IBM Launches New Mainframe with Focus on Security and Hybrid Cloud

http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/15/ibm-launches-new-mainframe-with-focus-on-security-and-hybrid-cloud/

by protomyth • 10 years ago

40 21 10 years ago

blakesterz2• 10 years ago

I don't quite understand what they're used for. Who buys these things and what are they doing with them that can't be done with other cheaper alternatives now? The article says they're over $100k.

SteveNuts• 10 years ago

When I worked at $HugeHealthCareCompany they had a ton of Z systems. Mainly used for data crunching on huge data warehouses.

blakesterz2• 10 years ago

Ah, so is it something like $HugeHealthCareCompany can't send this kind of data to AWS or something because of HIPPA or whatever? Along those lines, I'd bet banks and finance places can't ship anything outside either. Makes more sense now :-)

AnonNo15• 10 years ago

Honestly, nothing that commodity x86 servers can't do.

nickpsecurity4• 10 years ago

What commodity servers have Channel I/O with sustained 90+% utilization without virtual machines? And which support virtualization using software that passed pentesting with source? And which have 30+ years uptime at high volume sites?

Really, because I'd love to buy them. I'd have believed you if you said VMS clusters or NonStop systems. They're not x86 either, though, although a VMS port is underway.

scott_s• 10 years ago

A decent background: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/24/heres-why-i...

Basically, highly transactional workloads that have severe performance and reliability requirements. If you're serving a web app, maybe you can spin up a bunch of instances on AWS because while performance and security are important, they're not that important. And by "not that important", I mean not important enough to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on. To a large consumer bank, it is that important. You also may be able to get away with having an eventual consistency model because it's okay if two different users see two different views of your app. But that's not okay for a bank processing credit card transactions, so they are forced to deal with highly transactional workloads which are now consistent.

I had the same questions as you did, but after talking to some of the z systems folks, I think it may be the case that mainframes, or things that look like mainframes, will always be around. Consider that basically the entire consumer banking and insurance industries still use mainframes. It's possible to consider that an artifact of legacy, but it's also possible evidence that their use-case doesn't fit well with the alternatives (clusters of smaller systems).

Disclaimer: I work for IBM Research, but not in this area.

scholia• 10 years ago

Consider that basically the entire consumer banking and insurance industries still use mainframes. It's possible to consider that an artifact of legacy

Legacy is certainly a large chunk of it. The vast majority of Fortune 500 companies have been using IBM mainframes since the 1960s or 1970s, and some were IBM "shops" before computers were invented.

The cost of moving software and data from a proprietary IBM stack would be enormous, even if you could guarantee that it would work. However, the failure rate and cost overruns that appear to be endemic to very large systems development (including IBMs) make moving a risky proposition.

The average CEO is focused on quarterly numbers and is unlikely to stay around for very long. If IBM mainframes were in place decades before the CEO arrived, and will likely be around for at least a decade to come, why take the risk?

jakub_h2• 10 years ago

Didn't pseudo-time solve these things a long time ago, only to be forgotten (and not developed further) by the mainstream?

dontscale• 10 years ago

I think it may be the case that mainframes, or things that look like mainframes, will always be around.

It's also easy to imagine a future where compute workloads begin to dramatically trail behind compute power and space requirements. Then, you've got one of these Z13 mainframes the size of an Apple power adapter plugged into the wall of every home.

Maybe we wouldn't even need cloud providers anymore.

vyrotek• 10 years ago

Someone asked a similar question a few years ago and there was a good discussion on HN about it here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4446880

My father's entire career revolved around IBM's TPF mainframe systems. Airline Reservation Systems, Credit Card Processing, and the IRS use it for extremely high volume processing.

orionblastar• 10 years ago

Mainframes are designed for 100s of users at the same time. They have a lot more I/O than desktop computers have.

There is a lot of legacy COBOL and FORTRAN programs out there still in use that need legacy mainframes to run the code.

nickpsecurity4• 10 years ago

What shocks me is that they still lack highly assured endpoints despite IBM's prior work in that area through Karger. The chips were already fabbed. They could cram a bunch in there alongside computd and I/O processors. Run legacy with ttusted code in secure envirinment.

Instead, more features still with same breakable model.

PhantomGremlin• 10 years ago

That mainframe picture is so boring.

Back in the good old days, here's what an IBM mainframe front panel looked like! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/360-91-p...

It was really fun to watch the lights blink, even if you didn't know what their significance was.

IBM Launches New Mainframe with Focus on Security and Hybrid Cloud

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