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IBM Offers Windows on Mainframes For The First Time

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 31 comments

IBM is expanding software support for its mainframe server technology.

zEnterprise system will be able to connect to Windows applications in a hybrid computing environment that combine z196 and z114 servers that are combined with x86-based IBM x servers. IBM said that the "new heterogeneous virtual IT infrastructure" will become available on December 16.

With an approach that enables front-end Windows applications to integrate with applications and data on a mainframe system, IBM says that the technology addresses the problem of "the jumble of disparate technologies added over time to run specific applications." The combination of the mainframe with an x86 server can consolidate app environments, staff and software tools. As a result, the IT environment will be less complex, will require less management and reduces cost, IBM claims. The company said that the cost savings can amount to "up to 70 percent" over traditional distributed platforms.

The addition of x86 now enables IBM's mainframe system to support z/OS, Linux, IBM AIX, x86 Linux and Microsoft Windows.

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  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , November 7, 2011 8:11 PM
    YES!
  • 0 Hide
    goatsetung , November 7, 2011 8:24 PM
    No idea what the implications are, but it's interesting.
  • 3 Hide
    back_by_demand , November 7, 2011 8:26 PM
    goatsetungNo idea what the implications are, but it's interesting.

    Quote:
    The company said that the cost savings can amount to "up to 70 percent" over traditional distributed platforms.

    Millions of dollars, that's a pretty big implication
  • Display all 31 comments.
  • 0 Hide
    hpglow , November 7, 2011 8:50 PM
    They are selling something, so of course they are going to say that this technology will save a company millions. The catch of course is that it is not free and you will have to spend money to "save" this money. Therefore, it may take a company many years to recoup these savings, if they do at all.
  • 3 Hide
    marraco , November 7, 2011 9:05 PM
    WTF!!!

    I would never put windows on a server, and even less on a mainframe. But I would had bet that windows was available at least a decade ago.

    I guess that mainframes are getting inexpensive enough to appeal to a broader "audience", and they have no time to fight console screens.

    Creating graphic, human "readable" standards good enough to replace console commands is a huge task, but we are in 2011. Is time to evolve, Linux.
    LVM is unnecessarily complex, anti intuitive, and obscure.
  • 0 Hide
    ta152h , November 7, 2011 9:45 PM
    It sounds like they're just making data sharing easier, not actually running x86 on mainframes, or am I missing something?

    Why would anyone want to run Windows on a mainframe? Mainframes are supposed to be reliable. Microsoft on something mission critical makes about as much sense as electing a Democrat and hoping for a balanced budget.
  • -4 Hide
    Anonymous , November 7, 2011 9:46 PM
    Mainframes need to go away, they've outlived their usefulness. There are plenty of other ways to have security and 100% uptime without having to deal with odd hardware and bizarre operating systems.

    What makes this stranger is Windows integration. Windows is not synonymous with mission-critical or secure, Meanwhile, businesses will continue to flock en masse to Linux for mission-critical applications.
  • -3 Hide
    Anonymous , November 7, 2011 9:49 PM
    TA152H: You mean electing a Republican and hoping for a balanced budget? Or are we re-writing history where Bush had a balanced budget, and Obama turned it into a massive deficit?

    You should try factoring in the cost of interest payments on previous Republican debt, then adjusting for inflation. It's not that bad.
  • 1 Hide
    palladin9479 , November 7, 2011 10:59 PM
    @TA152H ??? Umm what? MS Windows server 2003 and beyond run quite stably, we utilize them for exchange and AD services for 24/7 ops. Considering this is a C2 system it's about as "mission critical" as you can get other then a space shuttle.

    That being said we also heavily utilize Solaris for core systems, so it's about picking the right tool for the right use.
  • 3 Hide
    togenshi , November 7, 2011 11:22 PM
    Quote:
    Mainframes need to go away, they've outlived their usefulness. There are plenty of other ways to have security and 100% uptime without having to deal with odd hardware and bizarre operating systems.

