I agree. You can tell everyone all you want about how the mainframe
runs the business-critical applications, that it can handle I/O out the wazoo
(painful concept, when you think about it), how other platforms are only now
implementing things that MVS has had for years, but when you mention that you
have to take online systems away from users for an hour for a simple clock
change you punch a serious hole in the whole "high-tech" mainframe rep.
Add to that the fact that the little boxes are getting to be "good
enough" in terms of uptime, and we have a serious public relations problem.
(I'm sorry that Ed has to reboot his Windows PC five times a week, but I rarely
have to reboot either my work or home Windows machine more than once or twice a
month.)
Is the mainframe the best solution by far for a whole host (Host! Ha!)
of applications? You bet. Are we losing the perception war? In most shops,
probably so.
Jon
<snip>
Get something else. My iBook says, now:
500 $ uptime
8:18 up 14 days, 10:34, 4 users, load averages: 0.15 0.03 0.16
... and I once reached about 400 days on my Solaris workstation.
But I perceive a significant dearth of objectivity in this thread.
Admit it. The PFCSKs are right on this one. There's no justification
nowadays for a requirement to POR (not just IPL, mind you, POR) to
make certain clock changes. Shrug. It's just something the
designers of the TOD clock overlooked. Maybe things will improve
with the newly announced time protocol.
</snip>
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