[email protected] (Seymour J Metz) writes: > cloud = timesharing > > Someone else deploys the infrastructure, to you it's a black box. Less > control but also less manpower. Some legal issues. > > No, z/OS is not a cloud, but neither is AIX, *bsd, Linux, windows or > Solaris; it's the deployment that makes it a cloud or not a cloud. You > can have a cloud with z/OS just as much as you can have one with, > e.g., Linux.
In 1968, there were two commercial spin-offs from the IBM Cambridge Science Center ... doing virtual machine based online (commercial) service bureaus. One of the big issues was providing 7x24 non-stop operation. This was in the days when IBM leased the hardware and charges was based on number of hours per month ... based on the "system" clock ... which would run whenever any CPU and/or channel was busy (and continue to run for 400ms after everything was idle). There was lots of work on CP67 to reduce offshift charges when (initially) use was light (and little revenue based on online use) ... this included dark room operation ... not requiring onsite operator ... as well as special terminal channel program that would go to sleep when no characters were arriving ... but would immediately wake up to accept incoming characters (allowing system clock & charges to stop when system idle). They also fairly quickly moved up the value stream specializing in offering services to the financial industry and had to provide significant security features (when multiple competing financial operations all using the same systems). past scince center posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech. Trivia: long after IBM changed from leased to selling hardware ... MVS still had timer event that would wake up every 400ms (to make sure system clock never stopped). other triva: science center also started offering its virtual machine CP67 services to other internal IBM operations as well as (free) to various employees and students at various institutions of higher learning in the Cambridge/Boston area. CSC had also ported apl\360 (typically ran with 16kbyte workspace) to CMS as CMS\APL ... including allowing workspace to be virtual address space size and offering API for system services (like file read/write) ... greatly expanding the real-world applications that could be done on APL. Early user was business planning/forcasting from IBM Armonk hdqtrs that loaded the most holy of IBM data (detailed customer information) on the system ... for modeling ... and significant security had to be demonstrated ... making sure people like MIT students wouldn't be able to access corporate data. For over decade the large cloud operations have claimed they assemble their own server systems for 1/3rd the price of brand name server systems (a typical cloud megadatacenter will have over half million blade systems), likely part of the motivation for IBM selling off its server product business ... along with announcements from the server chip (processors, etc) makers were shipping over half their chips directly to the large cloud operations. The large cloud operations have reduced the cost of their servers so drastically that they are able to significantly over provision for "on-demand" (i.e. huge number of idle systems that can be instantly "on-demand" operation) ... these costs are possibly 1/100,000 the cost/BIPS of typical IBM mainframe. Because they have reduced server costs so significantly power&cooling has become increasing major portion of cloud megadatacenter ... and they have put significant pressure on server chip makers to optimize execution power consumption as well as drop to zero when systems are idle (but instantly on for "on-demand). There are some number of vendors looking at leverage a lot of the enormous work down by the cloud megadatacenters for marketing in-house cloud operations to businesses. The comparison to the 60s virtual machine commercial online operation ... is cloud datacenter (with over half million systems) typically operate with staff of 80-120 people (compared to cp/67 dark room operation) ... and power/cooling dropping to zero when systems are idle ... but are instantly on (compared to 360 channel programs allowing channel to go idle allowing system meter to stop ... but instantly on) ... as well as quite a bit of work on security. Early 70s also had TYMSHARE (on west coast) offering online commercial services (now with VM370). In Aug1976, TYMSHARE also started offering is CMS-based online computer conference "free" to SHARE as VMSHARE ... archives here: http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare other trivia: as undergraduate in the 60s, I was brought into small group in Boeing CFO office to help with consolidating all dataprocessing into Boeing Computer Services (independent business unit to better monetize the investment, just renton datacenter had something between $200M-$300M, 60s dollars, in 360 mainframes, 360/65s were arriving faster than they could be installed, boxes constantly being staged in the hallways around the machine room). I had done a great deal of os/360 optimization previously at the university as well as rewritten large parts of CP67 ... which I was also to install). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
