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Try this: Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am {...}.... Question: what is a house and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but ine

Try this: Ok, maybe this is a silly question, but I am {...}.... Question: what is a house and why would I want one? In my mind I think of it as a big, but inelastic, tent. If that's true, why wouldn't I want to just get multiple tents instead? A mainframe is the kind of computer you can buy and set up, turn on, and run for two decades (or more, if you like) non-stop. It doesn't need reboots, it most often doesn't even need to be powered down for hardware replacement or upgrades. It's the epitome of reliability. Most people don't care about reliability. Heck - most people use Windows, so they can't even possibly imagine what reliability and consistency might be like. Therefore, most people can't even imagine wanting reliability because what they have seems "good enough". People who run services which should never go down, on the other hand, love mainframes.

IE6 8y ago
As a non mainframe programmer I found your anecdote about windows reliability contrary to the experience I have had over the past few decades so I am not sure how accurate the rest of your post is.
- the-dude 8y ago
  Your username checks out though.
- tetrep 8y ago
  Here's my favorite: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2553549/all-the-tcp-ip-ports-that-are-in-a-time-wait-status-are-not-closed-aft https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2553549/all-the-tcp... article about it: https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/497-days-of-uptime-kills-windows https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/49... edit: If you want to be especially cynical, you can note that this wasn't discovered for a while because everyone running Windows reboots it regularly because of its notorious instability issues (the bug was found in 2013 and dates back to at least Vista, which was last updated in 2009).
  - com2kid 8y ago
    > because everyone running Windows reboots it regularly because of its notorious instability issues I reboot monthly because getting owned by 0 days sucks, and at this point in life, every platform (except for OpenBSD) is having new exploits found against it at a rather fair rate. Same reason my phone gets rebooted once a month. Aside from that, I have had uptime on Windows boxes in excess of 6 months. Laptops on the other hand, those are more problematic, but it isn't Windows' fault if a WiFi card hard locks itself, has a dysfunctional watchdog timer on board, and needs to be power cycled to get it working again. OSes that can hot swap or live patch kernels can brag about uptimes. The rest of us should stay humble. (And AFAIK no modern consumer based OSes distributions do that)
    - mr_toad 8y ago
      > Laptops on the other hand, those are more problematic Windows laptops. My MacBook has been up 56 days 14:06 hours.
      - com2kid 8y ago
        And my wife's MacBook randomly freaks out when plugged into an external display. Apple laptops have their fair share of hardware issues. Windows laptops tend to have more due to a shorter product cycle. Apple has longer relationships with their parts vendors and thus they have more time and leverage to force good firmware onto the multitudes of independent chips that make up a modern day computer.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    That bug is over five years old. Are you implying there haven't been similar, or worse, bugs in other operating systems since? Windows used to suck, but it's somewhat unfair to judge the platform of 2018 because Vista of 2006 was bad for you.
    - mmt 8y ago
      To be fair, the overall context of the conversation isn't (all) "other operating systems" but, specifically, mainframe ones. Additionally, the GP referenced "the past few decades", which certainly includes 5 years ago. Hopefully a mainframe expert can chime in as to whether the major mainframe OSes have included similar or worse bugs.
- pjc50 8y ago
  https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/ https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/ Windows has improved since then, but it's still a very brave person that would have a single business-critical Windows machine without a few scheduled maintenance and reboot periods every year.
  - nikanj 8y ago
    That bug is from 2002. Do you really think it's a solid reason to not host business-critical things on Windows in 2018?
    - mmt 8y ago
      If mainframe reliability is what it is purported to be, then, for someone making this choice as an alternative to a mainframe, especially if they've been on it for decades already, it's a very solid reason. It is, of course, only a proxy for the real reason, which is the engineering culture that led to the bug and/or reliability. If there's better evidence that Microsoft has drastically changed its engineering culture in favor of reliability and/or IBM has done the converse [1], it could easily trump this proxy evidence. [1] for example, if they've included the OS developers in the layoffs they've been in the news for
    - ralphc 8y ago
      That bug, no. The latest bugs that Windows no doubt has, yes.
WoahNow 8y ago
Except when they do go down it can be a catastrophic business interrupting event. Which is why the cloud model of assume everything is going to break and all your hardware is disposable works much better (IMO).
- walshemj 8y ago
  You can get very very redundant mainframes IBM Parallel Sysplex and so is Tandem
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure break more often than our mainframes. In this case, the cloud model is a con, essentially the self checkout lane at Walmart. You're paying more for the same ability you had before. "Well, you want redundancy right? Well you're supposed to be redundant across AZs, and then regions, and then you're going to have to have disparate vendors to mitigate sole vendor risks." And then we're right back to hosting our own mainframes in our datacenters.
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    Clouds reinvent mainframes. They're still cheaper, run more FOSS, and have more talent available. They're a better form of lockin than mainframes.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - mmt 8y ago
      > They're still cheaper Are they, though? Commodity hardware certainly is, but it's not as if cloud providers are charging a small margin on top of that. They're charging a multiple, potentially as large as 10x. Combined with the parent's proposed need of multi-cloud, that could turn what might otherwise be a few hundred $k of commodity servers into a few $M of cloud costs, which I understand is the OOM the cost of a mainframe.
watertom 8y ago
and everything inside is already virtualized the memory, the processors, the hardware, the power, everything, it can multiple operating systems.

