1700 watts, all the time. Yikes.
;-) It still uses slightly less power than a 1U bitcoin miner (~2200 W, maximum for a 10 A outlet)
Buying an IBM Mainframe
61–70 of 111 posts
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd be amazed at how little the underlying ecosystem has changed over the decades. Because it basically keeps compatibility forever, software that was written in the 60's can still run on modern machines. Because of this, learning using 80's software in the mainframe world is not too bad. For example, I keep a book on MVS on my desk from the 80's for reference, and most of the time it suffices for what I need to co…
At a high level, I suppose, but for example...3.8j is 24 bit versus the current z/os 64 bit.
Indeed the last official MVS freely available is 24 bit, but then you have stuff like MVS380, which supports 31 bit and has 64 bit support in the works.
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you Google around a bit, mainframes are pretty expensive, but have very high up times and other benefits.
Can't you get to that uptime with a well-configured cluster? I tried to find more information but couldn't find any other reasons why mainframes would still be the best option for a newly designed system?
Getting a cluster to guarantee that something happens excatly once is very hard, but doing things exactly once is an extremely useful property in banking. Using a single earthquake-proof computer with redundant everything, including hot-swappable RAM and CPU gives you similar reliability while making it much easier to achieve many desirable properties. Even if you can do the same in a cluster, spending more on hardware to reduce software complexity is worth it when bugs might cost you millions or billions of dollars.
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun and learning. I doubt there’s a legit use-case for a mainframe even in business environments. All the “reliability” it gives you can be re-implemented on commodity hardware and still come out ahead compared to the costs of buying & maintaining a mainframe.
"I doubt there’s a legit use-case for a mainframe even in business environments" You're incorrect. The most common one is to run legacy software, and not just banks. Insurance, retail, utilities, financial, manufacturing, etc. Some companies have been around before x86 hit the scene and already had significant investments in their in-house computing infrastructure.
Using a real mainframe in order to run legacy code is probably the most expensive way to do so I can think of.
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you get to that uptime with a well-configured cluster? I tried to find more information but couldn't find any other reasons why mainframes would still be the best option for a newly designed system?
Also, with Mainframe, you’re not only using a different machine but also a different “everything”. You need specialized storage, you need to use an “exotic” programming language, you need people who know JCL, RACF, DB2 etc., for a lot of “middleware” (CD pipeline, access management, version control) you have limited vendors to choose from so you’ll pay a lot for that too. So if you are also running something else (Li…
Good old days when I transit from XA to ESA, from dos/vse to movs, from racf administrator to dB admin, Ibm start to ship 3390-3, ispf, Rexx to generate jcl, patching and debug 370 assembler ...
Still holding a Hp dos pocket whilst working on all these.
ThOse were the days. Different very much from using a mac to run leela zero using egpu :-)
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
At a high level, I suppose, but for example...3.8j is 24 bit versus the current z/os 64 bit.
Indeed, the 16 MiB virtual memory space is kind of limiting for anything remotely modern :-).
It teaches efficiency to learn the basics on such a system, something modern programmers are often lacking
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#67Is it just for the fun or is there actually a legit use case for having a mainframe at home apart from accelerating climate change?
I think its a great career niche to be fluent in everything Mainframe, they are still used in critical places and will be for the foreseeable future and they are largely overlooked as a opportunity. So if you want to work in this niche, having your own Mainframe will greatly speed up learning the system. It probably also looks awesome when you market yourself. So all in all, 25k USD for kickstarting a potentially ver…
If you just want to learn the software, you can set up Hercules mainframe emulator for free. Finding an image of z/OS is left as an exercise to the reader, but won't take you long.
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I doubt there’s a legit use-case for a mainframe even in business environments" You're incorrect. The most common one is to run legacy software, and not just banks. Insurance, retail, utilities, financial, manufacturing, etc. Some companies have been around before x86 hit the scene and already had significant investments in their in-house computing infrastructure.
Using a real mainframe in order to run legacy code is probably the most expensive way to do so I can think of.
Oh? Even when your environment uses z/OS, z/VM, CICS, DB2, and a whole slew of other IBM and 3rd party products? Do you know that all mainframe software is fully supported when run on a mainframe substitute? I have no idea whether it is or isn't.
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that a one off cost? Is there a yearly cost for keeping it in the datacenter?
There is recurring costs as well, something like $400/mo in power usage bills, and another $400 in internet and space rental fees per month. The folks over at the datacenter have been very happy to have me so there might be some discounts in there as well, but I am not sure. My goal was to keep the recurring cost as low as I can, and compared to what hosting a beast like this in a conventional datacenter would cost I…
Can some crypto mining partially cover the recurring cost?
Re: Buying an IBM Mainframe
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you get to that uptime with a well-configured cluster? I tried to find more information but couldn't find any other reasons why mainframes would still be the best option for a newly designed system?
Also, with Mainframe, you’re not only using a different machine but also a different “everything”. You need specialized storage, you need to use an “exotic” programming language, you need people who know JCL, RACF, DB2 etc., for a lot of “middleware” (CD pipeline, access management, version control) you have limited vendors to choose from so you’ll pay a lot for that too. So if you are also running something else (Li…
> Node.js on z/OS provides extra security and performance by leveraging the capabilities of IBM Z.
https://developer.ibm.com/mainframe/2018/01/19/reasons-host-...