OK - I'm going to play serious devil's advocate here,
at the risk of the ire of several people, I'm sure.
But, I think we need to do something more 'direct'
in terms of refuting the arguments.
I've seen a couple of posts that have a sentiment of
"well - this guy doesn't know what he's talking about."
But - I'd like to see some data and arguments to back up that sentiment.
If I break down his argument, these are the points I get from it:
1 - A mainframe CPU is about as fast as a PIII
2 - SCSI is SCSI - mainframe SCSI isn't going to be any
better/faster than any other SCSI.
3 - Linux is Linux, running on PC Linux is just as
"good" as mainframe Linux.
4 - Mainframes are awfully expensive for what you
get, given #1-3 above.
5 - The mainframe is very good at running it's legacy
apps, but not the new ones.
Now - how do we break-down the arguments and address them?
Simply jumping up-and-down and saying "nyaa-nyaa - this guy
is wrong" plays directly into his "these guys are a bunch
of clueless zealots who need to be consigned to the back
corner for there mutual back-patting session" idea. I suggest
we don't fall into that trap.
If you have some real data/experience to offer, please make it
known. If not, then we have a problem.
I think we could come up with an argument that says "well,
yes - we did have a PC farm of Linux machines; we consolidated
all of that quite successfully on a mainframe (because of #2 and
#3 above) and had a tremendous cost savings."
Or - something like "yes - the mainframe I/O did, in fact,
run faster than the PC for my DB2 database."
Or - something like "using the advanced backup facilities
on my SHARK, I was able to completely eliminate scheduled
downtime for backups."
Or - something like "using hipersockets allowed me to get
to the z/OS database (where all of the PCs are trying to
get to anyway) and change my average web response time from
M to N, an X% improvement."
Please understand, I'm not necessarily in agreement with this
fellow, but I'd sure like to have a reasoned response. If he
doesn't have a clue, then demonstrate it. Let's beat this
sentiment back with rationality.
- Thanks -
- Dave Rivers -
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: (919) 676-0847
Get your mainframe programming tools at http://www.dignus.com
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