IBM, Design a new System/360

What we need is everything in one box, all the latest technology, and easy to scale up. Can IBM deliver? Probably not but we can dream.

It is beyond time for IBM to not only create a converged platform for its customers, but also beyond time for the company to create datacenter-scale infrastructure that can represent the future of enterprise computing. That was what I was talking about last week when I was lamenting the departure of Jim Whitehurst, formerly chief executive officer of Red Hat and formerly president of IBM. As the title of that story implies – Historical, Functional, And Relevant – if I had a wish, it would be to create a system that was integrated (meaning it has everything that customers need) and scalable (meaning it could span from a single-core system for deskside use in the smallest of companies all the way up to a full-blown datacenter). And when I say system, I mean system: Compute, network, and storage, and as much offload and processing in the network as possible and only applications on the server processors.

Linux-only mainframes

Might be good?

Lessons learned from mainframe usage

An excellent overview of what learning to program on a mainframe was like. GDGs for source control, oh my. This comment on what you needed to do to get terminal time is so excellent:

My junior year I didn't yet have keys to the building (I got them senior year so I could have office hours for the business-school freshmen I was teaching FORTRAN - that never made sense to me either...), so we worked out the following: unlock a window in the terminal room. Climb onto the first-floor roof of the student services building. Cross that to the sciences building. Climb the ladder to the astronomy observing platform on the top of the building. Go in that door, down the hall, out the window onto the roof *again*, then in through the terminal room window.

Plumbing in the data center

I watched an IBM mainframe service tech remove the jacket of his three piece suit, roll up his shirt sleeves, strike up a propane torch and re-sweat the solder joints on the copper pipe for the water cooling system of an ES/9000.

Awesome.

IBM systems and development trends

Unification is the word of the day. It did always seem odd to me that they went through all that trouble to get everyone on System/360, and then introduced a dozen other lines.

IBM had the right idea back in April 1964 when it announced the System/360 mainframe, and it even had a name that reflected its understanding of what customers wanted. The idea was that a single line of machines, using different processor and storage technologies, would be united by levels of abstraction that would allow them to all run the same applications, but just on a different scale and with different price points.

It is a lesson that IBM quickly forgot when it bifurcated its market in 1969 with the advent of the System/3 minicomputer, and I still believe that IBM did this for legal reasons in case the U.S. Justice Department tried to bust Big Blue up over antitrust issues.

Mainframe programmers wanted

Looks like my investment in JCL may just pay off yet.

Mainframes have relied on Cobol and assembler as their programming languages. But these days, not a lot of people are teaching these languages or mainframe management, Semerjian says. Meanwhile, today's university students are preoccupied with learning newer technologies such as .Net and Java. "Despite the fact that [mainframe] apps are core to so many large businesses, to newer programmers there's not as much sizzle in learning mainframe programming," Vallely says.

Free old mainframe to play with

Woot!

Some info about the system. In brief, sign up here.

New Hercules front-end

Behold Jason!

Mainframe programming for mere mortals

Or, why won't IBM let programmers help them?

IBM is in a comfortable niche w/r/t their high end hardware. For "real developers", there is zPDT. It ain't free. In fact, it is well beyond what most FOSS volunteers can afford. So we have free (as in beer) ways of emulating a mainframe, like Hercules. The guys who shouldered the monmuental task of emnuating the mainframe with open-source did an amazing thing. And there are some things Hercules cannot do. So there is a place for zPDT. Maybe IBM is just trying to keep certain business partners comfortable. I hear that many developers are not. (are not "comfortable", that is)

Oracle screws customers

To get at HP, of course. Looks like IBM may be the winner here. Oracle is a devouring monster, I'd be afraid to build too much in their ecosystem.

Previously I offered my thoughts on Oracle's announcement that it is terminating all its development for HP Itanium platforms. This announcement has understandably caused great anxiety and concern within HP's enterprise server community.

GCC on Mainframes

An awesome community effort, and an open letter to R.

Secure mainframe data exchange

Turns out that z/OS supports all modern data exchange methods. Awesome.

Problems in IBM's midrange

Maybe IBM's troubles are just a blip. Maybe the new Power7 boxes that IBM says have more appeal than their predecessors will finally yield a turnaround, the one that should have become visible during the third quarter. But then again maybe not. Maybe there's something really wrong with IBM's midrange sales effort, and maybe it's more than just the midrange, too, because these days Power Systems overlap X64 servers at the low end and match or possibly exceed IBM mainframes at the very top.

Hercules goes commercial