Today (Monday 16 July 2007) is my youngest daughter’s 21st birthday – so happy birthday to Jennifer. I started to think how things were different 21 years ago from how they are today – and hence I stole the title from Bob Dylan’s third album (released 1964) for the title of this blog.
21 years ago I’d just started working for Xephon (which I still do). I had a small laptop at home that I used for all my computing – although it was a Sinclair Spectrum and needed to be plugged in to a TV to see anything! IBM was the top mainframe computer company and you could use VM, VSE, or MVS as your operating systems. CICS and IMS were very popular transaction processing systems. But no-one had heard of OS/390 or z/OS. SNA was still king of communication with TCP/IP hardly being mentioned.
At work we shared Apple II computers – a luggable Mac each was still in the future. And we had so many pieces of paper!! We needed manuals and cuttings from the papers – you forget how the arrival of the Internet has made research so much easier. So, that’s another thing that’s changed – the Internet has revolutionized our lives. I can remember giving a course at that time where I would explain to people how many ways they interacted with a computer without them realising it. It sounds laughable today – you’d never do anything else on the course if you stuck to listing each person’s computer interactions!
The other thing that was missing 21 years ago that is such a necessary part of our lives is the mobile (cell) phone. You could be out of contact for a whole day and this was considered normal. Nowadays people expect an immediate answer. If you’re not getting calls on the phone then it’s text messages. There’s never been a generation of humans with such strong thumb muscles before! Teenagers can’t spell, but they can text amazingly fast.
21 years ago computer games were very simple. There was just no thought that a game would be able to respond to movements of your body like the Wii does. But, perhaps, back in those halcyon days, we went outside and played tennis or went swimming – sport that didn’t involve a TV screen.
Was it really a better simpler time? Were politicians less corrupt and the world a safer place? This is probably the wrong blog to answer those kinds of question. Would a CICS user from 1986 recognize a CICS screen from 2007? The answer is probably no. Gone are those green screen to be replaced by browsers. They wouldn’t recognize SOA, Web services, and all the other current buzzwords.
And yet despite all these changes listed above (and many others), a typical CICS or IMS user would still understand the concept of entering data and getting a suitable response.
So perhaps when you look at things from a personal perspective, although Dylan was right the times they are a-changin’ (laptops, phones, Internet, etc), the man-in-the-street still goes to work, it’s just what happens behind the scenes that has changed. For him, the French expression plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same – might have been a more accurate title for this review of 21 years.
What do you think?
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Where can you go for help?
You’re an IBM mainframe user, where can you go for help with your mainframe problems? (If you were thinking of more personal problems, you’re reading the wrong blog!!) Well, my obvious answer would be Xephon’s Update publications (see www.xephonusa.com) or, perhaps, a search on Google (www.google.com), but IBM has recently introduced Destination z (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/destinationz/index.html).
IBM’s new Web-based portal is designed to allow its customers, system integrators, and software developers to talk about mainframe usage, share ideas, and ask for technical help from other users. And just in case you might find you need to buy something, Destination z has links to IBM sales. To be fair, though, it is meant to contain technical resources such as case histories and mainframe migration tools. Part of the thinking behind this development is to provide the expertise to help potential customers migrate workloads from other platforms to mainframes.
In marketing speak, the IBM announcement said that it will also provide space for business partners to drive business developments and provide a broad spectrum of technical resources.
Going back to Xephon, for a moment, the June issue of TCP/SNA Update shared some interesting ideas from mainframe networking specialists. There were two articles that included code that could be used in order to monitor and measure exactly what was going on. The first looked at VTAM storage utilization and the second looked at VTAM subpool storage utilization. A third article looked at the need to apply a PTF if you utilize the VTAM Configuration Services Exit. There are also two interesting articles. The first talks about SNA modernization, and the second discusses Enterprise Extenders.
If you have some mainframe networking information you would like to share you can send your article to me at trevore@xephon.com.
