Good luck with that. My management here too is going to throw out the mainframe. We (IT) were establishing working relationships with Marist, IBM, and the ERP vendor to get our new university ERP system to run under z/Linux but upper management caught wind of it and made us stop. Marist I assume is going on with the project to move their university ERP system (which will be the same as ours) to z/Linux. So now we are planning on spending close to $200,000 on Dell hardware and Microsoft server software. This doesn't include the licenses for the Oracle software.
Jim Dodds Systems Programmer Kentucky State University 400 East Main Street Frankfort, Ky 40601 502 597 6114 -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:linux-...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Erik N Johnson Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 9:53 AM To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: Old IBM Mainframe - Still Useful? It is very true, however, that you can run several LPARs with Linux/390 on them. Also, MVS is available for free nowadays, as well as several other major components that run on the pre-Z 360-derivatives. So although you won't be able to teach your kids VM you CAN show them what IBM big iron can do. Have you approached anybody with the IBM academic initiatives program? Both Marist and Colorado have Z systems which they will provide accounts on for students. My university (Northern Illinois University) is getting this from Marist, as our administration have their heads on backwards. Some Microsoft evangelist has convinced a bunch of our administrators that our ESA/390s are dinosaurs that need to be surplussed and replaced by a cluster of x86 boxen running peoplesoft on windows server. It's complete garbage and it means they're going to tell IBM (who was going to give us a brand new z10 bc next year) to get stuffed. Does anybody know where I could point out to my administration what a HUGE mistake they are making? Our curriculum has been based around the IBM mainframe for half a century! I can only imagine having been forced to learn x86 assembler... *shudder*. When did people forget that IBM > Intel?!?! Erik Johnson On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:16 AM, John Summerfield <deb...@herakles.homelinux.org> wrote: > Andrew Wiley wrote: >>> >>> Andrew, >>> >>> Unless you already have a release of VM on this hardware, you can't get >>> a VM that will run on this hardware anymore. So you are pretty much out >>> of luck. >>> >> >>> IBM does have an academic initiative which provides incentives for >>> higher education on System z: >> >> Well, this is a high school computer science course, so we don't have >> much budget and, quite frankly, we aren't a priority in... anything. >> >> However, the machine I'm investigating is being offered by a local >> business that's decommissioning it, and I can ask if they plan to >> include VM. >> Assuming they do, could the machine be useful? It wouldn't be used >> under high load; it would be hosting student projects. > > > It's 31-bit, so recent SLES and RHEL don't run on it because those are > 64-bit. Debian probably does, and Slack might. > > This might be a time when, depending on just what you want, a nice HP > DC5850[1] (desktop PC) might win out. They're 64-bit (we have AMD > processors in ours), they support 8 Gbytes of RAM, run the latest Fedora > and openSUSE, and you can use virtualisation. > > It's not a mainframe by any means, but finding someone who knows the > software is pretty simple (no VM gurus needed), and it's a setup the > kids can replicate at home if they wish (and can afford a newish pc). > > If you particularly want to run Linux/390, that's possible too. Just > install Hercules - it's probably in the software repo. > > 1 I mention this just because I have personal knowledge of them. > Probably, other vendors have something equivalent. One of the things I > like about these is the diagnostics DVD. It boots Linux, so I figured > the chances of running recent Linux is probably feasible. It is, unlike > the DC7700 when new. > > > > > -- > > Cheers > John > > -- spambait > 1aaaa...@coco.merseine.nu z1aaaa...@coco.merseine.nu > -- Advice > http://webfoot.com/advice/email.top.php > http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375 > > You cannot reply off-list:-) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390