Size isn’t important – z16 rack-mounted versions

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

 

Mainframes – expect the best

Too often, when I have conversations about mainframes with non-mainframe IT people, the picture in my head of the mainframe is a pimped-out rack with flashing lights – you know, the kind of box that IBM takes round to mainframe conferences etc. It’s exciting and modern to look at. Whereas the picture of a mainframe that these other IT people have in their heads is some giant box with hundreds of peripherals filling a computer room and everyone staring at green screens. Plus, like movies from the 1970s, they picture lots of tape drives with the tapes whirring backwards and forwards like there’s some kind of parity check problem. Although we’re using the same words, we have completely different images in our heads.

We also have completely different emotions about the topic in hand. I rather like mainframes and see them as a large part of the answer to the question about the best way to stay in business with a successful modern IT strategy. They see them as being about as interesting as a box containing last-week’s pizza, and as relevant as whether sound will every catch on in movies!

Let me very quickly tell you about your brain and how it works. Most people think that your brain simply responds to stimuli, which it does, but it also acts like a prediction machine. It builds up expectations about what will happen next. So, if you predict that the next Zoom meeting you have to attend is going to be a complete yawn-fest and Bob from accounts is going to drone on about the predicted year-end figures, you will start to act as though those events have already happened. You will, in fact, be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, if you want to beat Bob from accounts at a game of tennis at lunch time, you need walk on to the court like a winner because that’s what you expect to happen, and it probably will happen.

So, the point of telling you that is because when I’m talking to non-mainframers about the mainframe, they expect me to be discussing a box built in the late 1960s running an operating system written about the same time. Their assumptions are so different to mine, their expectations are totally non-congruent with mine, that we could be talking a totally different language because of the lack of communication that is going on.

For example, I was talking to a small group of people the other day and saying that I could run mainframe software on a laptop. You would have thought that I’d just said that I had discovered Atlantis and there was a tunnel to it from the middle of Swindon. Everyone thought that it was a huge joke. And yet, that’s what IBM Z Development and Test Environment (ZD&T) does. It runs z/OS on a PC running Linux (Ubuntu). It doesn’t need mainframe hardware! The idea is that so long as you have an Intel or compatible chip on your PC or workstation, you can run z/OS, middleware, and other z/OS software, and emulate z/Architecture with virtual I/O and devices.

There are three variants. ZD&T Personal Edition lets a single user to run IBM Z on their PC. ZD&T Enterprise Edition comes with a web-based interface. And ZD&T Parallel Sysplex can be used to enable a Sysplex environment that is running within z/VM.

It seems like a useful idea to try out your mainframe software on your laptop without using any mainframe cycles. As well as testing, you could also develop applications, and you could demonstrate them to colleagues or potential customers. Or, I guess, you could train new application programmers using an environment that they can’t break – or at least the consequences of breaking are comparatively minimal.

Alternatively, you could run mainframes in the cloud with IBM’s Wazi as a Service. Again, it’s a development and testing option that doesn’t actually involve any mainframes – because, as I just mentioned, it’s cloud-based.

All this came to mind because I see that Pop-Up Mainframe, a company I know nothing about, has just announced PopUp Mainframe 2.0, which provides virtual environments running ZD&T Version 14.0.0 and IBM’s latest z/OS operating system, IBM z/OS V2.5. They are offering it as a quick, low-cost way for organizations to test business applications on z/OS 2.5, with zero risk to the physical mainframe.

PopUp environments can be spawned and retired in minutes, allowing IT teams to create an environment, perform their testing, then destroy the environment with no long-term maintenance requirements. The company is claiming that it’s a great opportunity to test the new features available in z/OS 2.5.

Like I say, I don’t have any connection to the company, but the idea of running mainframe software off the mainframe (whether that being Intel-chip devices or the cloud) seems like a great way to get those DevOps program developments under way and overcome the development backlog that has built up at some companies.

There are so many ways that the mainframe (and, yes, I know I’ve just been talking about working without a mainframe being present) can be flexibly used by organizations. It just seems so sad and limiting that non-mainframe specialists in the IT team don’t realize what a powerful and significant contribution mainframes can make to the success of a project and the company they work for.

Perhaps, when we speak to these non-mainframers, we should take a leaf our of Socrates book. He would challenge the assumptions of the people he was talking to (it’s called Socratic questioning), and he would keep doing it. If we did that, they might recognize that what they think about the mainframe – their expectations – are old-fashioned, or just plain wrong. And we can help them understand what benefits the mainframe can offer to their organization.