IBM’s new Web-based portal is designed to allow its customers, system integrators, and software developers to talk about mainframe usage, share ideas, and ask for technical help from other users. And just in case you might find you need to buy something, Destination z has links to IBM sales. To be fair, though, it is meant to contain technical resources such as case histories and mainframe migration tools. Part of the thinking behind this development is to provide the expertise to help potential customers migrate workloads from other platforms to mainframes.
In marketing speak, the IBM announcement said that it will also provide space for business partners to drive business developments and provide a broad spectrum of technical resources.
Going back to Xephon, for a moment, the June issue of TCP/SNA Update shared some interesting ideas from mainframe networking specialists. There were two articles that included code that could be used in order to monitor and measure exactly what was going on. The first looked at VTAM storage utilization and the second looked at VTAM subpool storage utilization. A third article looked at the need to apply a PTF if you utilize the VTAM Configuration Services Exit. There are also two interesting articles. The first talks about SNA modernization, and the second discusses Enterprise Extenders.
If you have some mainframe networking information you would like to share you can send your article to me at trevore@xephon.com.
Let’s hear it for Power6
A while ago I mentioned in this blog about IBM’s ECLipz project – their unannounced and mainly rumoured plan to create a single chip for System i, System p, and System z (hence the last three letters of the acronym). The big leap forward in this plan (according to rumour mills on the Web and elsewhere) was the much-touted Power6 chip, which IBM finally unveiled at the end of May.
Before we look at whether it fulfils any of the ECLipz hype, let’s see what was actually in the announcement. Running at a top speed of 4.7GHz, the microprocessor offers double the speed of a Power5 chip, yet still uses about the same amount of electricity to run and cool it (all part of the “green machine room”). This means customers can either double their performance or cut their power consumption in half by running at half the clock speed.
And while we’re talking “green”, the processor includes techniques to conserve power and reduce heat. In fact, the processor can be dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed. Also, if extreme temperatures are detected, the Power6 chip can reduce its rate of execution to remain within an acceptable, user-defined, temperature range.
In terms of that other hot topic, virtualization, Power6 supports up to 1024 LPARs (Logical PARtitions). It also offers “live partition mobility”, which allows the resources in a specified LPAR to be increased or decreased, but, more interestingly, the applications in a virtual machine can be quiesced, the virtual machine can be moved from one physical server to another, and then everything restarts as though nothing had happened.
The new Systems Director Virtualization Manager eases virtualization management by including a Web-based interface and provides a single set of interfaces for managing all Power-based hardware and virtual partitions; and for discovering virtualized resources of the Virtual I/O server. Virtualization Manager 1.2 supports Power6 chips. It also supports Xen hypervisors included in Red Hat and Novell Linux distributions, as well as VMware, XenSource, and Microsoft Virtual Server.
As far as Project ECLipz goes, the Power6 chip does have redundancy features and support for mainframe instructions (including 50 new floating-point instructions designed to handle decimal maths and binary and decimal conversions). It’s the first Unix processor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in hardware – previously calculations involving decimal numbers with floating decimal points were done using software. There’s also an AltiVec unit (a floating-point and integer processing engine), compliance with IBM’s Power ISA V2.03 specification, and support for Virtual Vector Architecture-2 (ViVA-2), allowing a combination of Power6 nodes to function as a single Vector processor.
And in case you were wondering, IBM listed benchmark tests showing the Power6 chip was faster than Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 car, and perhaps hinted that H-P’s Itanium-based machines may as well just give up now!
Before we look at whether it fulfils any of the ECLipz hype, let’s see what was actually in the announcement. Running at a top speed of 4.7GHz, the microprocessor offers double the speed of a Power5 chip, yet still uses about the same amount of electricity to run and cool it (all part of the “green machine room”). This means customers can either double their performance or cut their power consumption in half by running at half the clock speed.
And while we’re talking “green”, the processor includes techniques to conserve power and reduce heat. In fact, the processor can be dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed. Also, if extreme temperatures are detected, the Power6 chip can reduce its rate of execution to remain within an acceptable, user-defined, temperature range.
