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Sure IBM System Z is a marvel to work with, and it tickles the fascination of an engineer to be able to hot swap CPU banks and memory banks from a live system w

Sure IBM System Z is a marvel to work with, and it tickles the fascination of an engineer to be able to hot swap CPU banks and memory banks from a live system without downtime! I have had my mind blown away doing exactly that with a test Z10 in 2008. However, the big System Z is surrounded by a lot of marketing and sales people who only know how to hype the shit out of the world. You talk to them for 2 minutes, and they bring up Watson just like in the linked article. For no logical reason. It is a big percentage of your job to cut the bull shit if you are dealing with IBM, particularly the System Z crowd. Unfortunately. As expensive it is. It might be a crown jewel of enterprise computing even in the modern era if the ecosystem around it evolves to modern practices and cut out the bullshitters. I have run a few thousand Linux VMs under Z/VM (hypervisor) on the Z10 hardware, using specialty Z processors made for running Linux. It was lovely albeit being inaccessible to the masses.

neverartful 6y ago
I completely agree with you. I have been completely fascinated and astounded by the capabilities of the System Z (and also System P in my case), yet utterly flabbergasted and disgusted by the incompetence of IBM in business dealings. For example, the hypervisor on P series has been around since the introduction of Power5 and it allows you to create micro-LPARS with a small fraction of the CPU resources. Even back in the Power5 days, there was something called entitled capacity that lets you specify the minimum amount of CPU resources your LPAR would receive even if the entire server is being hammered simultaneously. It's an engineering marvel. Back then it was called APV. I believe it's called PowerVM these days. I'm sure that most people in our industry have no idea that this capability exists, let alone that it's been around since Power5. Sad, really.
StillBored 6y ago
"specialty Z processors made for running Linux." This isn't really accurate WRT what is happening, the IFL (https://www.ibm.com/products/integrated-facility-for-linux https://www.ibm.com/products/integrated-facility-for-linux) is little more than a normal fully unlocked PE that is only licensed for running linux. Its just a cheaper way to get an unlocked PE.

neverartful 6y ago

I completely agree with you. I have been completely fascinated and astounded by the capabilities of the System Z (and also System P in my case), yet utterly flabbergasted and disgusted by the incompetence of IBM in business dealings. For example, the hypervisor on P series has been around since the introduction of Power5 and it allows you to create micro-LPARS with a small fraction of the CPU resources. Even back in the Power5 days, there was something called entitled capacity that lets you specify the minimum amount of CPU resources your LPAR would receive even if the entire server is being hammered simultaneously. It's an engineering marvel. Back then it was called APV. I believe it's called PowerVM these days. I'm sure that most people in our industry have no idea that this capability exists, let alone that it's been around since Power5. Sad, really.

StillBored 6y ago

"specialty Z processors made for running Linux." This isn't really accurate WRT what is happening, the IFL (https://www.ibm.com/products/integrated-facility-for-linux https://www.ibm.com/products/integrated-facility-for-linux) is little more than a normal fully unlocked PE that is only licensed for running linux. Its just a cheaper way to get an unlocked PE.