Not to be contrarian, but - well - let me be contrarian. Rant coming. TL;DR -
there needs to be a free version of z/os & it’s siblings sooner than later, to
not do this is to potentially starve the platoform out of existence as we know it.
I don’t think, for a moment, that when people ask for a mainframe-in-the-cloud
type experience, that they are asking for Linux One or linux on Z, the want a
z/OS-type platform on which to learn and play. Otherwise it's just Ubuntu or
SUSE, like I can run on my laptop. For anyone but the kernel developers and a
few select others, most would never know the difference (outside of
performance, perhaps). It’s certainly not the classic z/OS / VM / tpf / etc
experience that most here talk about daily.
As for the other offerings, none are the same (or even really the same sport)
as having your hands on a “real” z/OS (or z/VM, etc.) mainframe - the closest
of which for people not buying hardware would be z/PDT. By real, I mean you
can provision storage, configure parmlibs, install software with SMP/E, develop
load modules, configure platform software and tcp/ip, etc etc. IPL the system,
crash it, figure out how to build a stand alone dump. Figure out how to read
that dump, get the system up and running again. Gen a system from scratch;
install an upgrade with a serverpac and so on.
Until IBM figures out that they’re losing opportunities because of this, I fear
the platform is going to get harder and harder to support and defend. Most (if
not all) of the cloud - or public offerings on Z (again, not talking Linux) are
for Developers. Master the mainframe, z Systems cloud trial (RDT for z “Test
drive development tools”) etc. <- all focused on developers.
But, where will the next generation of Storage Engineers & System Programmers
come from? Who will write the DFSMS/ACS routines, or write the assembler-based
system exits? Who will wade through SMP/E reading hold data and figuring out how to
fix or remove a wonky PTF that didn’t apply correctly or went PE? Who will
configure the VTAM / 3270 applications and the intricate work tweaking TCP/IP net
filter and ATTLS? Who is going to do the detailed capacity / performance analysis
and tuning of the storage, wlm, cpus and so on? To say nothing of the gargantuan
task of securing these beasts.
These are skills with theoretical backgrounds in many disciples, but the
specifics and technical difficulties pertaining to using those skills on this
platform are non-trivial. People need time, mentors and opportunity to learn
it. That opportunity is nearly gone - or unrealistically appraised at this
point.
Sure there are a few colleges which teach these skills, and the tried and true way
of apprenticeship still works if you can get it, but how prevalent is that?
Moreover, why would a fresh-out-of-school person take a chance on an OS/platform
that they’ve never gotten to put their hands on? In today’s world, they can get a
free/inexpensive version of every single OS on the planet for personal use
(Microsoft & VMWare development and full evaluation versions, Linux is open
source and free, as is the BSD’s, etc etc) - except for z/OS and it’s time-tested
brethren. Why is that? How does that secrecy help generate buzz and the next
generation of loyal mainframers?
To ask the fresh, talented, next generation of techies to go to work in a
mainframe shop - or to go to a school to learn mainframe is asking them to take
a gigantic leap of faith. They have the opportunity to be hands-on with
99.999% of the tech out there before they leave high school; but somehow,
someone expects that they’l self-select into becoming a z/OS sysprog? Why
would they? Not having a clear track to this pipeline is the single biggest
security issue and threat to this platform there is. Companies will hire the
remaining few, then outsource, then divest - unless we (and IBM) start driving
interest by making the platform (the whole platform, not just the development
bits) available to anyone who wants to play with it.
It’s a huge opportunity missed, and I hope it changes soon. One of the hardest things to see is, after giving a talk at a non-mainframe centric conference, people who come and ask how they can get involved directly. You can’t. Unless you go to work or school somewhere special, or are willing to lay out several thousand out of your own pocket - you just have to admire it from afar. And that’s too bad, because it’s a kick butt OS and a super challenging ecosystem that the unbelievably sharp new technologists would sink their teeth into. They’d eat it up. Many were programming from the time they could walk and computers just. make. sense. But this computer, with it’s super configurable and somewhat non-forgiving “you better know what you’re doing or how to figure it out” practices and protocols, requires time and a steep ramp-up period to become proficient. It has to start now.
When you go to those job fairs, conferences, or just on the next marketing push
- come up with a way to give away for free or cheap a copy of these OS’s that
run on a hypervisor like zpdt for people to just play with, destroy, hack, but
mostly learn. Will there be some negative consequences ? Maybe. But fear
not, the rest of the OS providers who have gone before in this space have
already figured that out, with a mix of bug bounties, licensing agreements and
lawyers. But that’s a topic for a different post. Sorry for taking up all
your bytes this morning . Take care :)
Chad
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