RE: oracle has customers over a barrel

> Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:49:47 +0100 > From: obnoxio@serendipita.com > CC: informix-list@iiug.org > Subject: Re: oracle has customers over a barrel > > Ian Michael Gumby wrote: > > > > I'd say if you were going to run Linux, build out a pair of linux boxes > > and replicate IDS for load balancing and redundancy. > > But if you have a LOT of Linux boxen (not just IDS, but maybe app > servers and webservers and so on), then running Linux on z could make > sense. I once did a "thought exercise" on this and it came down to > having around 30 Linux boxes almost made sense to consolidate on z. The > more you have, the more sense it makes. > Get a bean counter in your 'thought' exercise. ;-) Since we haven't seen any form of 'benchmarking' from IDS, we can assume that its on par ( read: within the same order of magnitude.) with other databases. Mainframe MIPS are horrendously expensive, not to mention that the odds are that the customer hasn't upgraded his mainframe hardware in years. (Also expensive.) So Moore's law works against you on the z as well.... IBM has recognized this and reduced the price of some of their MIPS but not all of them. Not to mention they are in a lawsuit with a company which allows one to run things like DB2 (read expensive MIPS) in a less expensive partition on the mainframe. (Thus protecting their revenue structure...) Also, you have to consider the fact that with Linux boxes you can distribute your application servers, web servers and database servers in to multiple safe silos. You really can't do that with your mainframe. This would allow for better fault tolerance and load balancing. If you cut the dark fiber running in to your machine room, you lose your mainframe. If your system is distributed, you might get bogged down by the loss of a node, but your other servers can pick up the slack. (Assuming that you built in the redundancy using ER and setting up 'live-live' peering. (Of course you could duplicate your mainframe for disaster recovery, however you better not use IBMers (IGS) to do this because I do know of one customer where they never tested for a catastrophic failure... ;-) Also be prepared to fight IBM on costs. The secondary system would have to be in a stand by configuration only. If you went live for load balancing... the costs get doubled. The truth is... you first have to figure out how much do you *have* to spend on a build out and what your performance metrics are before doing this and yes... ymmv so that in some cases a z box may win out. My gut instinct tells me that for most legacy apps still on the big iron, you can port them to Linux boxes and get better performance for much less money. And there's another factor... Suppose you can replace your mainframe with hardware that will fill one rack, maybe two... Is it cheaper to lease/rent space in a data center than to build your own? The point is otc... you have a lot of factors to have to consider as part of your thought exercise. The difference in the cost of the physical plant can mean a *lot* of money. Of course there is one other thing... switch your database from DB2 on the mainframe to GreenPlum since IDS doesn't come in a MP flavor anymore.... Is XPS still being enhanced? ;-) (Note GP isn't *free* but its based on Open Source and their licensing costs are lower than alternatives.) But hey! What do I know? I've only had one cup of coffee and I haven't put a lot of thought in to this. ;-) -G _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/