    What makes this stranger is Windows integration. Windows is not synonymous with mission-critical or secure, Meanwhile, businesses will continue to flock en masse to Linux for mission-critical applications.


    Obviously someone has never worked in a IBM midrange/mainframe environment. You have no idea what you are talking about. Windows is not a server OS. If anything, it is a bastardized version of a desktop-made-serverish OS. IBM i/p/z series usually clock in the uptime in years and if there is anytime a failure, there is redundancy and I (front panel or HMC) or IBM can locate the EXACT part that is faulty and have an engineer with the spare part at work within 4hours, even if its 2am in the morning.

    Not to mention that working with ILE makes programming so much easier to interact with the OS. IBM's documentation is very thorough as well.

    If it wasn't that the service and systems came at a significant premium, it would be far more popular in businesses than it is now. If IBM gave systems for free to universities, IT will see a significant change. Oh and changed their damn entitlements/passport advantage systems already.
  • 0 Hide
    palladin9479 , November 7, 2011 11:46 PM
    Quote:
    Obviously someone has never worked in a IBM midrange/mainframe environment. You have no idea what you are talking about. Windows is not a server OS. If anything, it is a bastardized version of a desktop-made-serverish OS. IBM i/p/z series usually clock in the uptime in years and if there is anytime a failure, there is redundancy and I (front panel or HWC) or IBM can locate the EXACT part that is faulty and have an engineer with the spare part at work within 4hours, even if its 2am in the morning.

    Not to mention that working with ILE makes programming so much easier to interact with the OS. IBM's documentation is very thorough as well.

    If it wasn't that the service and systems came at a significant premium, it would be far more popular in businesses than it is now. If IBM gave systems for free to universities, IT will see a significant change. Oh and changed their damn entitlements/passport advantage systems already.



    The right tool for the right job. Commodity servers are cheap and for when you just need something done. There is a reason MS Windows is as popular as it is, and it has nothing to do with some super secret conspiracy. It's easy to use and has a reduced administrative cost (biggest selling point by far) and a very wide software footprint. Linux is getting close, very close. In fact if they would fix WinBind to work better and create a one-stop easy way to manage patching (linking to external distro sites is NOT an enterprise solution) then Linux could dominate Windows in the corporate enterprise sector.

    IBM / Sun's are used for when you need something done and to NEVER EVER EVER die. I can't stress enough how impervious to failure these systems are. You can even hotswap entire CPU's and memory banks. With logical domains, should a CPU / memory bank have a failure the system will migrate the OS / process's to a functioning CPU / memory bank and alert the admins / operators to replace the failed unit. Pull out old card, put in new, the system detects, initializes, diags and onlines the new card. Migrate OS / process's back to the new card and *poof* problem fixed. Absolutely zero interruption in service.

    The only downtime's we ever have are for late night scheduled maintenance for when we do SUNSEC patch's and system updates. And even then we fail over services to the spare system during that time.

    Yeah I'm a Sun guy :p 
  • -1 Hide
    togenshi , November 8, 2011 12:05 AM
    I would consider Linux a server OS but Windows has too much of a monopoly on office tools to the point that its $600 per Office license or $60/user CAL for Exchange. Its competition (OpenOffice/LibreOffice/NeoOffice) is simply not good enough to complete. Besides using Java doesn't help at all with the interface. As soon as there is a suitable alternative for Office and Exchange, Windows will lose its grip on the server market.
  • 3 Hide
    palladin9479 , November 8, 2011 12:12 AM
    Quote:
    I would consider Linux a server OS but Windows has too much of a monopoly on office tools to the point that its $600 per Office license or $60/user CAL for Exchange. Its competition (OpenOffice/LibreOffice/NeoOffice) is simply not good enough to complete. Besides using Java doesn't help at all with the interface. As soon as there is a suitable alternative for Office and Exchange, Windows will lose its grip on the server market.