In terms of that other hot topic, virtualization, Power6 supports up to 1024 LPARs (Logical PARtitions). It also offers “live partition mobility”, which allows the resources in a specified LPAR to be increased or decreased, but, more interestingly, the applications in a virtual machine can be quiesced, the virtual machine can be moved from one physical server to another, and then everything restarts as though nothing had happened.
The new Systems Director Virtualization Manager eases virtualization management by including a Web-based interface and provides a single set of interfaces for managing all Power-based hardware and virtual partitions; and for discovering virtualized resources of the Virtual I/O server. Virtualization Manager 1.2 supports Power6 chips. It also supports Xen hypervisors included in Red Hat and Novell Linux distributions, as well as VMware, XenSource, and Microsoft Virtual Server.
As far as Project ECLipz goes, the Power6 chip does have redundancy features and support for mainframe instructions (including 50 new floating-point instructions designed to handle decimal maths and binary and decimal conversions). It’s the first Unix processor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in hardware – previously calculations involving decimal numbers with floating decimal points were done using software. There’s also an AltiVec unit (a floating-point and integer processing engine), compliance with IBM’s Power ISA V2.03 specification, and support for Virtual Vector Architecture-2 (ViVA-2), allowing a combination of Power6 nodes to function as a single Vector processor.
And in case you were wondering, IBM listed benchmark tests showing the Power6 chip was faster than Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 car, and perhaps hinted that H-P’s Itanium-based machines may as well just give up now!
IBM acquisitive and dynamic
It looks like IBM has a plan. A number of recent events seem to indicate that IBM has decided how it wants things to look this time next year, and has started to set about making it happen. What am I talking about? Well I have in mind the recent acquisition of Watchfire, a Web application security company, and the “Web 2.0 Goes to Work” initiative.
Watchfire has a product called AppScan, which has been around for a few years now, in fact Watchfire got it by acquiring a company called Sanctum in 2004. IBM needed a good Web security product to go with RACF, it’s well-known mainframe security software, and, of course, its ISS purchase. Internet Security Systems cost IBM $1.3bn. The company sold intrusion detection and vulnerability assessment tools and services to secure corporate networks. Once it’s happy the Internet is secure, IBM can move forward with its new Web initiative.
Before I go on to talk about that, you might be interested to know that HP has bought SPI Dynamics, another Web security company. Whether HP bought the company to stop IBM getting it, or whether they have plans to integrate WebInspect (one of SPI’s products) with their own products, I just don’t know.
Anyway, the “Web 2.0 Goes to Work” initiative, announced 20 June, is IBM’s way of bringing the value of Web 2.0 into the enterprise. By the value of Web 2.0, they are thinking about things like easy access to information-rich browser-based applications, as well as social networking and collaboration software. No IBM announcement is complete these days without the letters S, O, and A appearing somewhere. IBM said that SOA helps build a flexible computing infrastructure and Web 2.0 provides users with the software required to create rich, lightweight, and easily-deployable software solutions.
Cutting through the hype, IBM has actually announced Lotus Connections, comprising social bookmarking and tagging, rich directories including skills and projects, activity dashboards, collaboration among like-minded communities, and weblogs or blogging. Lotus Quickr is a collaboration tool offering blogs, wikis, and templates. Thirdly, WebSphere Commerce now makes online shopping easier. Full details of the announcement can be found at www.ibm.com/web20.
IBM is clearly thinking ahead and definitely doesn’t want to be seen as the company selling “dinosaur” mainframes. A strong move into the Web 2.0 arena is clearly sensible – and making sure security is locked down tightly means IBM can retain its reputation for reliability.
Watchfire has a product called AppScan, which has been around for a few years now, in fact Watchfire got it by acquiring a company called Sanctum in 2004. IBM needed a good Web security product to go with RACF, it’s well-known mainframe security software, and, of course, its ISS purchase. Internet Security Systems cost IBM $1.3bn. The company sold intrusion detection and vulnerability assessment tools and services to secure corporate networks. Once it’s happy the Internet is secure, IBM can move forward with its new Web initiative.
