Today it is z10:
It is Green !
Posted on 08/03/2010 8:13:42 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The thing is big changes don’t happen all at once. They happen slowly and it’s less expensive and quicker to simply modify the legacy system.
Sounds ideal. I wish you success!
Maybe insurance companies too?
Banks, though, are also good candidates. Credit card companies. Massive amounts of customers.
Today it is z10:
It is Green !
Wondering here now if the Space Shuttle Mission Simulator at Johnson Space Center still runs on UNIVACs and Perkin Elmer 3250's(???)
A good friend describes sitting in meetings with people who have no idea why computers work they way they do. He tries to describe the underlying causes and solving the real problem. The answer from high-level management is always that the kludge is quicker, less expensive, and easier to understand and therefore the chosen method. When the whole thing falls apart, it’s The Old Guys who come in and fix the problem, and therefore garner the blame for the failure. Cynical? Nah.
We just got in the latest from Big Blue: the Z10. It’s not awfully big and is actually smaller than our Z9 was. It takes up about 1.5 floor tiles (~3 ft) in width and 3.5 (~7 ft) in length. It’s a behemoth at 7 ft tall, and our nightly processing for one hospital campus went from over 2.5 hours to less than 30 minutes. It’s a workhorse.
As far as the technology, this is all becoming available on the “WinTel” side of the house with clustering technologies and gigabit LANs/MANs. There are a lot of problems on the software side with that equipment, however, and that’s where the mainframe shines: virtually bulletproof OS and seemingly infinite processing power.
We just got in the latest from Big Blue: the Z10. It’s not awfully big and is actually smaller than our Z9 was. It takes up about 1.5 floor tiles (~3 ft) in width and 3.5 (~7 ft) in length. It’s a behemoth at 7 ft tall, and our nightly processing for one hospital campus went from over 2.5 hours to less than 30 minutes. It’s a workhorse.
As far as the technology, this is all becoming available on the “WinTel” side of the house with clustering technologies and gigabit LANs/MANs. There are a lot of problems on the software side with that equipment, however, and that’s where the mainframe shines: virtually bulletproof OS and seemingly infinite processing power.
ROFL!
Yes indeed....
Looks good,...still looks like Big iron...which is good.
SVC 57
Only you can still cluster mainframes. Use a parallel sysplex in datacenter and most applications won't even hiccup if one server goes down, or you can sysplex 32 systems over 120 miles apart.
I like commodity hardware clusters. I really do. They're relatively cheap and give good performance and reliability. But they will never, ever be able to completely take the place of mainframes.
Yeah, everything shrinks of course. Last I was involved with mainframes was around 1989, linking together SNA based stuff with minis. Those guys had a load of IBM’s and a couple of Amdahls as backup.
Does this mean “easily offshored”?
When I got out of the army in 1967, I took a very low paying job at a major insurance company in Chicago. I started out as a ‘control clerk’ setting up jobs to run on the computers and them moved into operations where we had an IBM 705 computer as well a 1401, 1410, 360/50 and a 360/65.
I worked my way up into operations and then into programming. When I retired back in 2000 after an auto accident, I owned my own consulting company.
I never went college, entering the Army shortly after graduation from high school and everything I learned, I did on my own from experimenting and personal reading and OJT (On the Job Training). During my time in operations, I started learning 1401 autocoder and wrote a few simply programs for our 1401.
We had an IBM 360/30 which ran MCC (Multiple Compatability Control) which used a ‘load mode’ tape of 1401 programs which it was able to retrieve programs from to run them under 1401 compatability on the 360/30.
We couldn't use that ‘lode mode’ tape on our 360.50 even though it was able to run 1401 programs in compatability mode as well. We had to load each 1401 program from cards if we wanted to run them on that machine.
I wrote a simple 1401 program which we loaded into that machine which could read the load mode tape and then execute those programs on the 360/40 bringing them in from tape rather than from cards.
From operations, I went into programming working my way up from trainee to programmer, to programmer analyst, through systems specialist and finally to systems engineer.
Those days are long gone where someone could come in with no knowledge or experience and work their way to the top of the career field. Today, that only happens in new fields with new equipment where there is no readily available trained workforce available for hire.
I remember one company where they hired a new college graduate with a degree in computer science to work as a ‘Systems Analyst’. They had to send that person to a two year school to learn basic COBOL and IBM DB/DC programming before they could even use her. I never did see her do anything, she was always ‘away at school’.
That machine was huge and they has several massive air conditioning units blowing directly into it to try to keep it cool.
One day ti caught fire anyway due to how hot it always was.
IEFBR14
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