Re:Buying an IBM Mainframe
by leokennis on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:06AM
(#19990227)
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 (Linux servers etc.) you basically need double the staff and licensing costs...
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That is not really 100% true. You can certainly run z/OS if you want, and that incurs those costs you mentioned - but that is true if you want to run Windows as well for example.
However, the biggest thing to remember is that you can and should run Linux on these things as well. Linux on z, or zLinux as it for some reason is called, is just Linux on the redundant and fault tolerant mainframe hardware. Anyone with Linux experience could manage it really, and you would get a pretty damn good platform to build a high availability service on.
> 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-...
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 :-)