CLOUD

By Uwe Harms, Harms Supercomputing Consulting -- Fujitsu Siemens Computers has ported its proprietary mainframe operating system BS2000/OSD from /390 CMOS processors to its own SPARC processors. The first system of the new SX-series, the SX130, which can run BS2000/OSD and Solaris in parallel in different hardware partitions. This allows a fibre channel connection on a mainframe and the usage of Solaris application software. It was at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany that Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) announced the new product line, the SX-series. The first is a midrange system with 35 to 250 RPF (a FSC internal performance measure), following FSC, 1.3 to 1.5 RPF equal one MIPS. The S-line, based on /390 CMOS processors has a range of 156 to 1920 RPF with up to 14 processors and an additional one as hot stand-by. The next generation S-system will be announced in Q3/2002. It is possible to connect four computers via HIPLEX load connection. The SR-series uses MIPS processors, up to four, in scalable SMP (symmetrical multiprocessing). The SX-series The new business server underpins FSC' strategy to open BS2000/OSD, modern hardware technology and Solaris application software. New features are CoD (Capacity on Demand), OLR (OnLine Replacement) and a new partitioning concept with flexible resource management. If they experience a peak load, the operator can switch on an additional CPU using CoD and switch off after the end of the high load. Standard Fibre Channel connections allow the optimal and efficient usage of a SAN (Storage Area Network) from the Solaris side. BS2000/OSD supports ESCON and KT2 (Channel Type 2) connections. The partitioning concept allows the usage of only BS2000/OSD or BS2000/OSD and Solaris in parallel. On the SX130 there are 3 hardware partitions allowed, for BS2000/OSD the maximum is 2. A partition contains one or several system boards (CPUs, memory, I/O connections). VM2000 (Virtual Machine) allows the division of a partition into several guest systems. There are several instances where BS2000/OSD can run in parallel. The SX130 has a performance range of 25 to 250 RPF and can be upgraded to up to 6 SPARC 64-GP processors, developed by the American Fujitsu HAL Computer Systems. Following FSC, these processors have a better performance than the Sun Microsystem's SPARCs. The memory is expandable to up to 8 GByte for BS2000/OSD. Both operating systems can run in parallel. This allows the connection of new applications to mainframe data. The next steps will be processors with a higher performance, support of new and additional hardware models, dynamic reconfiguration, virtual partitioning, communication of the system domains via Hipersockets and Enhanced CoD. The priority of sales lies in Europe. For more information visit www.bs2000.de