Re: No future for DB2

owner-informix-list@iiug.org wrote on 27.07.2005 05:05:08: > > When you really get down to it both AIX and Linux are just different > > versions of UNIX. Our AIX machines are every bit as powerful as the > > mainframe we migrated off of a decade ago. So Linux on a mainframe > > makes perfect sense if you want to run a UNIX style system and the cost > > of Linux is less than other available operating systems. > > > > The issue is more of the cost of mainframe rather than the cost of Linux. > Would anyone want to run Linux on mainframe when they can run it on x86 or > RISC? I am not talking about those who are unfortunately locked into > mainframe. The price/performance difference is just out of this world. Apparently some want to, as there are customers who buy new mainframe hardware, e.g. to run IDS on zLinux on this new hardware. And this is not a just single customer. Of course I don't know what else these customers are doing with their mainframe ... Naturally it is cheaper to e.g. run IDS on Linux/Intel on a Dell computer than to run IDS on zLinux on a mainframe. But if you want to run a big IDS configuration (e.g. 16 CPUs and >= 32 GB memory) on Linux, then I'm not sure if/how that's accomplished on a Dell computer ... You can do so on a RISC-processor, but it may be Solaris, HP-UX, or AIX (and not Linux). Only recently have there been 64-bit releases of IDS on Linux other than zLinux (e.g. AMD 64bit or Power5 architecture). As I understand customers (and my understanding of this is somewhat limited), most are using zLinux on mainframe for consolidating several other big and/or medium sized systems into one big system. And there are many cases where this makes perfect sense. Especially when you consider peak vs. normal resource requirements on different medium-big systems you will often find that you get much better utilization by combining all those systems into one big system. (Instead of 10 RISC machines each with 16 CPUs and 16 GB memory, you may be able to run all these applications on one mainframe with 32 CPUs and 32 GB of memory. While the initial purchase price may not be cheaper, TCO should still be less because of less and centralized administration, less maintainance, maybe higher uptime, etc.) Of course these things need to be analyzed before such decisions and then they should be planned very well before execution. I'm not saying that everybody should throw out their Dell computer and buy a mainframe instead. But I think neither did anybody else. Regards, Martin -- Martin Fuerderer IBM Informix Development Munich, Germany Information Management sending to informix-list