Following on from last April’s announcement of its z16 mainframe, IBM has announced its new rack-mounted version, which can be used with standard 19-inch racks and power distribution units. And the advantage of that for customers is that they don’t need a massive, dedicated computer room to house their new mainframe, they can just slide it into the racking they already have and start getting all the advantages of a modern mainframe.
Not only are there z16 configurations, there are also IBM LinuxONE 4 configurations. That means, organizations that are currently using lots of Linux racks to power their corporate computing (with lots of people to manage those configurations) can save money by replacing them with a single new unit. It takes far fewer people to look after as many Linux systems running on a mainframe than x86 devices. It also takes less power, so it is a greener option for organizations looking at their current carbon footprint. Specifically, IBM is saying that consolidating Linux workloads on a single Rockhopper 4 would let customers replace at least 36 x86 servers. It would also reduce energy consumption by 75 percent and space usage by 67 percent. The IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4, was launched in September last year,
These new rack-mounted mainframes use the Telum processors that everyone was talking about last year with their almost real-time AI inferencing at scale and quantum-safe cryptography. In addition, they provide high availability levels designed to help companies maintain customer access to bank accounts, medical records, and personal data. With the on-going growth in cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks on all companies, including mainframe users, these new mainframes include important security capabilities such as confidential computing, centralized key management, and quantum-safe cryptography.
The z14 was the first mainframe I saw as a rack-mounted system, and the z15 was also offered in that format. So, IBM must know that the rack mounted mainframe idea works with customers.
You may ask how powerful the new processors are? Well, the technical specifications aren’t as high as last year’s z16 models – and that’s been IBM’s model for selling mainframes over quite a few years, to bring out a high-spec machine one year followed by a less powerful variant the following year. I always think of it like a hardback copy of a book coming out one year followed by the paperback edition the following year.
According to Marcel Mitran, IBM's CTO of cloud platform and IBM zSystems, IBM is seeing the decentralization of IT infrastructure so users can bring compute power closer to where their data is, especially for hybrid cloud environments”. And that’s what using the new single frame and rack-mounted systems can achieve. There is now an easy way to bring high-level computing power to what was the edge of a company’s computing infrastructure.
Of course, if you move processing away from the centre, you’re going to increase the risk of security breaches, which is why potential customers would do well to take a look at these new models because, as well as strong security, they provide high availability, transaction processing at scale, and greater resilience. The new models provide 99.9999999% availability. Someone else has calculated that to be equivalent to three seconds of downtime over the course of a year.
IBM is saying that the newly-launched single frame and rack mount configurations increase client infrastructure choices. Like any big business, IBM needs to sell what customers want to buy. And that’s clearly the thinking behind this move. It certainly gives customers one more great choice about how to modernize their computing environment.
The new IBM z16 and the LinuxONE 4 servers both become available on 17 May
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