On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Jim Sibley wrote: > > 2) One model that Linux can handle and I don't see explored very much is > the interactive user model, where many users log on to a single Linux image > (as some do in TSO or CMS). Large 64bit memories would also help this > environment. Instead of having a copy of Linux for each user, there would > be one copy of linux running with many users. I know this is an "old" model > with the internet model now in favor, but there may still be use for it.
I know I'm thoroughly out of touch with reality wrt mainframes. I had the impression people are running servers on them, that there are better ways of persuing the mainframe model with lots of TSO users. I don't know for sure why people want to run lots of virtual linux servers on a mainframe, though I can see some sense when consolidating, to mapping one real server to one virtual server, or where one group (whatever that means to you) previously had several identical real servers, them map them all to a single virtual. Interactive work of the kind done with CICS I see being done these days with a web server and client browsers. The kinds of things I've seen done with TSO - mostly program development and testing - can be done on other hardware. I imagine something along the lines of an X440 could support quite a number of users doing the sort of things I used to do on MVS using TSO and batch jobs. Testing apps developed for the mainframe on Intel boxes would require rebuilding for the target, but I don't think that's unusual anyway. Programmers can login to the xBox from an X-Terminal, or a diskless Pentium running as one. Booting it off the xBox isn't hard, so you'd still get most of the consolidation benefits of moving this work to a mainframe, but running the workload on a machine with a decent amount of CPU power. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb Copyright John Summerfield. Reproduction prohibited.
