Wouldn't it be great if things like MVS were totally no-strings attached Free? You can download MVS along with TCO for hercules, but you aren't allowed to run them on an ESA/390 for free. This is despite the fact that IBM wil not sell you support on any of these products (including the ESA/390 itself) If these programs were freely available, even exclusively to universities, the cost analysis for maintaining our pair of ESA/390s over replacing them with commodity hardware and microsoft + peoplesoft will look like the distance between the extinction of dinosaurs and the dawn of man. In the meantime I am looking at entering the workforce with a degree focused on IBM enterprise systems and my institution doesn't have a mainframe. It's really embarrassing, frankly, but Illinois politicians know best. Never mind how far up the z10 bc sales were last year. The administration here never presumes to know what the nursing department needs in terms of equipment, why are they convinced they know better than our faculty what the landscape of the IT industry is?!
Erik Johnson On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Dodds, Jim <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes you are on the same ERP system we have because I have talked to your > school in the past. It's funny that we were going to join Marist, who > has IBM assisting in this venture, to get the new ERP system to run on > Z/Linux. After they get it to work and I am sure they will and in a few > years the ERP vendor will bless it and it will be much cheaper to run on > Z/Linux. So by then management will have too much money and ego invested > to be able switch back. > > Jim Dodds > Systems Programmer > Kentucky State University > 400 East Main Street > Frankfort, Ky 40601 > 502 597 6114 > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Joe O'Brien > Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 11:02 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Old IBM Mainframe - Still Useful? > > Amazingly,a consistent story. The same has happened here as we are going > from an IBM environment to a SUN Solaris and/or Windows environment to > run our ERP system(s). > > Dodds, Jim wrote: >> Good luck with that. My management here too is going to throw out the > mainframe. We (IT) were establishing working relationships with Marist, > IBM, and the ERP vendor to get our new university ERP system to run > under z/Linux but upper management caught wind of it and made us stop. > Marist I assume is going on with the project to move their university > ERP system (which will be the same as ours) to z/Linux. So now we are > planning on spending close to $200,000 on Dell hardware and Microsoft > server software. This doesn't include the licenses for the Oracle > software. >> >> Jim Dodds >> Systems Programmer >> Kentucky State University >> 400 East Main Street >> Frankfort, Ky 40601 >> 502 597 6114 >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Erik N Johnson >> Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 9:53 AM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: Old IBM Mainframe - Still Useful? >> >> It is very true, however, that you can run several LPARs with >> Linux/390 on them. Also, MVS is available for free nowadays, as well >> as several other major components that run on the pre-Z >> 360-derivatives. So although you won't be able to teach your kids VM >> you CAN show them what IBM big iron can do. Have you approached >> anybody with the IBM academic initiatives program? Both Marist and >> Colorado have Z systems which they will provide accounts on for >> students. My university (Northern Illinois University) is getting >> this from Marist, as our administration have their heads on backwards. >> Some Microsoft evangelist has convinced a bunch of our administrators >> that our ESA/390s are dinosaurs that need to be surplussed and >> replaced by a cluster of x86 boxen running peoplesoft on windows >> server. It's complete garbage and it means they're going to tell IBM >> (who was going to give us a brand new z10 bc next year) to get >> stuffed. >> >> Does anybody know where I could point out to my administration what a >> HUGE mistake they are making? Our curriculum has been based around >> the IBM mainframe for half a century! I can only imagine having been >> forced to learn x86 assembler... *shudder*. When did people forget >> that IBM > Intel?!?! >> >> Erik Johnson >> >> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:16 AM, John Summerfield >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Andrew Wiley wrote: >>> >>>>> Andrew, >>>>> >>>>> Unless you already have a release of VM on this hardware, you can't > get >>>>> a VM that will run on this hardware anymore. So you are pretty > much out >>>>> of luck. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> IBM does have an academic initiative which provides incentives for >>>>> higher education on System z: >>>>> >>>> Well, this is a high school computer science course, so we don't > have >>>> much budget and, quite frankly, we aren't a priority in... anything. >>>> >>>> However, the machine I'm investigating is being offered by a local >>>> business that's decommissioning it, and I can ask if they plan to >>>> include VM. >>>> Assuming they do, could the machine be useful? It wouldn't be used >>>> under high load; it would be hosting student projects. >>>> >>> It's 31-bit, so recent SLES and RHEL don't run on it because those > are >>> 64-bit. Debian probably does, and Slack might. >>> >>> This might be a time when, depending on just what you want, a nice HP >>> DC5850[1] (desktop PC) might win out. They're 64-bit (we have AMD >>> processors in ours), they support 8 Gbytes of RAM, run the latest > Fedora >>> and openSUSE, and you can use virtualisation. >>> >>> It's not a mainframe by any means, but finding someone who knows the >>> software is pretty simple (no VM gurus needed), and it's a setup the >>> kids can replicate at home if they wish (and can afford a newish pc). >>> >>> If you particularly want to run Linux/390, that's possible too. Just >>> install Hercules - it's probably in the software repo. >>> >>> 1 I mention this just because I have personal knowledge of them. >>> Probably, other vendors have something equivalent. One of the things > I >>> like about these is the diagnostics DVD. It boots Linux, so I figured >>> the chances of running recent Linux is probably feasible. It is, > unlike >>> the DC7700 when new. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Cheers >>> John >>> >>> -- spambait >>> [email protected] [email protected] >>> -- Advice >>> http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php >>> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html >>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 >>> >>> You cannot reply off-list:-) >>> >>> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> 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 >>> >>> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> 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 >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> 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 >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
