Categorizing workloads as "small" versus "large" doesn't mean much (at least not to me). What you need to look at is the CPU utilization of the application, versus how much I/O gets done. For Linux/390, you want to favor I/O intensive applications over CPU intensive ones. Linux on Intel would be just the opposite. You don't want to run prime number search programs on Linux/390 (or any of distributed.net's cryptographic crunchers, etc.).
You're right that Linux/390 on z/VM is good at handling a fairly large number of "small things." Web serving and/or database serving would seem to be a very good fit for the platform. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Eric Sammons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 8:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Is Linux on z/VM suitable for "large workloads" I have been under the impression for some time that zLinux, while a terrific solution for some applications, may not be the best solution or fit for "large workloads". Certain colleagues of mine have begun evaluating where zLinux might fit in our organization should we choose to go in that direction. They have listed Linux on Intel as suitable for small workloads and zLinux as suitable for large workloads. In fact I have been of the understanding that zLinux would be a solution for many guests installed under z/VM running small to medium workloads, i.e web server farm. I keep thinking back to the Linux 2.6 kernel which allows for a larger number of CPUs, more memory and more disk to be addressed. In addition I see Los Alamos implementing 2000+ AMD CPUs for almost 12 trillion operations per second of processing power (This information from ZDNet regarding Lightning, August 14, 2003). To me that sounds like a large work load on an Intel type platform. So my question is, to those of us using zLinux, what are we seeing it implemented for and where is working best? Thank you, This information will prove very helpful. Eric Sammons (804)697-3925 FRIT - Infrastructure Engineering
