On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Tom Duerbusch wrote: > My tangent on this wasn't brute cpu power, it is on the cost of such power. > > You know as well as I do, that it is very hard to justify mainframes > just on hardware cost. But when you consider the manpower cost and use > of the "white" area along with environmentals, there is justification. > And if you can throw in the cost of software licenses, so much the better.
The cost of sofware licences for you and your mainframe to run Linux are precisely the same as mine. No savings either way. I showed you what my Athlon can do. Price one. Compare my number with yours, running Linux on the iron. For this you don't want VM in the way, you want the full power of a single CPU. Price your CPU vs mine. I win. You don't buy a mainframe for serious computation any more. Unless you've serious computations that take a very long time to run, you can get an IBM xBox or equivalent with all the reliability and availability you need. I have this uptime at present: [EMAIL PROTECTED] summer]$ uptime 8:08pm up 53 days, 3:07, 9 users, load average: 0.08, 0.03, 0.01 [EMAIL PROTECTED] summer]$ on an aging Pentium II, not even on UPS. On UPS, I'd expect years, unless I take it down to replace the kernel. > > Of course if the cost of manpower, isn't a concern, forget about all > computers and get a building full of clerks with pencils <G>. > And as I've said in one of the past posts on this thread, that I've > always been of the opinion that CPU intensive workloads really were not > suitable for Linux/390. But that guy running 7 images on 9 IFL engines > (that to me, fits the description of CPU intensive), does have me wondering. Seven images in a nine IFL engines is probably seriously underworking the system. Either that or he's running the wrong workload. And, the geekpower required to look after it's probably no better than that required to look after seven X440s. I've no doubt I can run seven copies of Hercules and run seven virtual zBoxes all running zLinux. It doesn't actually mean I'm doing useful work. >From what I've come to understand on this list, Linux doesn't actually use the S/390 hardware all that well, and to get the most out of it you need VM under it. If someone's reported running a well-balanced load on S/390 with Linux, it's escaped me. If you're flogging the CPUs and giving your disks a good workout, and if it's properly tuned, then you're probably getting good use from it. If your CPUs are heavily loaded, and the disks are idle, then the workload's probably on the wrong hardware. My MIPS are cheaper than yours. > > For the last year, I have talked up putting Linux images on the > mainframe. And if they become too resource hungry, we can move them to > another platform, but with the 7 images on 9 IFL engines, apparently > being justifiable, I've backed off on that line of justification. You can't make a sensible recommendation without knowing the kind of workload. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb
