Windows OS Coming To the Mainframe 148
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."
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
Breaking news (Score:1)
The botnet is now coming to the mainframe!
Year of Windows on the Mainframe (Score:3, Funny)
Truly, next year will be the year of Windows on the Mainframe!
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WOO HOO! Dinosaurs, frosted in shit!
Somehow, I think that this is an admission by Microsoft, of failure to get HyperV into the datacenter, vs. vSphere.
Run! Run! Run for your lives! (Score:1)
You poor IBM system admins...
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IPL, IPL, IPL, IPL, All the doo dah day! (Score:2)
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?
Re:IPL, IPL, IPL, IPL, All the doo dah day! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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The mainframe is still running z/OS, and will have the same performance and reliability characteristics it always had.
Having worked on the mainframe platform for the last 20 years, I can tell you that mainframe reliability isn't what it used to be.
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How about that, Microsoft almost catching up with Linux in yet another category. How long has it been ince Lunux ran on mainframes? Quite a while, one of the ten fastest computers in the world runs on Linux (keep working on it, MS). I keep thinking of BSoDs, do you know how damned long it takes to boot a mainframe? Will they have to restart the mainframe on Patch Tuesday every month? Reboot it when its antivirus needs new definitions, or Adobe updates Flash?
Run for your lives, indeed!
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Er- all of the ten fastest computers in the world run linux.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#June_2011 [wikipedia.org]
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New info for me, thanks.
Is this something the market forces are demanding? (Score:3, Insightful)
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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.
Re:Is this something the market forces are demandi (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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 ).
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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 manage
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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.
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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.
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Re:Is this something the market forces are demandi (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ?
Re:Is this something the market forces are demandi (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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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 ev
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+1 Agreed
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-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 re
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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 yea
Re-boot and call me in the morning (Score:3)
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IPL :)
Not quite... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yep... imagine having to pay several $K for background antivirus software running 24x7.
Renting CPU cycles works (Score:3)
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 c
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My guess is that you have not done the math. Any company that has a mainframe will also have a team of bean counters. They will check the cost of those extra cycles to adding hardware and even look at the taxes involved. Of course cloud based solution may works as well but if you already have the code on a mainframe you would have to also look at the cost of the port and testing to make it work.
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Dude don't get your knickers in a knot. My post was mostly pro mainframe. I just said that a cloud based solution like Rackcloud or E2C might work as far as an easy to scale system. I also pointed out that a port of mainframe software to such a system would probably be far more expensive than running it on a mainframe.
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You are missing an important piece of the puzzle: software. The monthly license charge for mainframe software is proportional to the performance of the machine it is installed on. A single z196 box can have anywhere from 240 MIPS to 53000 MIPS. Mainframe customers can get exactly the performance they need for each situation, saving them tons of money on licensing.
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The purchase went through and the old owners are very happy with me ri
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In cases where it requires the same ultra high precision and reliability - yes. But those cases are not common. And most of those an be covered by lesser hardware.
Exactly. Who wants their new skyscraper to be designed on a computer with a Pentium processor doing the floating point math?
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cool story +1
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SunPCI for the JCL crowd!
Not Really... (Score:3)
works for PCs (Score:1)
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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.
Not so much IBM's worry - but that of any customer who goes that route.
Bit like replacing a wheel on your car by welding a truck in place - one facing the other direction.
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...sort of. (Score:2, Informative)
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 m
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If I had mod points... Yeah, Windows doesn't run mainframes. This is like when MS announced Hyper-V would "support" linux.
Don't expect your rational explanation to curtail the "durr, hehe, Big Blue screen of death teehee!" and "Durr, botnet!" childish humor this story will generate.
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Dude, comparing POWER to PowerPC is like replacing Charles Sheen with Ashton Kutcher.
Errrrr ......
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And following hot on the heals of this .... (Score:5, Funny)
... 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?"
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Funny, I would imagine it being the other way around, IE: Giant Engine ( mainframe ) powering something that would make no sense such as a Vespa Scooter.
Would make the Vespa harder to use and more likely to crash spectacularly.
