Non zOS 101.

[Anuj Dhawan]

I thought I've made the front page of this board too crowded to cover most of the topics but since the introduction of the zEnterprise (oh wow - I woke up! ), "z/OS-only" (yeah you read it correct) programmers and analysts are usually put into the world of non-Z software and hardware and I thought we should talk about some non zOS things as well but I don't feel any other part of the Forum suitable for this kind of discussion so it's under other mainframe topics/of-topics .

Said that, usually most installations run Unix of some sort and that is maintained by the other staff. However, I think we'd need to understand terms like POWER, blades, AIX, and others also to chip in the discussions with them well and so this thread is to talk about a bit on bit off zOS and for those who haven't dealt with non-z platforms.

Slowly, after this post - I'll start posting a bit and we'll talk about them in brief. If some one would require more information, we can definitely start a new thread by referring back to this thread, however let's keep this thread around brief definitions.

[Anuj Dhawan]

System i:

This is the term used for the midrange IBM processors, previously known as AS/400, eServer iSeries, and System/38 (S/38). It was officially merged with the System p to become the IBM Power Systems line. We're including it because it's still used in several references. The software for the System i processors was IBM i, which was previously called OS/400 and i5/OS.

[Anuj Dhawan]

System x

The System x servers are the PC-based servers from IBM. System x is also re-ferred to as an x86 server, which can run Windows, Linux, VMware, and Solaris Unix. They're important to z/OS people because an IBM statement of direction in-dicates that the new zBX (zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension) will support Linux running System x blades by mid-2011. System x is available in towers, rack-mounted, and blades.

[Anuj Dhawan]

System p:

The System p servers were originally the RS/6000 machines that were the RISC/Unix-based servers. These were renamed first to eServer pSeries, then eServer p5, and then System p5 before merging with the System i to become the IBM Power Systems line. We're including it because it's still used in several refer-ences. System p could run either AIX or Linux.

[Anuj Dhawan]

The blade servers had been the buzz word in the market for quite some time now and the name itself sounds like as if it cuts out everything else. One can think of a blade server as a compressed computer. In this, one small piece of hardware contains the processors, memory, and disk storage. A blade is designed to fit into a Blade-Center that can contain several blades.

As stated earlier, a blade server is a stripped down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Whereas a standard rack-mount server can function with a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, while still having all the functional components to be considered a computer. A blade enclosure, which can hold multiple blade servers, provides services such as power, cooling, networking, various interconnects and management. Together, blades and the blade enclosure form a blade system (although BladeSystem from Hewlett-Packard is a specific product name). Different blade providers have differing principles regarding what to include in the blade itself, and in the blade system altogether.

For example, the Blade-Center PS701 is a POWER7 blade that contains eight cores and runs at 3.0 GHz. The BladeCenter PS700 has 4 cores, and the PS702 has 16 cores. The PS701 is the blade used in the zBX model 002, and comes with eight 64-bit 3.0 GHz cores, with between 16GB and 128GB of memory, and up to a 600GB hard drive. It is 9.65" (245 mm) x 1.14" (29 mm) x 17.55" (445 mm) in size.