2001

Forwarded message:
>--
>
>By the way, I realized the reason IBM is changing the name to z/OS is
>because it's changing to 64 bit architecture.  I also read today that
>Linux can run on "bare iron", meaning mainframe hardware, with no other
>operating system.  Not many shops can afford to mess with that right
>now, but who knows down the road...
>
>Your friendly neighborhood mainframe DB2 DBA, Linux newbie,  ;-)
>Jim Herrmann
>
    The new system is called z/900 and can support up to 64 CPUs.

    A Linux image was limited to, last time I checked, 16 of those 64 and
    VM can assign idle ones to a particular image on the fly.

    And from another message:

>chief information officer at Korean Air. "A single IBM eServer z900
>running Linux can do the work of an entire server  farm. Multiple copies
>of Linux can run side by side on a server, allowing for highly scalable
>and manageable environments that can handle unpredictable spikes in
>Internet activity."
>
>
>
>I'm not sure, but it sounds like these guys may be running Linux on
>"bare iron".
>
    Not bare metal, having the equivalent of "an entire server farm" implies
    using VIF or VM.

    VIF is a stripped down version of VM which allows running Linux images with
    lower cost than VM but gives up some useful features.

====================

    Near the start of this thread you indicated that heavy IO marked a separation
    between mainframes and other computers, well the heavy IO is about to move
    down into the lower cost area which has been dominated by Sun and HP.

    We should start seeing InfiniBand servers next year.

<TITLE>Infiniband</TITLE>
<H1>Infiniband</H1>

<BODY>
<DD>
    <DL><p>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001020S0037">Cluster era dawns with 
Infiniband spec rollout</A>
<DD>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.vnunet.com/News/1106812">Big Blue's processors travel towards 
Infiniband</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2000/0427serverrole.html">Traditional role of 
servers begins to change, 04/27/00</A>
<DD>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2711278,00.html">ZDNet: 
Interactive Week: Busted!</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-3293615.html">New InfiniBand technology 
to remake servers--eventually</A>
<DD>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.crossroads.com/products/infiniband/">Crossroads - Products - 
Infiniband</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/Press/prnews.nsf/jan/1F52AAC6DA5B43FA852569040050A494">IBM 
Plans InfiniBand Chips to Link Servers for Higher Performance, Resource Sharing--IBM Press 
room-Press Release</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.linuxnews.com/stories.php?story=01/06/20/5455828">LinuxNews.com - 
Linux for Business News</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20000620S0003">SiliconStrategies.com 
- IBM readies InfiniBand chips to link computer systems for resource sharing</A>
        <DT><A HREF="http://www.qlogic.com/press/releases/infiniband_0800.html">InfiniBand Switch 
for Server Clustering Applications at Intel Developer Forum</A>
<DD>
    </DL><p>
</BODY>

    This is an area where MS is behind, high performance clusters, and will keep
    dropping back further as time goes on.

    Linux will happily live everywhere in the range from departmental servers with a
    single channel switch fabric all the way up to IBM's next generation of mainframes
    with twelve channels per switch.

    The channels run across copper or fiber with four bits in parallel, the clock runs at
    2.5 G, and they move another four bits on each rising and falling edge of the clock.

    That is 2.5 GigaBytes per second, per channel.  With twelve of those channels mainframes
    will still be the IO kings but departmental servers with a single channel will be roughly
    eight times as fast as todays top PC servers.

    Beowulf clusters and Parallel Virtual Machine make Linux ready to play on this new hardware
    from the time it first becomes available.  People who can tune a Linux cluster to handle
    specific loads are going to be in high demand.