DB2 Performance Tuning

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Saving Money and the Planet with the Most Open System – System Z

DaveBeulke Tags: z system 546 Visits

After the original post of “Reminding Management of the Advantages of System Z,” many people commented on how their management is increasingly out of touch with the mainframe. Also, comments also stated that the System Z environment is really processing almost all of the transactions in their company and how all the Windows platform systems continue to have scalability issues.

Although the mainframe revenue for IBM suffered in 2009 because of its upgrade cycle, the introduction of the z10 System platform demonstrates it is the best open system. Yes, that is correct, the mainframe is the most open system available because it runs all types of workloads: the legacy standards of Assembler, COBOL, PL1 etc. but also C++, C#, Java, PHP and the rest of the languages that run on UNIX and Windows boxes.

Also, some people are starting to run “virtualized” windows on the mainframe environments. PCWORLD highlighted this capability in early 2009With the System Z speed, scalability and network, the mainframe continues to be the best solution for all types of workloads. A nice short demo of z/Vos is on YouTube along with many other videos that you can show to your iPhone-obsessed boss, demonstrating that consolidating those hundreds of MS SQL Server instances is also possible.

The story of virtualization continues to drive UNIX consolidation to the mainframe. In 2009 Allianz consolidated 60 servers into a single mainframe, saving substantial operating, licensing and energy costs while improving scalability. This story detailed in this ComputerWorld article is being repeated at many companies as the mainframe IFL, zIIP and zAAP specialty engines continue to bring processing power at PC or minimized prices. This consolidation activity has a very short term return on investment as these efforts pay for themselves usually in the first year and reduce power consumption dramatically making it a “green” project.

The next time the hundreds of windows or UNIX server configurations need an OS, database or other software upgrade make sure to mention how System Z is saving other companies time and operating costs and overall costs through consolidating these environments to the best cost alternative -- the mainframe System Z.

Reminding Management of the Advantages of System Z

DaveBeulke Tags: z system 1 Comment 798 Visits

During the 2010 IBM Z Summit road show, there were several presentations detailing the mainframe platform advantages over UNIX and Windows platforms such as the lowest total cost of ownership, the best availability and unparalleled scalability. These presentations cut through the rumors with detailed facts and figures of different platform configurations. Download these presentations and distribute them to your management for a little reminder why the mainframe continues to be the best platform for your enterprise applications.

The Windows and UNIX platforms proponents always discount and minimize the total cost of ownership, availability and scalability topics. It is our duty to periodically remind management of the extra costs of these UNIX and Windows systems with their huge power consumption costs, software license fees, and software maintenance costs of working with several hundred or thousands of disparate systems. The mainframe quietly continues to process the majority of the transactions at the Fortune 500 companies and everyone, especially younger management types who think the world can run on an iPhone, needs to understand that the System Z infrastructure is the best backbone for any company.

The System Z mainframe is also evolving since it now has specialized processors such as the IFL, zIIP and zAAP to reduce overall operational and licensing costs. These specialty processors, along with the smaller configuration of the System Z offer a single small platform that can consolidate any number of UNIX workloads into a single footprint with a smaller greener energy footprint and better licensing configuration.

The presentations detail benchmarks, licensing fees and labor costs of various mainframe versus UNIX platform configurations. The figures show it sometimes takes double the number of processor cores on a UNIX configuration to start to scale out a configuration. Even more UNIX processors are required to achieve transaction rates that are still only performing one-fourth of what the mainframe System Z executes. These UNIX systems are also dedicated to the production transaction environment with no thought of supporting testing, QA or failover facilities that have yet to be priced or considered, features that come standard within the System Z environment.

System Z also continues to grow because of its faster chips. Ask any PC or UNIX platform personnel “what platform has the fastest clock speed processors” and you will quickly find out who keeps up with the industry information. The chip clock speeds of the System Z and other IBM platforms have improved like the rest of the PC industry. In fact, the System Z z10 chip operates at 4.4 GHz and comes in a 64-way quad core configuration that can speed up any application performance problem. This is almost twice as fast as the HP Superdome processors and a third faster than the Intel Nehalem chips.

So the mainframe continues to lead the industry. Does your management know the cost savings and performance figures of System Z? Tell them and show them the presentations before someone tries to “replace the mainframe” again with a more troublesome, power hunger, bad performing clustered iPhone configuration.

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