>>> On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 11:41 AM, in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Grinsell, Don" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: -snip- > Bearing in mind that I'm a zSeries software guy and know only enough > about Linux and AIX administration to be dangerous, how do I answer that > argument? Are his concerns well placed? I know there are lots of > larger organizations than ours putting their eggs in this basket, so > what influenced the choice of Linux over AIX?
Their concerns are only moderately connected to reality. Yes, Linux is not AIX, put IBM in particular has been investing a huge amount of developer time to make Linux better. (IBM is trying to not hurt System p hardware sales by pushing Linux for System p, but I'm not aware of a large number of places running that.) I would say they need to see what modern Linux distributions are capable of. Things that have influenced other people to choose mainframe Linux over AIX: - Better performance for I/O intensive applications - Lower cost, particularly for products licensed by # of CPUs - Better virtualization, leading to better resource utilization - Wider range of application availability (getting there for commercial apps, already there for open source) - What IBM likes to refer to as "Mainframe Qualities of Service." - Open source software provides you with more control over how you run your business. - Rapidly evolving for the better - Lower power, cooling, floor space, and administration costs - Probably lots I've missed. Some of their concerns are more valid. A fair amount of work has been done to be able to get more diagnostic information, such as standalone dumps, kernel crash dumps, etc., but there is still a lot of room for improvement there. Management tools, for those with enough money, are a non-issue these days. "has not earned the level of trust that AIX has."? How does it earn trust unless you use it? Wait until you're the only shop on Earth that's not running it? Oh, and IBM is moving about 3,900 internal AIX systems to mainframe Linux. What does that tell you? Philosophy's nice, but I prefer dealing with reality at work. :) Mark Post ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
