Mainframe Linux

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The perfect environment for Outsdanding Linux.

Excellent article Murph, sometimes we need to uncover some very unknown idiotic comments from big corp clueless about computing.

But unfortunately your scenario is exactly the one where a Linux Environment is absolutely outstanding and unbeatable.
That is the right place to displace mainframes and replace old gear by X86_64 Linux.

The point is Murph that the path of systems evolution is clearly favoring Linux.
Not mainframes.

Todays unbeatable performance, stability, safety and reliability systems are built around Linux.
Dirt cheap, fast, reliable.
How? Simple:

Fortunately you made a point about this data processing application scenario.
In practice today a single Rack with 84 Servers (yes each 1U for application server is a Dual Quad Core system with two identical Motherboards) can have up to :

84 Serves, = 168 Cores (One hundred and Sixty eight Cores) Dual Quad Core 2GHz 1066 FSB, 8MB Cache.
16GB / Node = 672GB ECC 667MHz RAM total (max 32GB/node total max of 1344TB! if needed ... )
36.7GB /Node = 1.577 TB 10.000RPM total in the rack (SATA2 Drives ... I know they are not for DB and actually can up-date up to 1TB raid 1 per node for the same price! 42TB /rack ... all RAID 1 each node 4 hdd's )
Each node cost about 5000US$ ... 2500US/Server !!! And what a server!
... that costs about 210.000$
A complete Supercomputer for 210.000$ ...

The trick is to use Software to make a system act like a distributed system: A Mega Mainframe for this particular scenario.
Use a couple of servers to run only Apache 2 with mod_jk in a redundant configuration, acting as a mod_jk load distributor. fro the user requests.
We get all of our servers to receive a fair share of requests.

For a database use a huge multiGigabit input with fiber channels disks ...
Make the application speed oriented: And that means: The database acts as a database _only_ , meaning it only handles data, not a single calculation or complex storage procedures are handled.
Let that small Supercomputer Datacenter in a single Rack do what it does best, take care of all the application.
Yes I know ... DB folks will not like this scenario ... no sir!
They do not trust programmers (I also must have an eye on the code all the time ... but also know stories about db's ... tss tss tss tss mistrust is mutual folks )

With this type of solutions Murph ... call whatever mainframe you can get ... it will look slow to a crawl in comparison to this systems ...
As always the trick is on the software ...

A huge piece software in that system with a decent database solution can sustains Millions of requests per minute no problem!
(As long as the database sustain the hit .. ...

In an actual system even in a big Corporate ERP application integrated Logistics, CRM, financial part and so on, one does not even need all that much servers, only ten would more then sufficient for 10.000 -20.000 simultaneous sessions the users would have a instantaneous reply to every single request.

Now, I wonder how much a mainframe system would cost to have this type of responsiveness, interactivity ... I wonder ... and also how would be the price form maintenance, licensing, operation ... and last but not the least, programming costs ....


Regards,
Pedro

Posted by: p_msac@...   Posted on: 08/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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