Before I go on to talk about that, you might be interested to know that HP has bought SPI Dynamics, another Web security company. Whether HP bought the company to stop IBM getting it, or whether they have plans to integrate WebInspect (one of SPI’s products) with their own products, I just don’t know.
Anyway, the “Web 2.0 Goes to Work” initiative, announced 20 June, is IBM’s way of bringing the value of Web 2.0 into the enterprise. By the value of Web 2.0, they are thinking about things like easy access to information-rich browser-based applications, as well as social networking and collaboration software. No IBM announcement is complete these days without the letters S, O, and A appearing somewhere. IBM said that SOA helps build a flexible computing infrastructure and Web 2.0 provides users with the software required to create rich, lightweight, and easily-deployable software solutions.
Cutting through the hype, IBM has actually announced Lotus Connections, comprising social bookmarking and tagging, rich directories including skills and projects, activity dashboards, collaboration among like-minded communities, and weblogs or blogging. Lotus Quickr is a collaboration tool offering blogs, wikis, and templates. Thirdly, WebSphere Commerce now makes online shopping easier. Full details of the announcement can be found at www.ibm.com/web20.
IBM is clearly thinking ahead and definitely doesn’t want to be seen as the company selling “dinosaur” mainframes. A strong move into the Web 2.0 arena is clearly sensible – and making sure security is locked down tightly means IBM can retain its reputation for reliability.
SOA still making an impact
IBM’s SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) conference, IMPACT 2007, attracted nearly 4,000 attendees to Orlando, Florida. IBM used the occasion to make some software and services announcements.
IBM introduced a new mainframe version of WebSphere Process Server, which, they claim, automates people and information-centric business processes, and also consolidates mission-critical elements of a business onto a single system. IBM suggests that a combination of DB2 9, WebSphere Application Server (WAS), and WebSphere Process Server will deliver process and data services for SOA on a mainframe.
IBM also announced DB2 Dynamic Warehouse, which integrates Information on Demand and SOA strategies to implement Dynamic Warehousing solutions – they said. It also integrates with Rational Asset Manager (a registry of design, development, and deployment related assets such as services) to improve SOA governance and life-cycle management. At the same time, IBM announced a new WAS feature pack to simplify Web services deployment.
The trouble with SOA is that there are a lot of people talking about it, but not enough people who really understand how to implement SOA in an organization. IBM has thought about that issue and announced at IMPACT 2007 218 self-paced and instructor-led courses conducted online and in the classroom. IBM also claimed that it has good relationships with colleges and universities round the world and is working on the development of SOA-related curricula with them.
If you want to visualize how an SOA affects different parts of an organization, IBM had an interactive 3D educational game simulator. Called Innov8, this BPM simulator is designed to increase the understanding between IT departments and business executives.
At the same time, IBM announced an online portal containing Webcasts, podcasts, demos, White Papers, etc for people looking to get more SOA-related information.
Lastly, IBM announced its SOA portfolio, which contained integrated technology from DataPower SOA appliances, FileNet content manager, and Business Process Management (BPM). Included in the announcement was the WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50, which can now support direct database connectivity. Also, IBM has integrated the capabilities of WebSphere with the FileNet BPM.
So, not surprisingly, SOA and WebSphere are definitely THE hot topics for IBM at the moment.
IBM introduced a new mainframe version of WebSphere Process Server, which, they claim, automates people and information-centric business processes, and also consolidates mission-critical elements of a business onto a single system. IBM suggests that a combination of DB2 9, WebSphere Application Server (WAS), and WebSphere Process Server will deliver process and data services for SOA on a mainframe.
IBM also announced DB2 Dynamic Warehouse, which integrates Information on Demand and SOA strategies to implement Dynamic Warehousing solutions – they said. It also integrates with Rational Asset Manager (a registry of design, development, and deployment related assets such as services) to improve SOA governance and life-cycle management. At the same time, IBM announced a new WAS feature pack to simplify Web services deployment.
