ibm system z, the smarter mainframe

March 2010

IBM System z, the Smarter Mainframe

Created by Robert Neidig/Fishkill/IBM 1-914-766-3302 [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]


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Table of Contents Introduction...................................................................................................................................2 The Challenges of Today’s Infrastructure.....................................................................................2 Today’s General Market Insight, Claims and Trends ...................................................................3 A Brief History of the Mainframe ...................................................................................................3 The Distributed IT Approach ........................................................................................................4 The ‘Smarter’ Technology Story....................................................................................................5 ‘Smarter’ Virtualization Differences ...............................................................................................6 ’Smarter’ Software Differences .....................................................................................................7 Green is a ‘Smarter’ Color.............................................................................................................8 ‘Smarter Schools’ ..........................................................................................................................8 ‘Smarter’ Security’ .........................................................................................................................9 One ‘Smarter’ Benchmark Example..............................................................................................9 Cost/Value the ‘Smarter’ Way .......................................................................................................9 A ‘Smarter’ Summary ..................................................................................................................10


Introduction This short paper will address an argument that exists in the WW IT marketplace today and has existed in the marketplace over the last several years. It is an argument between mainframe computing with its z/OS® operating system and distributed server implementations of UNIX® and x86 vendors. The competitors being HP, with its HP-UX operating system, Oracle (Sun) with its Solaris operating system and x86 vendors such as Dell with primarily the Microsoft® Windows® operating system. These vendors also support the Linux® operating system, albeit in a distributed fashion, and with some virtualization techniques such as VMware and Hyper-V.

We will compare these distributed server implementations against the IBM System z® mainframe in a variety of ways. We will look at the value propositions of each platform in terms of such attributes as architecture, design, technology, systems management and investment protection. We will also look at scalability, capacity, performance (both uniprocessor and multiprocessor), reliability, availability and serviceability, virtualization, environmentals, operating system and middleware software, openness, security, business resiliency, and last but not least, cost.

In general, the argument for the mainframe versus distributed servers centers around several topics, one of which is the sharing of resources. This sharing of resources simply provides better overall efficiencies thereby enabling better economies of scale. This shared resource approach of the mainframe also enables a more consolidated approach to computing. This consolidated approach allows more work to be done on one server versus work being done on multiple distributed servers networked together. Another mainframe benefit is the ability of having all the data in one place versus having many copies of the data spread among many distributed servers. High availability is also achieved by the built-in failure avoidance and recovery functions within the mainframe. High availability in a distributed environment can be achieved by having redundancy of multiple servers and failover configurations at additional cost.

The Challenges of Today’s Infrastructure Today the need for progress is quite clear. We need to be smarter in our implementation of IT. The IBM System z ‘mainframe’ is a key component in this venture as we move into the future and also enhances today’s infrastructure with a smarter mainframe versus distributed environments. For example, up to $93 billion dollars in total sales is lost each year because retailers don’t have the right products in stock to meet their customer demand. Approximately 170 billion kilowatt-hours is wasted each year by consumers due to insufficient power usage information. Up to $25 billion dollars in global trading systems are under extreme stress, handling billions of market data messages each day. Seventy cents per

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$1 dollar, on average, is spent on maintaining current IT infrastructures versus adding new capabilities. Approximately 33% of consumers notified of a security breach will terminate their relationship with the company they perceive as responsible. The information and data explosion continues and is driving about 54% growth in storage shipments every year.

Today’s General Market Insight, Claims and Trends The following data points are examples of the impact that System z has had on the IT market place over the last few years. As of October 20, 2009, System z delivered nine percent MIPs growth over the last 24 months. According to IDC, System z has maintained revenue leadership in the WW $250K+ server segment with a 31.4% share. System z led #2 HP by 14 points for 2Q09. According to Gartner, System z held its #1 position at a 36.6% share for 2Q09. Installed capacity of specialty workload engines continues to grow rapidly. Comparing the first half of 2008 to the first half of 2007, Linux engines (IFL) grew ~30%, Java™ engines, the IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) grew ~49% and the IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) specialty engines grew at ~141%.

