IBM Saves $250M Running Linux On Mainframes 274
coondoggie writes "Today IBM will announce it is consolidating nearly 4,000 small computer servers in six locations onto about 30 refrigerator-sized mainframes running Linux, saving $250 million in the process. The 4,000 replaced servers will be recycled by IBM Global Asset Recovery Services. The six data centers currently take up over 8 million square feet, or the size of nearly 140 football fields."
Ric Romero says "virtualization saves space" (Score:2, Insightful)
People are consolidating lightly (and heavily!) used servers into VMs all over the place.
$250M?? (Score:4, Insightful)
what does this have to do with Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
The story here is about consolidation, virtualization, etc.
Linux is a small part of the technology involved here. z/OS is the real story here.
Well Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why companies are in this pickle is because they thought more was better. They though "All we need to do is buy 4000 x86 servers and we can do tons of work." They didn't realize how HARD it is to get 4000 servers to operate in a cluster so you can take advantage of those individual systems as one body. So, they ended up with islands of computing power instead of a cluster. Naturally the mainframe consolidates these islands back to computing continents and you end up running the mainframes at near capacity all the time. Modern mainframes make this easy with dynamic CPU/RAM allocation, as well as dynamic storage. So you segment out the mainframe in to four or eight chunks. Chunk 1 is hot, chunk 3 and 5 are idle. Simply re-assign some of the CPUs from chunk 3 and 5 to 1 until the load goes down. You can take advantage of this in a big way if you segment your work load to match global demand. So chunk 1 might be data for the western USA, and chunk 7 might be EMEA. You can bounce resources between those segments much more easily. You can even script it. HP has an offering that does this automagically, I'm sure IBM has something similar.
Now, my personal opinion is why Linux? Some of the more advanced features like dynamic RAM, CPU, and IO allocation don't appear to be that solid to me. Perhaps IBM added these features to Linux or made them more robust? Maybe they run Linux inside an AIX virtualization container?
Re:IBM's been doing this for-ever, dude. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious because I recall reading that even the latest zSeries systems can natively run code dating all the way back to the original System/360 models.
-Z
Re:My employer recently 'consolidated' too. (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if IBM factored in the number oddball projects that require Windows systems in their server count? Windows won't run in a zSeries VM, and there is plenty of software out there that is still Windows only.
Re:IBM shouts -- Yay Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
OS/2 (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're hesitant to accept IBM because of the whole 70's/80's "Big Blue" stuff, but after Microsoft swept the rug out from under their feet the company's strength was permanently compromised. The consumer market rejected them (hence the sale of the PC division to Lenovo) and until they committed to Linux software was a major vulnerability for them. The openess of Linux enabled them to get back in the game - their customers didn't have to worry about the future of the platform while their immense contributions to Linux enabled the OS to really threaten Microsoft. So yeah - as a Slashdotter, IBM are the good guys. They support Linux and they don't aggressively protect their many, many patents (they use their patents to protect themselves rather than trying to sue everyone they can for $$$). Personally, I think IBM is the most important tech company in the world.
Re:Imagine....Need To Update... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A pleasure to work with, as well.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Big Iron. Right concept, wrong platform. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, for email we run Lotus Notes on a couple of BIG pSeries (AIX) servers. We could have run it on a farm (technical term) of windows boxes.
For webservers, which you could run on AIX, or linux on zSeries. We have multiple (read: many) x86 servers running linux+apache. Why? They connect to a backend app server (pSeries) which connects to a backend zSeries DB2 (I'd prefer Oracle however, to run Oracle on zSeries requires it to be run in a linux VM).
We definitely subscribe to the school of using VMs whether they are zSeries, pSeries, or VMWare on x86. Even if the x86 server is running ONE application, we still put vmware underneath, as it allows for us to move the image to a newer hardware platform when it's time to upgrade. Even some of the larger x86 servers run vmware but in each partition there is a single instance of apache. Makes for managing storage that much easier (fewer zones, cabling etc).
Would I consider moving our apache on linux on x86 to apache on linux on zSeries? Not really. It's a waste of CPU cycles (MIPS). I'd rather use zSeries MIPS for something a bit more critical like keeping my database up and running than serving out webpages (static or dynamic).
IT isn't not about religion, it's about finding the best tool considering your requirements. I have no problems telling IBM that product XYZ is trash. While my servers are IBM, you won't see IBM disk, or IBM tape, and atleast once a quarter some salesman from IBMs storage group is at my door. He buys me lunch and every quarter he is sent packing. You won't see ibm bladecenters as the thought of hundreds of additional servers to manage isn't appealing (but I'll gladly take 100s of VMs across larger x86/pseries boxes).
I know many of you were expecting to hear me say 5000 linux servers, but there are options for my requirements that did not lead to big "google style" linux farms.
BTW: I have no problems kicking out IBM on x86 if HP/Dell/Sun have a better product, and knowing this and letting IBM know this gives me a great advantage over them, as they very well know I'm capable of bringing in something more suitable. (I *used* to have IBM storage).
Re:single points of failure (Score:4, Insightful)