Chris, >it doesn't really alter the point I was making >that sysplex design is predicated on sharing resources everywhere. That >design philosophy is what removes single points of failure and enables the >sysplex' marquee features of high availability and in theory, horizontal >scaling. It is equally obvious that that design philosophy is STILL (nearly >20 years on) at odds with the way people by and large continue to use those >systems.
Don't I know it! And I agree that in theory sysplex is a good idea for horizontal growth and availability. And for sharing. In theory. I have learned the hard way (with a lot of scars still hurting!) when I left the IBM software support glasshouse that 'the real world' doesn't care about the theory. All they want is to go on the way they always did it. But they also want to use 'the good things' (namely the pricing advantages that were introduced to push the idea of sysplex forward). Use the new stuff, but don't change anything! Isn't this a very human trait: Don't change the way I have always done this, I am used to it, I am getting older and it is harder to learn new things? (I am sticking with analogue photography, I don't want to deal with the newfangled digital stuff!) >To be utterly blunt, there are many open >systems (and even <gasp> windows systems) out in the big wide world >running >business critical workloads that absolutely run rings around typical z/OS >systems configured in 1989 fashion. And no, I am not kidding about that. >Trust me. I believe you, without seeing proof, and that's saying something! <VBG>. Unfortunately, it is very expensive to set things up sysplex-wise to be really really available and reconfigurable at the drop of a hat. One buys the high availability with a lot of redundancy. Only the very big installations can afford that these days, I think. >I will be the last person to defend software extortion but candidly the >complexity (and development cost) of these products is so high Are they? I have always found the 'sysplex primitives' very straight forward and easy to grasp. I have never really understood why others don't feel like I do :-( >and their addressable market is so small that now *that* I can really believe! >So I'll throw the question to the assembled throng; should IBM abandon >sysplex as the centerpiece of their growth/automation/availability strategy >for z/OS workloads, or should they remove the barriers (real and imagined) >to genuine sysplex adoption and exploitation? But if you vote for abandoning >sysplex, what's your other plan? I want to work in z/OS until I retire, so I opt for removing barriers by making sub-sysplexing more of a strategy. :-) As that is what the PHBs all want. But to me it looks like the future may hold a z-Box, but not necessarily z/OS. IBM appears to push for zLinux, and z/OS falls down. Or the other platforms win making z obsolete, not because they're better, but because they're less expensive. But then, what was first - the high prices or the smaller market? Best regards, Barbara ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
