Applications

The Mainframe Renaissance

I would like to share with you The renaissance of Mainframe due to its capacity to adapt to the business trends - Consolidation and  virtualization
Deploying virtual Linux servers on mainframe allows customers to leverage existing skills and investments in the platform designed and refined over the years specially to run multiple mixed workloads in a highly available, reliable and secure environnement. Today, customers are deploying SOA infrastructures on Linux virtual servers across multiple mainframes and others servers to deliver ultimate and flexibility and resource optimization. Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Ebusiness Suite, iFlex solutions are available on zlinux IBM Mainframe.

As a new member of Oracle/IBM Joint Solution Center I’m really surprised by the  number of projects of Oracle based on IBM Mainframe. With a background more Unix or Linux oriented  I was happy to see the easy way to use RedHat or Suse distrib on zLinux mainframe. It’s completly transparent for an Oracle DBA. The usage of Oracle Automatic Storage Management is possible and the Oracle Grid Control Manager is able to identify the Mainframe characteristics like zVM for example.
The IBM business around Mainframe is key for them and they are continuing to invest a lot of money on it and to build Initiatives with partners and University.

“I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996″ - Steward Alsop, Inforworld March 1991

Credit Suisse realized a reports named “Back to the Future” - Mainframe’s Quiet Renaissance. They believe too that the mainframe market is experiencing a “renaissance”, as It organizations have once again begun to value many attributes of the mainframe platform, including data sharing, disaster recovery, Linux, partitioning, power and cooling, server pool workload balancing and prioritization, security, specialized processors, total system utilisation and virtualization - all of which represent key focus points in today’s cost and performance conscious IT spending environment”
A lot of large enterprises have accepted that their legacy application suites will need to remain on the mainframe but in addition of that and with the new wave of consolidation and virtualization they decided to consider mainframe as their target environnement for their new projects.
Linux Consolidation
Defining virtual Linux servers on mainframe allows customers to leverage existing skills and investments in the platform designed- and redined over the years- specifically to run multiple mixed workloads in a highly available, reliable and secure environnement. Mainframe’s virtualization capabilities enable IT managers to place Linux applications and data in close proximity to traditional workloads runnign IBM’s proprietary operating systems.
Oracle on Mainframe
All the main Oracle products are available on zlinux mainframe yet.

Provisioning Oracle Environnement using zVM
Actually the only one bootleneck is the disk format duration step. But by example we can provide a Oracle Database 10g on RAC using ASM + 10g AS environnement in 2 hours. It’s very interesting for building temporary test or training environnement. I will continue to communicate on this blog on interesting features of Mainframe on Oracle project.

References:
  

•  Credit suisse : Back to the Future  (13 december 2007) . Customers can access this independent research at www.credit-suisse.com/ir  
•  mainframe blog 
•  IBM z6 - The Next-Generation Mainframe Microprocessor
•  Requirements for Installing Oracle 10gR2 RDBMS on SLES 9 zLinux
  (Note: 431443.1)
• Requirements for Installing Oracle 10gR2 RDBMS on RHEL 4 on zLinux (Note 420382.1) 
• Oracle for Linux on IBM Mainframe: A Quick Guide (Note : 277346.1 )
• 10.2.0.3 Database certified for IBM System z for Apps 11i
  

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