The trouble with SOA is that there are a lot of people talking about it, but not enough people who really understand how to implement SOA in an organization. IBM has thought about that issue and announced at IMPACT 2007 218 self-paced and instructor-led courses conducted online and in the classroom. IBM also claimed that it has good relationships with colleges and universities round the world and is working on the development of SOA-related curricula with them.
If you want to visualize how an SOA affects different parts of an organization, IBM had an interactive 3D educational game simulator. Called Innov8, this BPM simulator is designed to increase the understanding between IT departments and business executives.
At the same time, IBM announced an online portal containing Webcasts, podcasts, demos, White Papers, etc for people looking to get more SOA-related information.
Lastly, IBM announced its SOA portfolio, which contained integrated technology from DataPower SOA appliances, FileNet content manager, and Business Process Management (BPM). Included in the announcement was the WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50, which can now support direct database connectivity. Also, IBM has integrated the capabilities of WebSphere with the FileNet BPM.
So, not surprisingly, SOA and WebSphere are definitely THE hot topics for IBM at the moment.
Virtualization – a beginner’s guide to products
Let’s start with a caveat: I’m calling this a beginner’s guide not a complete guide – so, if you know of a product that I haven’t mentioned, sorry, I just ran out of space.
Now the thing is, on a mainframe, we’ve got z/VM, which is really the grandfather of all these fashionable virtualization products. In fact, if I can use a science fiction metaphor, VM is a bit like Dr Who, every few years it regenerates as a re-invigorated up-to-date youthful product, ready to set to with those pesky Daleks and Cybermen, etc.
And, of course, mainframers are all familiar with LPARs (Logical PARtitions), which are ways of dividing up the hardware so it can run multiple operating systems.
The real problem for mainframers is when they are asked to bring their wealth of experience with virtualized hardware and software to the x86 server arena. Where do you start? What products are available? Well, this is what I want to summarize here (for beginners).
I suppose the first product I should mention is IBM’s Virtualization Manager, which is an extension to IBM Director. The product provides a single console from which users can discover and manage real and virtual systems. Now, the virtual systems would themselves be running virtualization software – and I’ll talk about that layer in a moment.
If you don’t choose IBM, an alternative would be the VMware’s product suite, which comprises eight components: Consolidated Backup (for backing up virtual machines), DRS (for resource allocation and balancing), ESX Server, High Availability (an HA engine), Virtual SMP (offering multiprocessor support for virtual machines), VirtualCenter (where management, automation, and optimization occur), VMFS (a FileSystem for storage virtualization), and VMotion (for migration).
Also, quite well-known is HP’s ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack, which more-or-less explains what it does in the title.
Lastly, for this list of management software are CiRBA’s Data Center Intelligence (now at Version 4.2) and Marathon Technologies’ everRun. Marathon also has its v-Available initiative.
In terms of software that actually carries out the virtualization on an x86 platform perhaps the two best-known vendors would be VMware and XenSource. VMware has its ESX Server (mentioned above) and XenSource has XenEnterprise, XenServer, and XenExpress.
VMware’s ESX Server reckons to have around 50% of the x86 virtualization marketplace. It installs straight on to the hardware and then runs multiple operating systems underneath. The Xen products use the Xen Open Source hypervisor running straight on the hardware and allow Windows and Linux operating systems to run under them. Virtual Iron also uses the Xen hypervisor and is similar to the Xen products. It’s currently at Version 3.7. Also worth a quick mention is SWsoft, who produce Virtuozzo.
One other company that has a small presence in the world of virtualization is Microsoft – you may have heard of them! Microsoft has Virtual Server 2005 R2, which, as yet, hasn’t made a big impact on the world of virtualization.
So, any virtualization beginners out there – I hope that helped.
