A couple thoughts here, since I think Steve was talking about letting IBM know of these issues. First a point Barbara made:
>We are in the process of moving the UNIX apps to Linux under VM, where they >can use the other type of processors and save us a lot of software costs >(BMC is killing us, followed by CA.) IBM made a strategic decision several years ago to enter into direct, professional competition with BMC and CA. I would advise any customer to weigh their options now that there is heightened, healthy competition. That's not particularly vendor specific, actually. If you're an IBM tools/utilities customer then I would advise you to periodically compare with other vendors. In other words, it works both ways. One thing we've discovered is that terms and conditions often matter most, including license restrictions, capacity upgrade charges (tier levels, "MIPS on the floor" rules), etc. We've tried very hard to introduce more rationality into mainframe software pricing and terms. (Which is interesting, because the other platforms seem to be getting less rational with each passing day. :-)) With respect to Patrick's comments, WebSphere Application Server/Java is certainly not IDMS/ADO (for example) from a resource utilization point of view. A "modest" two-way CP-only 31-bit-only system is simply not going to be delivering very high WebSphere volumes, I'm afraid. Unless your WebSphere Application Server workload is trivial, please do one of two things: (1) get a zAAP (for WAS z/OS); (2) get an IFL (for WAS Linux). It's frankly bad *finance* to run (much) WAS without either of these two options. Spend money to save a lot more money. With either one of these two approaches mainframe WAS becomes not just affordable but, in numerous situations, the *most* cost-effective J2EE platform. My personal favorite is zAAP, but please choose at least one of these two avenues. Yes, WAS loves storage. But we're now in the era when even z800s come with minimum 8 GB, so the times they are a-changin'. (IBM saw these "new workloads" coming years ago and declared that everybody would have some generous storage even in the base configuration. I think it was one of the smarter things we've done.) "Wasteful"? Maybe. But IBM just cut the memory price (again, with the System z9), and we're now in the era when programmers aren't counting bytes (or even kilobytes) like they used to. Steve asks in reply about the IBM HTTP Server for z/OS -- is that "lighter"? Answer: absolutely. It's mostly I/O work, and allegedly mainframes handle that. :-) I'm generally not concerned about workload impact of HTTP serving, even on modest systems. If you're looking to get your "feet wet" with HTTP serving, a good match is WebSphere Host On-Demand hosted on z/OS. It's very quick and easy to set up, it's very light workload, it's frankly the best place to host Host On-Demand, and I guess you could say it's step zero on the road to WAS. There are other candidates for z/OS HTTP serving, but that's one of my favorites. Do note that the first Web server in the world outside Switzerland was installed on a Stanford mainframe -- a long time before any still extant operating system got a Web server. So HTTP serving on mainframes isn't exactly new, and you'll have lots of company if (when, I hope) you decide to join the club. Lastly, I think there's an implication that workloads in USS cannot fit into WLM service classing, goals, etc. in order to manage together with batch and other classic workloads. I hope nobody is saying that, because it's certainly not true. z/OS and WLM will manage all work, including USS-based work, as you tell it. If your system is too small to meet or exceed all goals at peak, that'll still be true regardless of the *type* of work you throw onto the system. WebSphere z/OS is spectacularly plugged into WLM -- it works really, really well, at least for the past three versions that I'm more familiar with (5.0+). But if I'm trying to suck an elephant through a straw and want the elephant to more or less retain its shape, well... :-) Kudos on this effort, Steve. It sounds really interesting. - - - - - Timothy F. Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries IBM Japan, Ltd. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
