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The bottom line seems to be "licensing cost savings make up for hardware cost differences"; but the assumption to that is running Oracle, which is a terrible bu
by appleflaxen 5y ago
The bottom line seems to be "licensing cost savings make up for hardware cost differences"; but the assumption to that is running Oracle, which is a terrible business decision for almost any company.
Overall, I want to find a reason to get excited about this market segment because I'm a processor nerd, but the arguments are profoundly uncompelling.
- rbanffy 5y agoThe worst part is that there's no entry-level for the platform - the smallest box will still cost you an arm and a leg. On the bright side, it's not much more expensive than a similarly capable (and reliable) pile of generic hardware and much easier to assemble (you just pay IBM to do it). They used to have entry-level deskside boxes, but not anymore. You can run the latest zOS on Hercules/Hyperion, but IBM will not like it - and most certainly won't sell you a license. You won't be using a cool CPU, only a normal one pretending to be cool. You can get a Linux VM from the LinuxONE Community Cloud. It's fun to play with - feels like a fast two-core (probably running SMT2 on a single one) with wicked fast IO but, apart from that, nothing too special. It has a lot of performance counters in the CPU too, so that's fun at least.