    This is the way of business. What you just said is that MS currently has the best product and even if their pricing is high (get bulk / site licenses if your user load is that big) companies still find their products to be desirable. The free alternatives are not quite to the standards that business's desire for their office automation. And honestly as long as "free" products are being developed "by committee" then they'll never be to the same level as a dedicated paid development staff will produce. I use OpenOffice at my house even though I'm eligible to get a legal version off Office via my company. Saying that I can see why companies desire to use the paid version of Office.
  • -1 Hide
    togenshi , November 8, 2011 12:37 AM
    I forgot to mention the midrange System p's already have the functionality to run Windows on their servers through PowerVM. Though I don't know if POWER has native x86 instruction set on top of its own. Or is there a hypervisor in the middle?
  • 0 Hide
    palladin9479 , November 8, 2011 12:52 AM
    Quote:
    I forgot to mention the midrange System p's already have the functionality to run Windows on their servers through PowerVM. Though I don't know if POWER has native x86 instruction set on top of its own. Or is there a hypervisor in the middle?


    It's emulation via code-morphing, similar to what transmeta tried to do. Not very efficient nor fast, but it works for when you need to do something with x86. Honestly if you needed x86 Windows run then get a good piece of x86 HW, put VMWare ESX on it and run the Windows server inside there. Would get you modularity and expandability while keeping costs low.
  • -2 Hide
    ta152h , November 8, 2011 1:05 AM
    palladin9479@TA152H ??? Umm what? MS Windows server 2003 and beyond run quite stably, we utilize them for exchange and AD services for 24/7 ops. Considering this is a C2 system it's about as "mission critical" as you can get other then a space shuttle.That being said we also heavily utilize Solaris for core systems, so it's about picking the right tool for the right use.


    It just means you don't know what mission critical is. Or what reliability means. Windows is a joke next to MVS, or z/OS as they call it. These processors can double check every single instruction to make sure they're correct. You can take processors out and add them at any given time, even if they fail, without bringing down the system or even noticing it. You can add more processors at peak times, when you need them. You can add specific types of processors for Java, Linux or whatever. Do that with your toy servers running Windows.

    Windows is fine for unimportant stuff, or when you don't care if the system goes down for 30 seconds, but when you need 100% accuracy, and incredible reliability, only a mainframe running a real operating system will do. That's not Windows.

    Do some research on mainframes, and see what you've been missing. They're light years ahead of these home machines you think are "mission-critical".
  • -1 Hide
    ta152h , November 8, 2011 1:08 AM
    togenshiObviously someone has never worked in a IBM midrange/mainframe environment. You have no idea what you are talking about. Windows is not a server OS. If anything, it is a bastardized version of a desktop-made-serverish OS. IBM i/p/z series usually clock in the uptime in years and if there is anytime a failure, there is redundancy and I (front panel or HWC) or IBM can locate the EXACT part that is faulty and have an engineer with the spare part at work within 4hours, even if its 2am in the morning. Not to mention that working with ILE makes programming so much easier to interact with the OS. IBM's documentation is very thorough as well. If it wasn't that the service and systems came at a significant premium, it would be far more popular in businesses than it is now. If IBM gave systems for free to universities, IT will see a significant change. Oh and changed their damn entitlements/passport advantage systems already.


    Keep in mind, you're talking to children. These clowns don't know anything, except they think a toy OS like Windows is a real one. They figure if they can shoot the evil Zargons with it, and that's an important mission, it's mission critical.

    Let's hope he's unemployed and not spouting that stupidity to anyone that will actually listen.
  • 0 Hide
    chopin43 , November 8, 2011 1:51 AM
    Finally IBM understand what computers are all about : Customers.
  • -3 Hide
    chopin43 , November 8, 2011 1:57 AM
    Finally IBM understand what computers are all about: customers.
  • -3 Hide
    chopin43 , November 8, 2011 1:59 AM
    chopin43Finally IBM understand what computers are all about: customers.

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