On Tuesday, 07/27/2004 at 09:31 EST, James Melin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > IF you plan to just play with it, putting it on an LPAR is fine. You'll > still get some idea of what you're dealing with. However, since you only > have a finite amount of lpars, doing this rapidly becomes a limiting factor > when you want to have many Linux guests.
And I think that last sentence is the crucial point: z/VM makes sense if creating additional LPARs becomes too burdensome or you find that your LPARs are too small (i.e. memory) to be effective. This will usually show up when the strategy is to consolidate the workloads of some carefully selected distributed servers onto zSeries. If, on the other hand, you are a z/OS shop and want only to create one or two partitions for SAP or Domino, then an LPAR is sufficient. And it isn't just for "play", though as you suggest, buying z/VM when all you want to do is kick the tires is certainly overkill. You may choose to add z/VM for other reasons (automation, virtual networking, test, ...), of course, but there are times when running Linux in an LPAR is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. (But be aware that Linux servers breed like peng...uh...bunnies. Saying "I'll only have two Linux servers on the mainframe" is like saying "I'll only eat TWO potato chips.") Alan Altmark Sr. Software Engineer IBM z/VM Development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
