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Dinosaurs?

steeleweed 19th Aug 2008

We run between 250 and 300 servers right now (not sure how many because we keep adding 3-5 a week). We run one mainframe. Not a day goes by without 2 or 3 (or more )servers crashing. The mainframe has never crashed in the 8 years I've been running it.
If the server-based Apps were on Linux, we could port them all to the mainframe as Virtual systems and have plenty of CPU, bandwidth (nobody beats IBM at I/O) and performance. All the disks would be Raid 5, much of the Operating System overhead would be in the micro-code, Windows servers tend to crash if you push them beyond 50% but mainframes keep chugging along up to 100%.

It took IBM years, (and I lived/worked through through the years when they were working out the kinks) but they finally got it right. Their VM is so far ahead of anything Intel-based that it isn't in the same league.

I have been working with mainframes since 1963 and with PCs since they were invented (by IBM). Take my word for it - whatever you can do on an Windows or Linux box, can be done better on a mainframe.
DB2 is in a similar situation - it's the best database ever built but in runs like a pig if the Admin is not really good. If you have the skills, DB2 blows the socks off any other database. If you have the skills, the mainframe outperforms anything else.

Total Cost of Ownership?
In a small show (under 50 servers), Intel-based systems may make sense, but in a real shop, if you add up the cost of hardware, software licenses, footprint costs, power and people, the bigger the outfit grows, the better the mainframe advantage.

Google has hundreds of thousands of servers, Amazon probably has thousands also. I've seen services disruptions at both places along with other major players in the Intel-based world.
I know of mainframes that have been running non-stop for years and applications spread across multiple mainframes so the applications are CPU-independent and which have been online non-stop for decades.
Try thay with Intel/Microsoft.