A Brief History of the Mainframe On April 7, 1964, the IBM Corporation launched the System/360™ into the marketplace. This system addressed the many workloads that existed with a new single architecture and family of systems unlike we had seen. The S/360™, a system designed for business computing, which took four years to develop and cost ~$5 billion (~$24 billion today) was an enormous and risky undertaking. Thomas Watson Jr. literally “bet his company” on the project. The S/360 has been ranked as one of ‘the’ major business accomplishments in American history alongside of Ford’s Model T and Boeing’s 707. It was the first time in history that a complete line of computers and operating systems was announced at one time. The S/360 architecture was the first architecture to combine both commercial and scientific architectures with a universal instruction set designed to execute multi-user, multi-function, batch, and on-line transactional programs with an intelligent off-loaded I/O subsystem.

This architecture also allowed new and exciting sets of events to occur. For example, a program written in 1965 in COBOL can still run today along side of code written just yesterday, and many of those programs are still running. This was a very significant achievement in ‘investment protection’ and no other vendor can make a claim that comes close. Also, imbedded in the architecture was another innovative ‘protection and integrity’ mechanism. A program could not corrupt any other program on the same system because a function called ‘storage protect’ was implemented within the architecture and continues to execute today. In addition, program integrity was also built in on ‘day one’ with isolation of supervisor state and problem program state. Since then, many innovative functions and features have been woven into the S/360, the S/370™ the S/390® and into today’s modern

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IBM System z10™. Today’s System z mainframe includes major memory enhancements, virtual memory enhancements, major processor enhancements and many significant input/output enhancements. It can also be configured into today’s modern and shared Parallel Sysplex® environment, and also a two and/or three site multi-data center Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex™ (GDPS®) environment providing the highest form of availability.

The Distributed IT Approach Distributed systems on the other hand, provide more of a silo-oriented approach to computing and a typically ‘non-shared’ approach in managing resources, although VMware and Hyper-V virtualization products have helped with this issue. In older distributed environments, one server had run just one application until the introduction of VMware and Hyper-V. Today, VMware and Hyper-V techniques allow one server to run multiple applications, but we still see some distributed ‘server farms’ or ‘server plantations’ in many installations.

Regarding availability, most distributed operating systems do not contain much or any recovery code. In addition to lack of recovery code, most non System z servers (other than POWER) lack a significant amount of recovery hardware as well. If the operating system suffers a problem, the typical response is to ‘reboot’ the system. Today’s IBM’s z/OS operating system, going all way back to MVS™, has recovery code called ‘Functional Recovery Routines’ for every major routine in the system. If a problem were to occur, the operating system has the ability to refresh the code and keep the system up and running. Since many outages are a result of software hits or operator error, System z enjoys a most reliable system, a high degree of automation, and the highest forms of availability on the planet. z/OS also has an automated restart manager (ARM) which can restart the right pieces on an available LPAR. Recent releases of z/OS extend its high availability characteristics by going beyond failure detection to predicting problems before they occur. z/OS systems are designed to learn heuristically from their own environment to anticipate and report on system abnormalities using Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA). Essentially, PFA can help customers avoid soft failures leading to outages. Distributed systems are normally refreshed when server upgrades are required, causing unnecessary outages and processing disruptions. System z processors can be added dynamically with functions such as CUoD, CIU, On/Off Capacity on Demand and Dynamic Provisioning.

In addition, Capacity Back Up for temporary additional processing power for every type of System z processor including GPs, IFLs, zIIPs, and zAAPs is fully supported. There is also the issue of the actual number of servers that is really needed. Many cost/value studies have shown that a distributed solution could require 3 to 4 times the number of servers that a

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production environment requires. These additional distributed servers are required to address workloads such as test/development/QA and D/R. All these workload requirements can reside within a single System z system using existing virtualization techniques like z/VM® and PR/SM™ LPAR, which are common to most System z configurations. Regarding server utilization, distributed servers typically run at lower utilization rates of 5 % to 30%, and sometimes higher with the help of VMware and Hyper-V, depending on the workload, although these hypervisors do not necessarily contribute to productive application cycles. System z, on the other hand, normally runs anywhere from 85% to 100% utilization.