Now the thing is, on a mainframe, we’ve got z/VM, which is really the grandfather of all these fashionable virtualization products. In fact, if I can use a science fiction metaphor, VM is a bit like Dr Who, every few years it regenerates as a re-invigorated up-to-date youthful product, ready to set to with those pesky Daleks and Cybermen, etc.
And, of course, mainframers are all familiar with LPARs (Logical PARtitions), which are ways of dividing up the hardware so it can run multiple operating systems.
The real problem for mainframers is when they are asked to bring their wealth of experience with virtualized hardware and software to the x86 server arena. Where do you start? What products are available? Well, this is what I want to summarize here (for beginners).
I suppose the first product I should mention is IBM’s Virtualization Manager, which is an extension to IBM Director. The product provides a single console from which users can discover and manage real and virtual systems. Now, the virtual systems would themselves be running virtualization software – and I’ll talk about that layer in a moment.
If you don’t choose IBM, an alternative would be the VMware’s product suite, which comprises eight components: Consolidated Backup (for backing up virtual machines), DRS (for resource allocation and balancing), ESX Server, High Availability (an HA engine), Virtual SMP (offering multiprocessor support for virtual machines), VirtualCenter (where management, automation, and optimization occur), VMFS (a FileSystem for storage virtualization), and VMotion (for migration).
Also, quite well-known is HP’s ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack, which more-or-less explains what it does in the title.
Lastly, for this list of management software are CiRBA’s Data Center Intelligence (now at Version 4.2) and Marathon Technologies’ everRun. Marathon also has its v-Available initiative.
In terms of software that actually carries out the virtualization on an x86 platform perhaps the two best-known vendors would be VMware and XenSource. VMware has its ESX Server (mentioned above) and XenSource has XenEnterprise, XenServer, and XenExpress.
VMware’s ESX Server reckons to have around 50% of the x86 virtualization marketplace. It installs straight on to the hardware and then runs multiple operating systems underneath. The Xen products use the Xen Open Source hypervisor running straight on the hardware and allow Windows and Linux operating systems to run under them. Virtual Iron also uses the Xen hypervisor and is similar to the Xen products. It’s currently at Version 3.7. Also worth a quick mention is SWsoft, who produce Virtuozzo.
One other company that has a small presence in the world of virtualization is Microsoft – you may have heard of them! Microsoft has Virtual Server 2005 R2, which, as yet, hasn’t made a big impact on the world of virtualization.
So, any virtualization beginners out there – I hope that helped.
When is a mainframe not a mainframe?
The April/May 2007 issue of z/Journal (http://zjournal.tcipubs.com/issues/zJ.Apr-May07.pdf) has an interesting article by Philip H Smith III entitled, “The state of IBM mainframe emulation”. Emulation is a way of letting hardware run software that shouldn’t be able to run on that hardware! It’s an extra layer of code between the operating system and the hardware. The operating system sends an instruction and the emulation software converts that instruction to one that the existing hardware can understand. The hardware then carries out the instruction. Any response is then converted by the emulator into something that the operating system would expect, and the originating program carries on processing unaware of the clever stuff that’s been going on. Often there is a native operating system involved between the emulation software and the hardware, but not always.
Philip talks about FLEX-ES from Fundamental Software. Its business partners offer integrated FLEX-ES solutions on Intel-based laptops and servers. It means that developers can test mainframe software on a laptop. It works by running as a task under Linux, and FLEX emulates a range of devices including terminals and tape drives. FLEX also sell hardware to allow real mainframe peripherals to connect to the laptop, and PC peripherals that can emulate their mainframe counterparts. There is currently a legal dispute between IBM and Fundamental Software.
There was also UMX technologies, which offered a technology that was apparently developed in Russia. This company arrived in 2003 and disappeared in 2004.
Hercules is an Open Source mainframe emulator that was originally developed by Roger Bowler. Hercules runs under Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS X. IBM, however, won’t license its operating systems for Hercules systems, so users have to either run older public domain versions of IBM operating systems (eg VM/370 or OS/360) or illegally run newer operating systems.