Mainframe futures – a staff perspective

Let me put my cards on the table from the very outset, I believe mainframes to be one of the most secure and versatile platforms for computing that there is. There is no ‘but’ or ‘however’ following that sentence. What I would like to say is that other platforms are ideal for certain types of computing. I use some of the many apps on my phone all the time. It’s quick and convenient. I use Word and Excel and the Adobe desktop products on my laptop all the time. And I know that cloud computing is brilliant for certain types of work, data analysis. In any reasonably-sized computing department, all these platforms should be used optimally to get the most out of them.

Unfortunately, IT people seem to be as fashion conscious as the Kardashians! The move away from the mainframe seems to have been going on since the 1990s. People have said, that client/server will replace mainframes, or mid-range systems, eg the Dec Vax line, Tandem, Sun Microsystems, and many other systems including IBM’s AS/400s and RS/6000s. And now we have people saying that cloud computing will completely replace – the word of choice is ‘modernize’ – mainframes out of existence. If history tells us anything, then it’s that that won’t be true!

IBM has continued to develop their mainframes, operating systems, and applications. And they have continued to absorb non-mainframe technologies onto the mainframe. There was a time when all mainframe communication to devices used SNA. But now, and for decades, it uses the same communication methods as everyone else, TCP/IP. Linux runs on a mainframe, in fact, it can be the sole operating system on mainframe hardware. So, all those Unix specialists can use mainframes. There’s a whole lot of other software available that makes the mainframe usable by computing specialists with no mainframe expertise. Ansible can be used to automate so many mainframe processes. Programmers can use Git for application development. z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) makes Docker available on mainframes. IBM’s z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) interface is used to provision, deprovision, and otherwise maintain zCX instances.

In fact, IBM z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) provides system management functions in a task-oriented, web browser-based user interface with integrated user assistance. This improves z/OS system programmer’s productivity by using simplified, streamlined, and automated tasks.

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is available. For developers using blockchain, IBM has released a VSCode extension called the IBM Blockchain Platform Extension, which helps developers create, test, and deploy smart contracts, enabling users to connect to a local Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) development environment to test smart contracts before they are deployed in runtimes such as IBM Cloud (with IBM Blockchain Platform for IBM Cloud) etc.

Broadcom has released Code4z, which is a collection of free extensions for Microsoft Visual Studio Code tailored for developers on the mainframe platform.

Zowe provides another way for people without mainframe experience to treat mainframes like any other servers. It’s an open-source software framework that provides easier interoperability and scalability between products and solutions from different vendors. And there is a Zowe Explorer Extension for VSCode, making working on mainframes a lot easier for non-mainframe people.

Lastly, Z Open Automation Utilities (ZOAU) provides a runtime to support the execution of automation tasks on z/OS through Java, Python, and shell commands. With ZOAU, it’s possible to run traditional MVS commands, such as IEBCOPY, IDCAMS, and IKJEFT01, as well as perform a number of data set operations in most scripting languages.

You get the idea – the mainframe is more than just green screens and arcane applications, it can be used by non-mainframe-trained IT specialists.

But that’s the state of play at the start of 2023. This is a world where we know lots of mainframe specialists are planning to retire in the next five years (although, some of them have been saying that for a good few years now!). And we know, although a lot of non-mainframers may not, that there is an easy-ish route into working on the mainframe for non-mainframers, But what else can IBM do to ensure the continued success of mainframes?

I was taken to task the other day because I moaned that universities weren’t training people in COBOL and mainframe skills. It was pointed out to me that colleges take time to change their courses. So, even if a lecturer wanted to add COBOL or mainframe skills to the syllabus, they would have to wait until the next review.

The answer to my question seems to be the inclusion of AI. We saw IBM’s plans for z/OS 3.1 has lots of AI built into it. I’m guessing, but I would expect this to be the start of more-and-more AI appearing in the software. This, I’m expecting, will start to deskill a lot of the jobs currently performed by mainframe specialists.

So, looking at mainframe futures from a staff perspective, we can see that mainframes will continue to be a viable computing platform. We can see that IBM and others have taken lots of steps to ensure that non-mainframe specialists can treat the mainframe as simply another server, and perform work on it with little extra training. Ansible runs from a laptop, for example, but affects the whole mainframe environment. That should allow ageing mainframers to take the retirement that they deserve without leaving organizations without anyone who can work on the mainframe. And, if my prediction is correct, the growing use of AI will deskill a large percentage of mainframe staff, making it easier to employ people to do work that, only a few years ago, would have required large amounts of technical expertise. And that means fewer mainframe experts will be needed by an organization.

Maybe one day, a mainframer will simply need to say, “Alexa, IPL the mainframe”. And it will!