In related news (Score:2)
IBM is in talks with Eset to produce cobol version of it's software.
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In related news rootkits and virus's both pre-date Windows.
Must be Windows Server (Score:2)
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?
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Of course, the mainframe is a marginalized beast these days.
Hardly marginalized. It's doing what it has always done best, which is push lots of data around with raw processing power. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there humming away crunching data. If you use an ATM, charge something to a credit card, or receive your pay I guarantee you there is a mainframe at the end of that transaction.
The need for mainframe services never went away, the world just built a whole new computer s
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Of course, the mainframe is a marginalized beast these days.
Hardly marginalized. It's doing what it has always done best, which is push lots of data around with raw processing power. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there humming away crunching data. If you use an ATM, charge something to a credit card, or receive your pay I guarantee you there is a mainframe at the end of that transaction.
The need for mainframe services never went away, the world just built a whole new computer segment separate from them for new things.
Everywhere I have worked the mainframes have yielded to blade servers, save one - where they are running some horrible old frankenstein COBOL system in a virtual HP 3000 environment (which could possibly be running on a blade by now, for all I know.)
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an HP 3000 is a "minicomputer" (in the jargon of the 70s to early 90s) that runs MPE/IX (somewhat unix-like). You just worked at a place where silly people called any server that wasn't a PC a "mainframe". I see that often in my job, manufacturing plants still running AS/400 and calling it a "mainframe", when it's just what was called at the time a "mid-range computer". I've seen Unix microcomputers and Vax called mainframes too, even DEC tried to advertise its big Vax 10000 as a "Vax mainframe", but
The Devil On His Throne (Score:5, Funny)
"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."
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2012, here we come!
This was promised two decades ago... (Score:2)
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.
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I do know of an Alpha in production: my wife's observatory has two Alpha's running VMS and Lisp to control the telescope motors. They're 100% reliable, but they're also now looking in to replacing them as it's not exactly a maintainable system.
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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.
IIRC it was officially available at one point or another for Alpha and MIPS R4000. A PowerPC port (for IBM PPC machines, not Macs) was in the works but I'm not sure it was ever released...? Of course, if you count NT-derived OSes that came after the one actually called "Windows NT", then there's also Itanium, and soon to be ARM.
some comments from an actual mainframe systems guy (Score:3)
In other news (Score:2)
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.
Does this mean (Score:2)
My... (Score:2)
Will they never learn ? (Score:2)
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 ?
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no, this is just a network attached x86-64 windows server, something that is quite common already. now they just have a blade for it and some software to manage the thing
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Yeah, my bad. As a typical /.er, I replied before reading the article.
This way, it actually makes sense for IBM to implement it.
man... (Score:2)
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Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Mainframes.
Isn't that a Linux meme, not a Windows meme? If so, then, given that Linux (unlike Windows) does run on S/390 and z/Architecture, it could probably be done....
There isn't a font big enough (Score:2)
BLUE. SCREEN. OF. DEATH.
IBM'll support anything (Score:2)
The solution to a problem that never existed (Score:2)
Thanks, Microsoft.
Microsoft should know better than this. (Score:3)
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.
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Old hat - Unisys Clearpath has done this for years (Score:2)
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
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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.
xbill to the rescue? (Score:2)
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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...
O RLY? [britishv8.org] Just Google it. [google.com]
And, yes, presumably they wouldn't be offering this if they didn't think it's useful to be able to run Windows on x86 blade servers plugged into IBM mainframes.
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it's just a way of having very high speed 10 gig net to a blade enclosure with Windows on a x86 blade (and also possibly AIX on another variant of the blades with PPC), also with software to manage windows and provide some services. People already run multi-tier architectures that include windows middleware or front ends as well as mainframes. not an uncommon scenario at all. Heck, I know of state goverment departments that run novell netware still that talk to mainframes
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not really true, Hercules emulator can run Z/OS (and Z/VM and Z/VSE and Z/TPF) very nicely and with enough performance (200+ mainframe MIPS per core on high-end x86-64 processors) to do useful work on any x86 or x86-64 server including blades, but IBM normally doesn't allow that by license.