Purchase of an Intel XEON system to run a Linux system with zPDT could be used purely to run Z/OSMF. Would that be good enough? I think that might be cheaper than real Z upgrades, but I have not done any arithmetic on software costs. z/OS volume images could then be transferred using FTP when needed.
Lennie Dymoke-Bradshaw https://rsclweb.com ‘Dance like no one is watching. Encrypt like everyone is.’ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Andrew Rowley Sent: 18 May 2022 01:35 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Mark your calendars for July 10, 2022 - CustomPac intended removal date On 17/05/2022 2:27 pm, Brian Westerman wrote: > What will be done for the smaller systems z13s level that only have 15MSU > (80MIP) in the entire box? I have a certain sympathy with the z/OSMF developers. 80 MIPS was a small system even back in the late 1990s wasn't it? Hardware limitations due to software pricing is strangling the low end mainframe market in particular. It would benefit customers, software vendors and IBM if IBM could get these small systems onto more reasonably sized hardware. We get a certain pleasure from extracting everything possible from a small system, but in reality it's not productive work. I would love to see IBM say the smallest system they will sell is e.g. equivalent computing power to a low-mid Intel system, maybe minimum 4 CPU and 200 MSU - and no sub capacity measurement below that size. (On my Dallas RDP system z/OSMF starts in about 40s. That system runs single threaded Java work at a similar speed to my desktop PC. Roughly converting, I think that makes my 6 core desktop PC equivalent to 600-700 MSU.) Vendors would be forced to rework their pricing for small systems. If the jump is big enough and forced by IBM you can't just tell customers to suck it up and fork out the big bucks or you lose the customer. It would cause pain for vendor pricing teams, but would benefit their developers and the mainframe market in the long run. It would be more practical to run new work on the mainframe (including z/OSMF), reduce the pressure to move work off small systems, and eliminate many performance problems. zIIPs, System Recovery Boost etc are really just workarounds for the fact that the smallest Z systems are too small. So much effort expended to limit system capacity to last century levels... -- Andrew Rowley Black Hill Software ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
