5 ms·

I never worked on z/OS, but I did work on AS400 (Series I, or whatever it's called now). I think the main things missing is how much IBM really brings to the t

by larrik 3y ago

I never worked on z/OS, but I did work on AS400 (Series I, or whatever it's called now). I think the main things missing is how much IBM really brings to the table here. > If one crashes or has to go down for maintenance, the other partitions are unaffected. Effectively, IBM often does that for you. The machine detects an issue, and calls IBM, who sends someone out (in my day it was immediately), and they fix it. Then it's fixed and they leave and most of your staff has no idea they were there at all. Plus, there's not enough that can be said about using a dedicated stack of hardware and software owned by one company. If there's an issue, it's IBM's. They are the ones who need to fix it. No trying to get HP vs Microsoft to agree to take the blame (which can take literal weeks). Just call IBM, and they take care of it. (In theory)

mxuribe 3y ago
Throughout my career, the term i heard most often for this type of scenario was: "Which neck to choke when stuff fails...", or something like "...the least number of necks to choke when stuff fails...", etc. lol :-D
hinkley 3y ago
Oxide seems to be trying to build a similar arrangement with customers. That's half their motivation for switching to open firmware for the little computers hidden in your machine. There's a big game of fingerpointing these days where you call your vendor and they blame one of their vendors and can't/won't hunt down the issue for you. The ways I've heard that explained sound exhausting. Paying anyone who you can say, "your machine broke come fix it" and they actually do, is probably worth the money. Right now Cloud providers and IBM are the only ones really providing that service. I suspect history will say that people were not running to the Cloud so much as running away from bullshit hardware vendors.
- Melatonic 3y ago
  Not always true - there are lots of hardware vendors that do have pretty decent support and automatically call home and a part is same day shipped. That being said usually I am the one replacing that part on my own infrastructure which is usually a 30 minute drive an hour to maybe 3 of my time
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I do like the idea that parts of a system can simply be turned off and when a number of faults have accumulated, a tech is assigned to deal with them all at once, amortizing the maintenance costs over more tasks. Better overall to replace three drives at the same time, especially if the servers are a half hour away from you.
- bcantrill 3y ago
  Yes! There are lots of ways in which we are nothing like these big IBM systems (we are, for example, entirely open -- like POWER, but very unlike AS/400 or Z series machines), but we definitely admire the robustness of these machines! Indeed, arguably to a fault, as I likened us to the AS/400 in a VC pitch[0] -- which (despite the potential accuracy of the historical analogue) is as ill-advised as it sounds... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0&t=2216s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0&t=2216s
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    IBM big iron is a thing of beauty. There is nothing ill-advised in pushing a platform that's comparable to it in the good parts, and lacking the icky ones is a huge plus. And it's a shame POWER is soooo expensive. But, then, so are high-end x86 and ARM, so I guess it's not that it's expensive more than I'm not paid nearly enough to have one. And, between buying a high-end POWER box and a yacht, I'll always take the second.
neverartful 3y ago
"using a dedicated stack of hardware and software owned by one company" advantage - one throat to choke disadvantage - they've got you by the balls when it comes time to pay the licensing and maintenance fees
- Yasuraka 3y ago
  One has to wonder if the most optimal throat-choking to ball-holding ratio can be modeled
  - bob1029 3y ago
    I have a really hard time with the game theory around this. Every time I run the numbers, I arrive at: I would much rather be in a situation where I can place blame at the feet of one party, especially if they are under some contract to provide a certain level of service. There are things that I absolutely cannot control and I'd rather push as much of this as possible into one bucket. What I can control is how we actually use the technology relative to the business. If our sole vendor doubles the price on a certain service, then we will explore alternative services (within the same vendor) or ways to use that service less (maybe we send emails instead). I know the vendor is going to try to turn the economic screws. That I can work with. Business as usual. What I don't enjoy are those "unknown unknowns".
larrik 3y ago
There was one other aspect of these machines I missed. They run forever. We had a machine in there that by the time I left was running nonstop for 10 years. I was their only IT person for 5 of those years, and I basically visited them a few times a year to work on MSAccess reports, and never touched the server (I may have never even logged into it!). It just chugged along running their entire business with no maintenance.

by larrik 3y ago

mxuribe 3y ago

Throughout my career, the term i heard most often for this type of scenario was: "Which neck to choke when stuff fails...", or something like "...the least number of necks to choke when stuff fails...", etc. lol :-D

hinkley 3y ago

Oxide seems to be trying to build a similar arrangement with customers. That's half their motivation for switching to open firmware for the little computers hidden in your machine. There's a big game of fingerpointing these days where you call your vendor and they blame one of their vendors and can't/won't hunt down the issue for you. The ways I've heard that explained sound exhausting. Paying anyone who you can say, "your machine broke come fix it" and they actually do, is probably worth the money. Right now Cloud providers and IBM are the only ones really providing that service. I suspect history will say that people were not running to the Cloud so much as running away from bullshit hardware vendors.

Melatonic 3y ago
Not always true - there are lots of hardware vendors that do have pretty decent support and automatically call home and a part is same day shipped. That being said usually I am the one replacing that part on my own infrastructure which is usually a 30 minute drive an hour to maybe 3 of my time
- hinkley 3y ago
  I do like the idea that parts of a system can simply be turned off and when a number of faults have accumulated, a tech is assigned to deal with them all at once, amortizing the maintenance costs over more tasks. Better overall to replace three drives at the same time, especially if the servers are a half hour away from you.
bcantrill 3y ago
Yes! There are lots of ways in which we are nothing like these big IBM systems (we are, for example, entirely open -- like POWER, but very unlike AS/400 or Z series machines), but we definitely admire the robustness of these machines! Indeed, arguably to a fault, as I likened us to the AS/400 in a VC pitch[0] -- which (despite the potential accuracy of the historical analogue) is as ill-advised as it sounds... [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0&t=2216s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0&t=2216s
- rbanffy 3y ago
  IBM big iron is a thing of beauty. There is nothing ill-advised in pushing a platform that's comparable to it in the good parts, and lacking the icky ones is a huge plus. And it's a shame POWER is soooo expensive. But, then, so are high-end x86 and ARM, so I guess it's not that it's expensive more than I'm not paid nearly enough to have one. And, between buying a high-end POWER box and a yacht, I'll always take the second.

neverartful 3y ago

"using a dedicated stack of hardware and software owned by one company" advantage - one throat to choke disadvantage - they've got you by the balls when it comes time to pay the licensing and maintenance fees

Yasuraka 3y ago
One has to wonder if the most optimal throat-choking to ball-holding ratio can be modeled
- bob1029 3y ago
  I have a really hard time with the game theory around this. Every time I run the numbers, I arrive at: I would much rather be in a situation where I can place blame at the feet of one party, especially if they are under some contract to provide a certain level of service. There are things that I absolutely cannot control and I'd rather push as much of this as possible into one bucket. What I can control is how we actually use the technology relative to the business. If our sole vendor doubles the price on a certain service, then we will explore alternative services (within the same vendor) or ways to use that service less (maybe we send emails instead). I know the vendor is going to try to turn the economic screws. That I can work with. Business as usual. What I don't enjoy are those "unknown unknowns".

larrik 3y ago

There was one other aspect of these machines I missed. They run forever. We had a machine in there that by the time I left was running nonstop for 10 years. I was their only IT person for 5 of those years, and I basically visited them a few times a year to work on MSAccess reports, and never touched the server (I may have never even logged into it!). It just chugged along running their entire business with no maintenance.