Dave Jones writes: > Thanks, Alan, that's what I wanted to know....we still treat these > blades as "distributed" servers, only they're connected to the z via a > secure, fast, internal network. Excellent.
But wait, there's more... Once a blade is purchased and entitled to be put in the zBX, as soon as it's put in the zBX it becomes part of the "z world". Assuming there's the usual z hardware support in place from IBM, the support immediately changes to 24x7 for the blade, it integrates into the "call home" mechanism of the box, it's monitored and watched just like any other z component and if anything goes wrong the usual z CE comes out and does the repair/replacement. Similarly, all firmware/hypervisor changes are done via the z HMC in the same way as, for example, channel cards, crypto cards and so on. I've already heard of one customer that's considering adding a zBX to a coupling-facility-only footprint (even though there's going to be no app data connectivity between the z196 and the zBX) purely to get the benefits of moving that level of management of the blade estate into the arena of z technology and z support. Oh, and when the zBX is installed, it doesn't just get dumped at the data centre door by the truck driver (as I'm told some blade chassis arrive)--it counts as "z" and so the full installation gets done in the same way as other z hardware. --Malcolm -- Malcolm Beattie Mainframe Systems and Software Business, Europe IBM UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
