The person that has this system (I forget which listserv that email exchange happened on), was normally 90-100% utilized. I never got from him how they justfified the resources for this.
Up until this site poped up on my radar, if anyone would have suggested that type of workload with Linux, I wouldn't have suggested a mainframe. I would have rejected the notion out of hand just from a cost perspective. But since someone is actually doing this, if someone had a resource intensive Linux application, I would at least consider it. In this case, the site wasn't running VM. So they didn't have to spend $45K times 9 processors plus an annual payment of $11K * 9 processors. Perhaps a used processors and/or added IFL engines to the current processor. My recommendations have been more on the line of, "lets put it on the mainframe...once in production, if it is using too much resources, we can always offload the work to another Linux platform if the resources are cheaper". IMO, applications tend to stay on the platform where they were developed. Once done, everyone goes off to new projects. Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/22 12:47 AM >>> Running 7 images on 9 processors does not, by itself, indicate that the workload is CPU intensive in nature. It could mean anything, from the 9 CPUs being totally idle, to having them pegged. No information as to system responsiveness has been given, so we don't know anything on which to base any kind of judgment. The bottom line for me still is this: very CPU intensive workloads should be run on something other than a mainframe (let's not quibble about high-end pSeries boxes being mainframes). If there's a decent mix of I/O and CPU use, Linux/390 is worth a look. Low CPU and high I/O is worth a very serious look. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Tom Duerbusch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:21 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: offloading CPU intensive loads from zLinux to cheaper pastures -snip- Until a few months ago, I've had the impression that putting cpu type loads on the mainframe wasn't economical compared to putting the same loads on Intel or Sun platforms. But then I start hearing about some other sites, one that had 7 Linux images in LPAR mode, using 9 processors. Apparently, it was economically justifiable. I still don't understand how. But it did open my eyes to "run the numbers" instead of throwing it out just based on an outdated "rule of thumb". I'm sure there is some room for Intel based cheap mips, but in todays world, I would have to see it to believe it. Next year is a different story. Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting
