INDUSTRY

Munich, The IBM Users Organization Guide Share Europe organized the subgroup's VM/VSE autumn conference in Jena end of September. The Programm was so tight that there have been parallel sessions. In the center of the meeting stood Enterprise Application Integration, all beneath one hat by connecting heterogeneous landscapes. An other main focus was Linux running on the mainframe and the resulting consolidation of Linux servers. Last week IBM announced a new "Baby" Mainframe for small and medium enterprises, one processor runs the mainframe operating system, the other Linux only. This approach reduces the software costs by approximately 25%. About 150 participants met end of September in Jena, to listen to 35 talks, covering a broad spectrum of topics around the mainframe operating system VM/VSE (Virtual Machine/Virtual Storage Extended). Although the press media name the mainframes dinosaurs, new applications and Linux open new perspectives in this arena. The conference had the main theme Enterprise Application Integration. Connecting the Internet access via a browser with the company's legacy systems and allow direct access to them. Other topics concerned VSE and the CICS transaction server, further development and possibilities of VM and VSE with IBM's database DB2. Linux was seen as a new challenge and chance for server consolidation and was covered in a lot of talks. This resulted in the fact that the VM/VSE users group decided to co-operate closely with the Linux Group within the IBM Guide Share European users society. Erwin Staudt, head of IBM Germany, gave the keynote tals:"Living and Working in a networked world". He sees the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a very important customer group. „We must win the battle, the battlefield SMEs, keep them and win." From his view, the IT world still is full of dynamics, in 2002, 600 million PCs, in the labs everx 18 months the storage capacity is four times higher, Nanotechnology. fifteen years ago machine-tools consisted in 85% of mechanics, today only 40% mechanics and 60% hardware (Microprocessors) and software. The same is true with cars. In the driver's seat in a Mercedes S-Class one can find 70 microprocessors which control electro motors. The he presented some hot themes in IBM, the entrance in High-Performance and Grid Computing, connecting high-end system to a virtual computer. An other topic is open source, Linux is something that has drive and movement. Linux is the vendor-independent worldwide computer language. In 1998 IBM invested 1 billion US$ to make all servers Linux-ready, 2000 IBM engineers are working at Linux. IBM has nearly 5000 customers with Linux with more than a pilot application. The third theme is the autonomic computing, Eliza, self-healing and bypassing problems for example. VM/VSE is used by SMEs because its reduced software costs, compared to z/OS. IBM offers a reduced version of the mainframe operating system, z/OS.e. It is dedicated for new business applications, but one cannot run IMS applications with it. VM is the virtualisation engine. With its support one can define partitions granularly. VSE is heavily used in Germany, because its source lays in the German IBM Laboratory in Böblingen. The same is true with Linux, it started its success in IBM from the same Lab. On the conference, Dirk Breidt, IBM Development, discussed the IBM offering for SMEs in the entry level. The solution was the z800, one- to four-way systems with 83 to 664 MIPS. The high-end model is the z900 with a performance spectrum from 261 MIPS to 3329 MIPS. Last Tuesday, IBM announced a „Baby" mainframe, the z800 0E1. Here the mainframe processor has a reduced performance of only 40 MIPS, by the use of microcode, and saves 25% of the software costs. The second processor runs with full power and has a performance of 185 MIPS. He can be used as a dedicated Linux processor only. He can run Linux web-, print-, main-, domain name-server or as the application server running SAP. Thus he can consolidate different Linux servers in one computer. An add on is the optional Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL). IFL allows additional Linux load without influencing the mainframe side of the system. It does not support the mainframe operating systems, only Linux applications, and the Linux operations in connection with the host operating system VM/VSE are possible. IFL is managed by PR/SM as a logical partition with dedicated CPUs. The communication of z/VM with Linux can be realised by a virtual channel-to-channel connection. Linux hosted by VM/VSE can lie in several LPARs (Logical Partitions), which are connected by VM-Guest LAN. Here the different partitions communicate directly in the main memory per hyper sockets - without channel delay. For high availability the clustering via Sysplex is possible. With these small models the mainframe leaves the computer centers and enters the SME offices. By the z/VM virtualisation the z800 can consolidate 20 to several hundreds of servers in one box - depending of processing power. In a telephone interview, Carol Stafford, IBM VP EMEA zSeries, mentioned that after the client-server architecture, now the mainframe business is growing because of the server consolidation - costs, management, support. In EMEA the MIPS growth was in the range of 56% last year. In the second quarter 2002 about 25% of the worldwide delivered MIPS run Linux operating system. This new combination of z/OS and VM/VSE with Linux opens new markets as Francis Kuhlen, VP System Sales Central Region mentioned at Systems 2002 in Munich. Telecommunication companies and banks use this combination. Thus the banks need mainframes for decades. "The discussion whether the mainframe lives is no longer existent", Kuhlen said. The presentations of the VM/VSE meeting can be found (partly in German) at: http://www.infologica.com http://www.ibm.com/eserver/zseries (mainframes) Uwe Harms