Re: z/VM usability

[George Haddad]

VIrtualization is (finally) a hot topic among the young 'uns in the 
industry. Unfortunately, most have never heard of the IBM's VM. I have 
run into a few younger (30-something) folks who have discovered the 
roots of virtualization and have tried to play around with it with 
Hercules. Unfortunately they are limited to primitive versions of 
VM/370. I don't think they are even allowed to run SEPP or BSEP, so 
editing is in line-mode only. These folks likely will never attend SHARE 
since they are doing this for fun, and not for any traditional 
organization.

If  there were someway they could license a more recent VM for a  
non-production test/development 
Hercules environment, they MIGHT discover the joys of CMS as we know it. 
Ultimately they COULD grow up thinking that todays' 30-40-something 
IBM-hating mgt-types are WRONG. Might even lead to addtl Z-processor 
sales down the road.  But I don't want to open THAT can-of-worms in this 
discussion!

Jim Bohnsack wrote:
I think that you are talking about something that is either going to 
hit us real hard or IBM is going to come out with something that will 
eliminate the need to the CMS based tools "old folks" such as me and, 
having met a lot of you at SHARE conferences, most of the rest of 
you.  You look around at SHARE and you almost never see someone who is 
closer to college age than retirement age.  Those rare ones are not 
sitting in on the kind of VM sessions  most of us do.  There is, for 
all practical purposes, no IBM education that would take a new, 
inexperienced person from an Intro to VM course level to an  advanced 
level.

Maybe this means that IBM is going to eliminate the need for us CP/CMS 
knowledgeable sysprogs.  Notice the greatly expanded number of lpars 
that are permitted on the newer processors.  An lpar is really a 
virtual machine running under a CP based hypervisor.  How much CP/CMS 
is needed to carve out an lpar?  Something like that may be where we 
are going--or at least the rest of you.  I'll be at full SS retirement 
age in a year and a half.

Jim