IE6 8y ago

As a non mainframe programmer I found your anecdote about windows reliability contrary to the experience I have had over the past few decades so I am not sure how accurate the rest of your post is.

the-dude 8y ago
Your username checks out though.
tetrep 8y ago
Here's my favorite: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2553549/all-the-tcp-ip-ports-that-are-in-a-time-wait-status-are-not-closed-aft https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2553549/all-the-tcp... article about it: https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/497-days-of-uptime-kills-windows https://blog.ctm-it.com/it-support/blogs/matt-cannon/2013/49... edit: If you want to be especially cynical, you can note that this wasn't discovered for a while because everyone running Windows reboots it regularly because of its notorious instability issues (the bug was found in 2013 and dates back to at least Vista, which was last updated in 2009).
- com2kid 8y ago
  > because everyone running Windows reboots it regularly because of its notorious instability issues I reboot monthly because getting owned by 0 days sucks, and at this point in life, every platform (except for OpenBSD) is having new exploits found against it at a rather fair rate. Same reason my phone gets rebooted once a month. Aside from that, I have had uptime on Windows boxes in excess of 6 months. Laptops on the other hand, those are more problematic, but it isn't Windows' fault if a WiFi card hard locks itself, has a dysfunctional watchdog timer on board, and needs to be power cycled to get it working again. OSes that can hot swap or live patch kernels can brag about uptimes. The rest of us should stay humble. (And AFAIK no modern consumer based OSes distributions do that)
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    > Laptops on the other hand, those are more problematic Windows laptops. My MacBook has been up 56 days 14:06 hours.
    - com2kid 8y ago
      And my wife's MacBook randomly freaks out when plugged into an external display. Apple laptops have their fair share of hardware issues. Windows laptops tend to have more due to a shorter product cycle. Apple has longer relationships with their parts vendors and thus they have more time and leverage to force good firmware onto the multitudes of independent chips that make up a modern day computer.
- nikanj 8y ago
  That bug is over five years old. Are you implying there haven't been similar, or worse, bugs in other operating systems since? Windows used to suck, but it's somewhat unfair to judge the platform of 2018 because Vista of 2006 was bad for you.
  - mmt 8y ago
    To be fair, the overall context of the conversation isn't (all) "other operating systems" but, specifically, mainframe ones. Additionally, the GP referenced "the past few decades", which certainly includes 5 years ago. Hopefully a mainframe expert can chime in as to whether the major mainframe OSes have included similar or worse bugs.
pjc50 8y ago
https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/ https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/ Windows has improved since then, but it's still a very brave person that would have a single business-critical Windows machine without a few scheduled maintenance and reboot periods every year.
- nikanj 8y ago
  That bug is from 2002. Do you really think it's a solid reason to not host business-critical things on Windows in 2018?
  - mmt 8y ago
    If mainframe reliability is what it is purported to be, then, for someone making this choice as an alternative to a mainframe, especially if they've been on it for decades already, it's a very solid reason. It is, of course, only a proxy for the real reason, which is the engineering culture that led to the bug and/or reliability. If there's better evidence that Microsoft has drastically changed its engineering culture in favor of reliability and/or IBM has done the converse [1], it could easily trump this proxy evidence. [1] for example, if they've included the OS developers in the layoffs they've been in the news for
  - ralphc 8y ago
    That bug, no. The latest bugs that Windows no doubt has, yes.

WoahNow 8y ago

Except when they do go down it can be a catastrophic business interrupting event. Which is why the cloud model of assume everything is going to break and all your hardware is disposable works much better (IMO).

walshemj 8y ago
You can get very very redundant mainframes IBM Parallel Sysplex and so is Tandem
toomuchtodo 8y ago
AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure break more often than our mainframes. In this case, the cloud model is a con, essentially the self checkout lane at Walmart. You're paying more for the same ability you had before. "Well, you want redundancy right? Well you're supposed to be redundant across AZs, and then regions, and then you're going to have to have disparate vendors to mitigate sole vendor risks." And then we're right back to hosting our own mainframes in our datacenters.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  Clouds reinvent mainframes. They're still cheaper, run more FOSS, and have more talent available. They're a better form of lockin than mainframes.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mmt 8y ago
    > They're still cheaper Are they, though? Commodity hardware certainly is, but it's not as if cloud providers are charging a small margin on top of that. They're charging a multiple, potentially as large as 10x. Combined with the parent's proposed need of multi-cloud, that could turn what might otherwise be a few hundred $k of commodity servers into a few $M of cloud costs, which I understand is the OOM the cost of a mainframe.

watertom 8y ago

and everything inside is already virtualized the memory, the processors, the hardware, the power, everything, it can multiple operating systems.