Platform Solutions has a product called the Open Mainframe, which provides a firmware-based mainframe environment on Intel-based hardware. It is built on intellectual property from the time that Amdahl offered a Plug-Comptible Mainframe (PCM). It’s not a complete solution because it doesn’t support the SIE instruction, with the result that z/VM won’t run. However, z/OS and z/Linux work OK. Open Mainframe runs straight on the hardware, it doesn’t need an operating system. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, IBM’s and PSI’s legal teams are now involved.
I also found Sim390, which is an application that runs under Windows and emulates a subset of the ESA/390 mainframe architecture. Its URL is http://www.geocities.com/sim390/index.htm.
I hope Philip H Smith III won’t mind me borrowing from his article, but there are two very interesting points leading on from this. One, and Phillip makes this in his article, is that if mainframe emulation is available on laptop, it is easier to use and more likely that younger people (remember that awful bell-shaped curve showing the average age of experienced mainframers and COBOL programmers) will want to have a go.
The second point is that emulation is only a short step away from virtualization, which I’ve talked about before. Wouldn’t it make sense (from a user’s point of view) if they had one box of processors (Intel quad processors, P6s, whatever), and they could then run all their operating systems on it? The virtualization software would also be the emulation software. It could run Windows, Linux, z/VM, z/OS, etc on it. If a user’s needs were simple, it would be a small box with few chips and not too many peripherals. If a user’s needs were complex, it would be a big box with lots of everything. Virtualization is appearing everywhere, I can quite easily see it absorbing the concept of mainframe emulation (IBM’s legal team permitting, of course!).
Philip talks about FLEX-ES from Fundamental Software. Its business partners offer integrated FLEX-ES solutions on Intel-based laptops and servers. It means that developers can test mainframe software on a laptop. It works by running as a task under Linux, and FLEX emulates a range of devices including terminals and tape drives. FLEX also sell hardware to allow real mainframe peripherals to connect to the laptop, and PC peripherals that can emulate their mainframe counterparts. There is currently a legal dispute between IBM and Fundamental Software.
There was also UMX technologies, which offered a technology that was apparently developed in Russia. This company arrived in 2003 and disappeared in 2004.
Hercules is an Open Source mainframe emulator that was originally developed by Roger Bowler. Hercules runs under Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS X. IBM, however, won’t license its operating systems for Hercules systems, so users have to either run older public domain versions of IBM operating systems (eg VM/370 or OS/360) or illegally run newer operating systems.
Platform Solutions has a product called the Open Mainframe, which provides a firmware-based mainframe environment on Intel-based hardware. It is built on intellectual property from the time that Amdahl offered a Plug-Comptible Mainframe (PCM). It’s not a complete solution because it doesn’t support the SIE instruction, with the result that z/VM won’t run. However, z/OS and z/Linux work OK. Open Mainframe runs straight on the hardware, it doesn’t need an operating system. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, IBM’s and PSI’s legal teams are now involved.
I also found Sim390, which is an application that runs under Windows and emulates a subset of the ESA/390 mainframe architecture. Its URL is http://www.geocities.com/sim390/index.htm.
I hope Philip H Smith III won’t mind me borrowing from his article, but there are two very interesting points leading on from this. One, and Phillip makes this in his article, is that if mainframe emulation is available on laptop, it is easier to use and more likely that younger people (remember that awful bell-shaped curve showing the average age of experienced mainframers and COBOL programmers) will want to have a go.
The second point is that emulation is only a short step away from virtualization, which I’ve talked about before. Wouldn’t it make sense (from a user’s point of view) if they had one box of processors (Intel quad processors, P6s, whatever), and they could then run all their operating systems on it? The virtualization software would also be the emulation software. It could run Windows, Linux, z/VM, z/OS, etc on it. If a user’s needs were simple, it would be a small box with few chips and not too many peripherals. If a user’s needs were complex, it would be a big box with lots of everything. Virtualization is appearing everywhere, I can quite easily see it absorbing the concept of mainframe emulation (IBM’s legal team permitting, of course!).
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