mainframes [was RE: The C is dead, long live the C]

[Jim Herrmann]

On Monday 11 February 2002 11:04 am, Adam Turk wrote:
> You are right, the future is probably this. Which raises another scary
> prospect (besides OS/390 on a PIM;) ), The world will further polarize
> into the little wireless PCs and the megalith mainframe-ish servers
> wherein their data lives. These being like treasure troves for hackers.
> "200mil people with their lives in one server? Lets bring it down and
> reformat. That sounds like fun." Marx was right! Ahahahahaha! Oh, sorry.
> <twitch> Pessimism overload.

It's almost impossible to hack OS/390, as the very least it is extremely 
difficult, even for someone who really knows the OS inside and out.  Of 
course, in this future world, there won't be one server, but rather many 
servers.  The mainframe world has been doing sysplex for over a decade, and 
distributed data bases have been around since the late eighties.  It's common 
for large companies to distribute their data over many geographically 
disparate mainframe installations.

>From an earlier post:
> If you can prove to me that a mainframe running OS/390 is more
> cost-effective than a linux server farm, you can quell me.
It's easy to spend a million dollars on a server farm, just like it is to 
spend a million dollars on a mainframe.  The difference is that that server 
farm is typically only running at minimal utilization, 5-10%, whereas a 
mainframe typically runs at 70-90% utilization.  There have been numerous 
studies that show that total cost of ownership for a mainframe is cheaper 
than WinTel boxen.  Linux probably narrows that gap somewhat.  As I state 
later, Linux on the mainframe is a killer combination.

I agree with Brian's prediction that the PC as we know it at home will 
eventually become a quaint artifact in the Smithsonian someday.  Actually, 
Nicolas Negroponte's "Being Digital", which came out in the early nineties, 
predicts that what communication that was under ground, telephones, would 
move to the air, cell phones, and what came through the air, television, 
would move under ground, cable.  He also predicted that the home would have 
more and more computers, but that they would disappear.  In other words, they 
would be in the electronic appliances like the TV, the refigerator, and the 
microwave oven.  So, I think Brian is absolutely right about need for Linux 
to dominate the embedded space, in which it has a good start.

And data will exist in the network somewhere, but most people, 99.9%, won't 
care where it is, as long as they can get their morning paper downloaded to 
their electronic paper device, and pull up their investments on their home 
video unit.  System admins and DBAs, however, will care where it is, and for 
my money, as a DBA, I would rather have my data secured on OS/390 or Linux, 
in that order.  I really think that the mainframe is the next real frontier 
for Linux on the server end of this two layer world of the future.  The 
mainframe architecture, combined with the stability, flexibility, and cost 
effectivness of Linux makes a killer combination.  I am advocating Linux on 
the mainframe every chance I get.  I stated in this forum many months ago 
that the way into the enterprise for Linux is not on Intel servers, but on 
mainframe LPARs.  I stand by that statement even more firmly today.

Linux on z/9000!  The future of enterprise computing!  :-)

Peace, love, and Linux,
Jim Herrmann