Independent Project Mainframe

Introduction

What is a mainframe? As defined in the book, “Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/OS Basics”, mainframe is a large computer system that is used to host the databases, transaction servers, and applications that require a great degree of security and availability. Even though once it was believed that mainframes will never last, this has been proven wrong. Nowadays mainframes are taking over e-business. Example: Banks, internet servers, health care, governments, or any organization that handles thousands of I/O operations at a time.

The famous operating systems for PC’s are windows and Linux/ UNIX, but mainframe has other operating systems that specialize on different things. We are familiar with Windows and Linux/Unix running on our PCs, while mainframe operating systems are quite a few. Starting with:

Linux- Open source, which makes it cheaper to operate mainframe.
z/OS – Offers secure and diverse application environment to deliver high quality of services for enterprise transactions and data.
z/OS.e – Based on z/OS generated for e-business.
TPF – High volume transaction processing.

PCs’ are attacked everyday, but to attack mainframe is close to impossible. Mainframes are known to be the most secure servers today and some mainframe can process 11,000 transactions per second.

Ebber, O'Brien, Ogden, explained that, RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) is one of the important features of mainframe. Mainframe has self-recovery capabilities and extensive self-checking; has the ability to recover from failure without impacting the rest of the system; and determine the originality of the problem that caused the system to fail. The above makes mainframe to be very cheap to operate.

Another plus of mainframe is power consumption. A single mainframe may cost about $32 per day of electricity, while it will take about 720 pc server to do the same job and cost $624 per day of electricity. I guess this gives a lot of businesses something to think about.

Mainframes are more efficient. Can handle hundreds I/O operations at the same time and operate on different operating systems.

	Miriam Malaquias Instructor: Prof J. Matthews Links to the project: HOME Mainframe Contest Glossary References
Independent Project: Mainframe
Introduction What is a mainframe? As defined in the book, “Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/OS Basics”, mainframe is a large computer system that is used to host the databases, transaction servers, and applications that require a great degree of security and availability. Even though once it was believed that mainframes will never last, this has been proven wrong. Nowadays mainframes are taking over e-business. Example: Banks, internet servers, health care, governments, or any organization that handles thousands of I/O operations at a time. The famous operating systems for PC’s are windows and Linux/ UNIX, but mainframe has other operating systems that specialize on different things. We are familiar with Windows and Linux/Unix running on our PCs, while mainframe operating systems are quite a few. Starting with: Linux- Open source, which makes it cheaper to operate mainframe. z/OS – Offers secure and diverse application environment to deliver high quality of services for enterprise transactions and data. z/OS.e – Based on z/OS generated for e-business. TPF – High volume transaction processing. PCs’ are attacked everyday, but to attack mainframe is close to impossible. Mainframes are known to be the most secure servers today and some mainframe can process 11,000 transactions per second. Ebber, O'Brien, Ogden, explained that, RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability) is one of the important features of mainframe. Mainframe has self-recovery capabilities and extensive self-checking; has the ability to recover from failure without impacting the rest of the system; and determine the originality of the problem that caused the system to fail. The above makes mainframe to be very cheap to operate. Another plus of mainframe is power consumption. A single mainframe may cost about $32 per day of electricity, while it will take about 720 pc server to do the same job and cost $624 per day of electricity. I guess this gives a lot of businesses something to think about. Mainframes are more efficient. Can handle hundreds I/O operations at the same time and operate on different operating systems.