IBM hatches new mainframe

Attempting to bring its next generation of mainframes closer to the corporate computing mainstream, IBM rolled out the latest member of its z900 line last week. The new eServer z990, previously known by its codename T-Rex, can handle up to 32 processors and 30 logical partitions, twice that of its predecessor. It integrates smoothly with WebSphere Application Server 5.0 for z/OS and supports the latest iteration of J2EE and the handful of core Web services standards.

“IBM is treating this announcement not like a mainframe announcement but like any other server. It’s certainly a radical departure from mainframe announcements of five and 10 years ago when it was all about undecipherable acronyms and arcane software licensing terms,” said Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata in Nashua, N.H. “The message here is the mainframe is no longer an insular system.”

IBM improved the system’s virtualization capabilities by allowing it to support thousands of Linux servers from a single box. It also enhanced automation features by including the Intelligent Resource Director, which helps allocate system resources to tasks that most need them, officials said.

“If [the z990] has that much more processing power to go with the virtualization software, then it becomes an attractive play for Linux in partitions. But I have to see how smoothly it all works with what we have in place here already,” said John Jefferies, a network and systems administrator at a large medical distributor in Chicago.

IBM’s Global Services said the new mainframe will drive its On Demand Data Centers by helping users access the processing power they need through a hosted or utility model. The first two models of the z990, the A08 and A16, will be available on June 16. The models C24 and D32 are due to ship on October 31.

In a related announcement last week, IBM unveiled a new suite of systems management products designed to take advantage of both the z/OS and OS/390 operating systems. One of those products, the Tivoli Management Portal, gives users a single point from which to see a system’s overall performance and to carry out checks on a system’s reliability.