> Having received a response from Mark and Tom I would ask the following > question, what is the feeling among the group about > consolidating a couple > hundred Unix servers running WebSphere and databases onto > Linux/390 under > z/VM. I guess to better phrase it based on Tom's response, would > WebSphere application servers be classified as transactional in the > opinion of the group? I of course understand that it > ultimately depends > on the application written but Java in general, what would be the > implementation most would lean towards? (Linux on Intel or > Linux/390 for > z/VM)
I realize this is late to the party, but .... Since we don't know what the application does or how tightly coupled it is to MF-hosted data, I would tend to do a composite solution (compute-intensive portions on Intel, data access and marshalling on 390). The biggest problem with an all-Intel solution is the cost of the WAS licenses -- which will likely vastly exceed the HW cost savings. The 390 side will win on licensing and on managment (if planned correctly), but will have difficulties with the entry-cost unless you have existing unused capacity. Other than noting that most Java code is hideously poorly written in terms of resource utilization, the language doesn't much matter. It's what the language tries to do that counts. The mix of the two technologies works a bit better in allowing you to place the parts where they make sense. >From a capacity point of view, running several hundred WAS instances is going to be pretty resource intensive. If you do go to the Z, consider running multiple applications in a smaller # of WAS instances to reduce the JVM and startup overhead if your application permits.
