New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured Linux mainframe

Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by gottorf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @02:51PM (#39279589)

Yours for only $135k (starting)! Supposedly it's designed for eight nines (99.999999%, or ~30 seconds of downtime a year) and a MTBF in the decades. I'm curious if at that point, assuming it lives up to it, if other factors outside of it, like DC power and cooling availability or internet connectivity, won't also be difficult to achieve.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by neverartful on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @02:57PM (#39279681)

The $135k is just the hardware price for the base configuration. I'm sure you're required to license several software SKUs that are not cheap and that you have to pay annually for maintenance.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by rbanffy on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:00PM (#39282070)

I don't think that's true for LinuxONE. One of the points is that it behaves as a large and fast (with lots of dedicated acceleration hardware) Linux machine.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by neverartful on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:17PM (#39282243)

Really? No license for PR/SM, z/VM, etc.?

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by benjarrell on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:25PM (#39282329)

You also need an IBM storage array

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by wmf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:34PM (#39282438)

I don't think LinuxONE requires that.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by neverartful on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:39PM (#39282489)

You probably do need a storage array, but I doubt it has to be from IBM. Ever hear of EMC?

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by tyingq on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @08:54PM (#39283527)

True. Here's the footnote on that $135k:

"5 This price reflects the base hardware configuration, and does not include additional items, maintenance, the operating system or other software. All prices are in USD. Prices shown do not include tax. Price will vary based on country and currency."

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2024-02-06-New-IBM-LinuxONE-4-Expre...

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by jhallenworld on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:01PM (#39279736)

or, especially, software

It's a z-series mainframe and I don't doubt these reliability numbers.

The world's financial system runs on these mainframes. An undetected bit error at the federal reserve might cause IBM to appear in the news, in a bad way, like Boeing..

It will not have the fastest single-threaded performance, but that's not why you buy it.

The mainframe mindset: Of course each core is running at 100% all the time... I paid a lot for it, so I want my money's worth. z/OS is designed to make this feasible. Not sure how well that works in Linux.. but it's where the market is.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by bitwize on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:06PM (#39279804)

The LinuxONE line is, I believe, a series of Linux-only mainframes; z/OS is not an option on them. They're IBM's entry-level option for businesses who salivate at those mainframe reliability numbers but don't have any OS/360|OS/370|z/OS apps and don't want to pay for the support on those systems.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by jhallenworld on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:07PM (#39279820)

I think you're right it can't run the apps, but I see it's running z/VM as the hypervisor.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by coolkil on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @05:09PM (#39281444)

Only for Linux guests. It is also possible to run kvm

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by rbanffy on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:00PM (#39282077)

IIRC, IBM Cloud's Hyperprotect VMs run on KVM.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by bitcharmer on Wednesday February 07, 2024 @05:32AM (#39286832)

> The world's financial system runs on these mainframes

No, it hasn't for a long time

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by wmf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @04:21PM (#39280816)

A single box of any type absolutely cannot deliver eight nines. Maybe a sysplex running very limited software...

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by hobobaggins on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:35PM (#39282979)

Tell that to my Linux boxes that have been up for years, or others who have been up for decades.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by neverartful on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:20PM (#39282272)

I would suspect that it IS multiple boxes and with z/VM using single system image. This is the first time I've ever heard of mainframe "in a rack". In the past they come in their own cabinet, but if you open the cabinet door you won't see one "box".

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by wmf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:30PM (#39282387)

No, it's a single box with one Telum chip.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by neverartful on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @06:40PM (#39282497)

Ok, good to know!

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by e12e on Wednesday February 07, 2024 @09:19AM (#39288845)

I mean it's susceptible to fire an ac/cooling failure - other than that? Redundant power, redundant connectivity are both feasible?

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by Yasuraka on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:00PM (#39279715)

30s a year is 6 nines, 8 would be 300ms

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by gottorf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @04:07PM (#39280605)

I believe the ninety-nine before the decimal point counts as two of the nines, but I'm sure different people word that differently.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by Yasuraka on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @04:47PM (#39281146)

Yes they count and were included

https://www.globalcallforwarding.com/wp-content/uploads/2022...

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by gottorf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:21PM (#39283693)

You're absolutely right! My mistake.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by dalemhurley on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:23PM (#39280033)

So one month of AWS costs.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by hobobaggins on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:36PM (#39282982)

You made me spit my Java out. (and you're right, even for smaller companies)

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by billforsternz on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @04:55PM (#39281246)

30,000,000 (ish) seconds in a year, 99.999999% of that is .... let me see, 99.999999% of 100,000,000 is 99,999,999 I suppose. So downtime is what's left over, about 1 second every 3 years or 300 milliseconds a year not 30s a year. I think.

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by kens on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:12PM (#39283632)

No, eight nines is 316 milliseconds of downtime per year. 30 seconds of downtime a year is six nines. (I spent a long time working on high availability at Sun, so the numbers immediately looked wrong.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...

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Re:New IBM LinuxONE 4 Express – Rack-mounted pre-configured ... by gottorf on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:21PM (#39283695)

You're right, my mistake.

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