> you can beat it in every single metric with commodity hardware. The zSeries selling point is not the hardware, but the reliability (which is in fact the hard

> you can beat it in every single metric with commodity hardware. The zSeries selling point is not the hardware, but the reliability (which is in fact the hardware). The z in that series stands for zero down time and they are not selling hardware, but close to 100% reliability. Now in reality, no one can guarantee zero down time, but IBM does in fact guarantee 5 nines (99.999%) and 6 nines (99.9999%) up time and that guarantee costs money. You certainly can't get those sort of up-time numbers using nothing but commodity hardware.