Does anybody hear remember a software product from a Russian company that 
allowed one to run Linux as
an address space under OS/390?  If memory serves me correctly, I think this was 
in the 1990's, possible early
2000's.

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of 
Phil Smith III
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2022 2:26 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Use of zCX

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>It likes a LOT of real memory and it appears that the running instance
consumes the full amount of real memory allocated to it for the duration, 
making it unavailable to zOS for paging or any other use.



Well, sure-that memory use is Linux caching files in memory. This has all been 
explored, analyzed, and solved under z/VM years ago; alas, z/OS doesn't have 
the same kinds of controls, so it's going to be a problem with zCX until and 
unless IBM adds some knobs.



I'm with Dave Jones re "Where's the real value?" I remember when IBM first 
proposed what became zCX, I asked what the point was. The answer I got was 
"It's politically hard/impossible to get an LPAR created to run z/VM (not to 
mention paying for z/VM) or to run Linux on the bare iron". A technical 
solution to a political problem is painful to contemplate, but is sometimes 
necessary, and it appears that's what zCX is.



Running an entire operating system under z/OS that isn't acclimated to doing so 
is inherently problematic. Things like Db2 and CICS have spent many, many years 
being made into good z/OS citizens (OK, since CICS has always been under z/OS 
and predecessors, that's obvious-but Db2 started as SQL/DS on VM). Sure, IBM 
can make Linux behave under z/OS, but it's gonna take a while! And the real 
value is still unclear to me, beyond the political hurdles. You're sure not 
going to run hundreds of zCX containers under z/OS, I don't think, as you can 
Linuxen under z/VM.



TonyH: My information is that z/OS (MVS) only uses SIE for zCX, so I think 
that's just two levels of SIE, which presumably/hopefully means vSIE, which 
isn't that bad?



...phsiii (who spent four years doing Linux provisioning under z/VM at 
Linuxcare and then a few years doing performance of Linux under z/VM, so feels 
he has some qualifications to make the above assertions)


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