John S. Giltner, Jr. wrote:
[...]
2. Usually all the servers have workload peak in the same time. They
usually form single information system.
Depends on what type of servers and your environment. Our file servers
do not hit their peak at the same time as our print server, or e-mail
servers. Our Windows DC's almost never see about 10-20% cpu utilization.
That's why I used "Usually". It doesn't mean "always". Maybe "usually"
mean "often" while I should use "sometimes".
3. Even If sharing resources could make some savings in term of
megabutes or CPU cycles, it doesn't necessarily mean any savings in
costs. CPU cycles and megabytes in PCs are much cheaper. Maybe cycles
are hard to compare, but memory price is simple to compare - megabyte
has the same meaning.
It also depends. If you know the distributed workload and when it is
busy and when it is not, you might be able to put many boxes on a single
mainframe. Remember, it is still recommended today that you do not put
more that one function on a single Intel server OS.
Another myth. It depends. In my previous life I used to administer such
"all-in-one" servers. The most important factor is performance. There is
no reason to offload machine which is 20% utilized <g>.
I know companies (small ones), which use their single server for every
purpose they need: printing, web, e-mail, file-serving, etc. Sometimes
they buy another one, because the first is overloaded.
[...]
MOST any one of these boxes CPU utilization gets is about 50% and that
is during backups.
IMHO strange. Usually Windows takes 100% during such I/O intensive
activities.
We could easily get 20 of these boxes on 2 IFL's but
we can't convince anybody to do it. Instead we are now going to spend
$100K on blade center with 4-5 blades to try and consolidate 10-15 of
these servers on to 4-5 blades using VMWare ESX.
So, they save a lot of money! <vbg>
IFL cost is approx. $125k, you wanted two of them (250k). Add some
gigabytes of memory (let's say 10GB - cost approx. $100k), add some
channels ($5k per FICON port). z/solution will cost more *in this case*,
even assuming you *already have* z/Machine. I know some companies which
do not have any mainframe <vbg>
Oh, did I mentioned, that on blade Intel slot you can run Linux as well
as Windows ?
Sometimes people have to use Windows, because of their applications.
Where it does come in handy is when you need hundreds of "servers" but
only a few , 10-100, are ever active at one time. Like in a collage
environment. Imagine giving 100 students 5 servers each. At Marist
they do this, with Linux on the mainframe. When you sign up for
computer courses you get 5 virtual Linux images that are yours for the
next 5 years.
College is good example for Linux on mainframe. However production data
centers are not <g>
OK, I'll rephrase it: Production data centers are not *necessarily*.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
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