Posts by lordminty 22 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2017
<blockquote>few VMware-powered cloud operators operate 3,500 cores</blockquote>
That really isn't a lot of cores for anyone that tries to call themselves a 'cloud operator' is it?
Maybe I've just worked in big shops, but 3,500 cores is only around ~90 ESXi servers with ~40 cores each. My last place had that sort of number of ESXi hosts for one solution comprising of a just 6 applications.
Thanks for taking the time to respond Liam.
The diskless boot looks very interesting. I wonder if it would work on a Raspberry Pi Proxmox hypervisor? When I get time I might have a play.
Now if we can move the master image into ram disk Linux can match IBM VM from 1967!
It's 'Shared Segement'.
Instead of IPLing (booting) CMS for each user from DASD (disk), it was already in CPs (the mainframe OS, aka VM) memory. When you logged into your CMS VM (actual virtual machine) it was there instantaneously as a read-only copy.
When you IPL VM (the OS, aka CP), CP loaded all the shared segments into upper RAM, where they lived all the time the machine was up.
The beauty of it was that when you upgraded VM, you upgraded CMS. So every CMS VM got upgraded. None of this lark of having multiple old OSes on different VMs clogging up your estate that all need to be upgraded individually.
Are there any x64 or Unix/Linux hypervisors that load a shared read-only copy of a guest OS image in memory?
And Shared Segments weren't just for CMS. They were used by 4GLs like FOCUS and RAMIS. Again when you upgraded it, everything using it got upgraded. No having gazillions of SQL or Oracke versions around.
I also worked on MVS and one thing I wanted to try before I moved on was a single shared read-only SYRES volume, to IPL our 14 MVS systems from. It was technically possible.
Do any x86/*nix virtualisation solutions use shared read-only boot disks?
Your ideal employee should have all the modern professionalism we would expect (remember: it wasn't common in the 1990s, we were still making stuff up as we went)
Wot? Are you serious? In the 1990s I was a senior MVS and VM Sysprog responsible for 14 IBM mainframe images, most running in around 128MB of memory. We had no choice not to be professional. If we cocked up we took thousands of online users and the entire business offline and I'd get a personal visit from the IT Director (who was being given constant ear ache from higher up).
Modern professionalism seems to consists of pushing out massively bloated, untested code and upgrades and then shrugging shoulders when it goes tits up.
I'm old enough to remember installing 5735-HAL IBM TCP/IP FOR MVS Version 2.2 waaay back in 1992.
Otherwise known in IBM speak as the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol Programme Offering, or in plain English an unsupported experimental product. I still have the scars and nightmares about SMP/E.
And all that pain so the MVS image could have a single IP address! It was the first time I used 'ping.
Then within 3 years, along came the fully POSIX compliant OS/390.
How has this not been fixed yet?
I mean The Guardian has the finest investigative IT journalist to unleash on the incident, Carole "Russian bots" Cadwalldr, winner of journalistic awards on the subject of hacking, with loads of "sources" to bail them out.
I expect she's frantically hitting her Macbook's keyboard right now, Googling "IP addresses in Russia"
"on an unsecured Tiscali database"
It was worse than that wasn't it? Application and DB all on a single Internet-facing server.
The IT version of leaving going out and leaving all your house doors and windows open with a big sign saying 'Criminals Welcome' hanging outside.
Sheesh, here we go again, another big name scrimping on IT security and using Stevie Wonder for their PCI-DSS audits.
Sod the ICO/GDPR fines, the banks should just take away their ability to take card payments, its not like this stuff is actually difficult.
If it's SQL injection again they really need to rethink their application and DB tiering, but I'll hazard a guess that everything is running on a single Internet-facing tier.
I'd call them cowboys, but at least cowboys wear boots.
"I think that's because their computers lack internet access... IPv4... graphical displays..."
Pah, I was installing the quaintly named Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol on IBM MVS mainframes back in 1991 before it was even an official IBM product for MVS.
Oh, and we used IBM-compatible PCs (remember them?) running Attachmate 3270 emulator, so arguably we had a graphical display too.
"Once upon a time you could boot an IMSAI or a PDP by loading the bootstrap in binary from the front panel."
Yeah, and a TI-990. In fact I used to have to do that, from multiple sheets of A4 to load the bootstrap loader that could then read a deck of cards, which loaded a program to do a bit level disk clone backup.
It was a right PITA when you got a few pages in and then messed up the switches. No choice you just had to start all over again.
Kids today eh?
Wot no COBOL?
Surely in terms of lines of code in active service, COBOL is still leader of the pack?
Are these languages actually popular, or is this survey of forums a measure of just how unskilled younger code monkeys are, or how user hostile and illogical the 'top' languages are?
Anyway, you're not really a programmer until you've had to hand code IBM mainframe assembler just to get the system to IPL. Somehow I dont see any Javascript/Java coders going near that.
"This latest incident brings back memories of the largest of those data thefts: the 2016 collection of Facebook information by political marketing strategists at Cambridge Analytica."
When people give data away freely it's not theft. When people use dodgy Facebook apps to impress their so-called friends and boast abou having a particular type of personality, it's not theft.
Just saying.
I've not worked on mainframes for over 20 years now (I was a VSE, VM and OS/390(MVS) sysprog manager, and I've worked with x86, Sparc and HP-UX based solutions for over 10 years now.
I suspect many of the negative comments come from people who have never experience mainframes, or seen a server estate that consists of tens of thousand of the things. 10s of thousands of physicals are not easy to manage and when you need a small army to run them, it makes mainframes look cheap. Mainframes just get a bad rep due to the upfront capital costs not the long term operational costs.
Quite simply I've seen nothing in the x86 etc. space that comes anywhere close to IBM's mainframe offerings, and I cease to be amazed by the so-called industry 'developments' in the x86 etc. space that mainframes were doing 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Yes some of the tech out there is interesting (think Sparc-based Exadatas, but they ain't cheap!)
Virtualisation is another one. VMWare ESX and NSX etc. are all interesting but they are still miles behind what VM on mainframes could do over 20 years ago.
Just look at the number of Linux VMs you can host on z/VM compared to a VCE Vblock, and even hidden in that press release, 2million Docker containers. You get big figures on big iron.
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