Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

How much an IBM mainframe costs? If they are expensive why companies purchase them? If they are not can someone like me also purchase it?

If they are expensive why companies purchase them?

if AIRBUS A380 are expensive why do airlines purchase them ?

You have asked what is an EXTREMELY complicated question. IBM sells mainframes, but they also use equipment leases as well as rentals. Furthermore, the price paid will depend upon a large number of factors (including but not limited to number of general processors, number of specialty engines, amount of memory, whether or not DASD storage is included, if the old machine is being traded into IBM or not, etc.) so two companies buying the same box may pay different prices.

I've seen quotes that the zBC12 started at $75,000 (US) -- if you have that kind of money then you can contact IBM or one of its partners and acquire one. Realistically, a usable system probably starts between $200,000 and $300,000 since the base system probably doesn't have enough resources to be able to do much. But don't forget that you will have to license z/OS and its components, so expect to pay several thousand dollars a month for the software as well. However, other than certain export restrictions I'm not aware of any problems with any particular person / company acquiring a mainframe.

And expensive tends to be relative -- at a previous employer, we paid close to $500,000 for the mainframe we were using. Our server consolidation / replacement budget (for Windows / Linux / Unix servers) ran about $1,500,000 per year.

I think there is a link on this forum to an article about a kid who bought a used one for about $US300.

Yeah, it was a used z800 a university put on eBay. The link showed pictures on getting into the basement and showing the HMC once it came up. Of course, it didn't have any disk drives and zLinux had to be run on it to avoid the license fees, but it did run last I heard.