What is Digg?72 Comments
- GoneSouth, on 10/10/2007, -3/+17In other news, IBM burns $250M in payroll on pointless meetings last month.
- swordedge, on 10/10/2007, -3/+15IBM has always leaned toward being green. Doing so saves money, lots of it. This is why they recycled paper for example.
And just because Bill Gates declared the era of mainframes to be dead doesn't mean it is. It most certainly meant that it is not. One of these things can do the work of 1500 PC's - Hoov, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8They're back because they've proven themselves capable.
- mattmcm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8It means that a company uses the products that it makes. For example, Apple OS X developers using OS X, or Windows developers using Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_your_own_dog_food - sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Or Alpo employees eating in the company cafeteria.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11Another proof if needed that the whole "TCO" issue raised by the folks of Redmond was just another attempt at spreading desperate FUD.
- LetsGoHawks, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7A big part of the savings comes from the servers taking up less space. And that space is equipped with more efficent air conditioning.
Plus, less hardware means a lower electric bill to run that hardware.
Power consumption is a HUGE issue for data centers. There is one in Georgia that is only half full of servers because the power company won't allow the center to use any more juice than it already is. - Xondar, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9What the hell does "Talk about eating your own dog food." even mean?
- Hoov, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Uh, no. IBM most certainly does not get everything free from themselves. There's still the labor process involved at the very least. And many services within the plant are handled by contractors.
- MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -7/+12This sort of reminds me how American Airlines saved I think it was $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating a single olive in each salad.
- sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Like "Windows is Secure" :)
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Yeah historically it was that the TCO of proprietary Unix was much lower than the TCO of NT (which was cheaper per license).
- jebus123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5That's 640k of RAM, not cache.
- OverThere, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7And yet they will continue to use Lotus Notes, hindering the productivity of their workers everywhere....
- ploop, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Anyway, the small servers they were using were of IBM manufacture. The savings is primarily because of things like lower electric bills.
- dogred, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Don't really work in a data center do ya?
A data center is more than just a server room. Sure you can have a "Data Center" within a headquarters building. But a behemoth like IBM will have a building just for their servers...that building will be the "Data Center". That will also house the support teams and their management. Also, there will be rooms for test environments, staging areas for incoming and outgoing servers, as well as storage rooms for spare parts and equipment.
The cost of manpower to keep the Linux servers running (hardware and software) also is much greater for 4,000 small servers compared to 30 Z-frames. - sacherjj, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Power for the server. Backup Costs. Admin costs. Hardware costs. When you actually do the math, things can cost much more than expected.
- dustinhoffman, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7As I sit here, waiting for Lotus Notes to do some simple tasks (or Bloatus Notes as we call it here)... I can't help but wonder how much faster this would run on a mainframe...
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3The people who use it?
Quite simply given all the companies that depend on Windows and the costs associated it is cheaper long term if they could make Linux a success. Linux would be the dream ticket for OEM's and ISV's, the only people who'd lose out badly are MS and cereal box MSCE's. - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4What about supercomputers, web servers, file and print servers, app servers and embedded devices. Oh I'm sorry I thought you had some sort of insight into the computing market.
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Let's be fair. Are there any good products in this market. The fact that the MS drones beat their chest over Exchange shows just how crappy all the alternatives are.
- clevvernet, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Keep in mind I think IBM had 30 mainframes sitting around (or available for cheap) with available resources. It would be interesting to determine if there would be a cost savings if you went out and purchased 30 mainframes to replace 4000 Linux Intel boxes, I'm guessing the answer would be a big NO. Still cool at any rate, I'm all for linux on anything!
- plizard, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4pap johns saves 1.5 million a year by only giving 1 pepper with your pizza instead of 2 like in the past.
it's just management saving money. - qwerty1263, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I think one of the main points they were driving here is "green", IBM is not green not by a long shot, I've been a contractor of theirs for many years and one example I can tell you is something that directly effects the environment and they could change it today if they choose to but do not. They use harmful gasses to protect their servers, tape libraries etc. They have failed to mention this. I helped them just a short time ago with the unfortunate problem they need to face that they will actually be breaking international building code as well as NFPA Fire codes for continuing to use out dated harmful CO2 to protect a lot of these servers. There are and have been many alternative green waterless protection clean agents they could have been using for many many years now and continue be excessively concerned about costs than the environment. Sorry big blue your not green.
- nnolasco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yesterday, we had mainframes and ASCII terminals.
Today, we have Application Servers and browsers.
Same thing, different name. - nnolasco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Getting rid of 4000 servers should represent savings in terms of physical space, server administration and maintenance.
- noth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2My company uses Lotus notes.... most of us just refer to it as "The virus".
- DavX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Things are changing around IBM, I don't work on the Lotus team, but I have to (we all have to) use notes, and everyone else here agrees that sucks.
- stenhard, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Me < 50yrs likes iSeries. Lots.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4yea...250000000 = 40000
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Can easily be coded. I imagine that it wouldn't be that hard to write a firefox extension to do it for you.
- DoverGeek, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Umm, they never left....
- GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yes but mainframes still aren't really suited to CPU bound tasks. For that you are better off with a cluster. Mainframes tend to be used a lot by ISP's to handle their services.
- blaket, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2"The cost of manpower to keep the Linux servers running (hardware and software) also is much greater for 4,000 small servers compared to 30 Z-frames."
That was my first thought. There goes another 2 - 5k jobs (fake numbers but you get the point). While the CTO gets a $10 million dollar bonus on hitting numbers. - K3ITHK, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2How do you do that quote thing? I mean you don't type it out every time do you?
- daalis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It would be interesting to know how the $250m actually IS accounted for. While it makes for great marketing PR for this to be listed as a "consolidation of Linux boxes" simple server consolidation, including older mainframes and zLinux could easily account for that much. There is disturbingly little detail on how this number was generated.
Along the lines of the Lotus notes comment... maybe these are the new consolidated back end for those servers. ;) - osarhan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1its about cause and effect!
- expert01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1And to buy those servers... http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/HelpDisplay?storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1&subject=2576394
- morningmatters, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I am pretty much sure much of these savings came from laying off people who supported the old systems. IBM Global/Business Consulting are pretty much the only good places to work for in IBM, but even there you will get laid off when you reach age 50.
- JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4Bill himself has denied ever having said anything like this and has challenged anyone to show otherwise. Since noone seems able to do so, it would appear that this is a classic example of the old adage that a lie repeated often enough becomes the new truth.
- trollick, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of those.
- ASSHO, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I work at IBM, and IBM to me stands for I've Been in Meetings... all DAY LONG.
Whoever thinks consolidating Linux clusters from x86 onto zSeries mainframes is a good idea should be the one to support, and tune the system. z/OS is good for one thing when it comes to performance, and that's pure transactional speed. Running Java, Linux on it is the worst thing anyone could do for their enterprise. - thundercleese, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Why do you think it is harder to support and tune mainframes over Linux clusters? Can you point me to any resources or studies?
- calvmari, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1AHHHH! It's the return of the ***** quoting system. There's a nice looking way to quote phrases, it goes a little this.
"So and so says the dow will shoot through the roof!"
http://www.dowmyjones.com - robwilkens, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4I'm an unemployed 32-year-old who lives with his parents. What gave you that impression, dumbass?
- gharding, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I really miss "
- lengau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yes, but each job has a place. I don't think that mainframes will die any time soon, because they'll be useful in many places (as you said - used by ISPs, for example). But eventually it'll probably become cheaper (although perhaps inefficient) to use clusters as time goes on.
- lengau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If Digg would just implement a system where you could do blockquotes...
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