The ‘Smarter’ Technology Story Today’s IBM System z10 Enterprise Class (z10 EC™) has a processing engine (and up to 77 of them) that runs at 4.4 GHz on a quad core chip. If you put 64 of these processors together you will get a single-image 64-way Multi-processor running one copy of z/OS. Most distributed processors today are in the~2.0 to 3.0 GHz range. Itanium technology only runs at 1.5-1.7 GHz and even the current Nehalem technology (Nehalem-EP) is estimated at about ~2.7 GHz. System z has also implemented ‘specialty engines’ for a decade. These include the System Assist Processor (SAP) for handling I/O offloads, the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) for executing Linux workloads, the IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for processing a variety of workloads including functions like DB2® star schema queries, DB2 Utilities, IPSEC the security code for TCPIP, and the System Data Mover (SDM) code for the system data mover function for extended data mirroring, z/OS Global Mirror (XRC). Additionally there is the IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) for executing Java code, and also the Integrated Coupling Facility (ICF) for executing Coupling Facility Control Code in a Parallel Sysplex configuration. Distributed systems do not have these forms of specialty engines for handling particular workloads.

When we discuss Input/Output operations, the IBM System z has an extremely powerful and robust I/O subsystem. The System z10 EC has up to 1024 I/O channels that can run up to a FICON® rate of 8 Gbit/s each (there are 336 FICON channels available, also with a new High Performance Feature (HPF) capability for even higher bandwidth). There are up 1024 ESCON® Channels for the traditional fiber optic support. For seamless connections to the network and the internet, there are Open Systems Adapters (OSA Express) that can run up to 10Gbit/s each, providing very high bandwidth. In addition, Dynamic Channel-Path Management is a capability designed to dynamically adjust the channel configuration in response to shifting workload patterns. It is a function in the Intelligent Resource Director (IRD) working together with the Workload Manager of z/OS. To address data security, there are Crypto Express processors which provide secure key encryption/decryption and also can process up to 16,000 SSLs/sec/adapter.

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The capacity of a single fully-loaded System z10 EC is about~30+K MIPs and if one were to couple these together in a Parallel Sysplex configuration, with up to an architectural limit of 32 nodes, you could scale to a very, very large system, indeed.

Memory management on System z is the best in the industry. System z implements an overall highly available and reliable memory management approach, a very high performance paging subsystem and excellent memory over commit ratios. System z z/VM over commit ratios have achieved 4:1 ratios and higher. X86 with VMware can provide up to a typical ratio of 2:1. Today’s System z also has up to 1.5TBs of real memory available. System z also has a HiperSockets™ function, or network (TCPIP) in a box, which enables data from one LPAR to be transferred to another LPAR securely, using the memory bus at very high speed.

‘Smarter’ Virtualization Differences System z has had virtualization capability since 1967 with the implementation of the CP67. This virtualization technique has been enhanced over the years to today’s System z ‘two dimensional’ virtualization approach with PR/SM LPAR logical partitioning and the z/VM hipervisor. Up to 60 logical partitions can be created within a single System z and with those LPARs which typically run the flagship operating System z/OS, you can also create additional LPARs which run z/VM as a hypervisor and support hundreds and hundreds of virtual Linux servers within a single LPAR.

VMware and Hyper-V are relatively new to the distributed environment providing an increased degree of virtualization, but with some architectural limitations and some possible security/integrity issues. Regarding scale, VMware VSPHERE 4 now supports a maximum of 8 cores per guest image as opposed to a previous 4 cores, and limits virtual machines to 255 GB of virtual memory. System z supports 64 cores per virtual machine. VMware also does not support any dedicated I/O. Hyper-V supports up to 4 cores per guest image but without a Dynamic Memory feature, and also has a dependency on a copy of Windows Server 2008, which could be a single point of failure.

Regarding security and integrity, as installations implement virtualization techniques like VMware and Hyper-V, they need to understand that not all hypervisors provide the same level of security. There have been reported instances with VMware whereby a guest virtual machine can exploit the host and invoke code to run on that host. That host has been rendered vulnerable. System z, on the other hand, provides protection in its hypervisor for both LPAR and z/VM to prevent these types of exploits. A program running in a partition on System z cannot disrupt the LPAR hypervisor, alter its contents, or use the hypervisor to insert data or executable code in another LPAR. There is also no need for costly weekly or monthly security patches as in the case of other non System z operating systems.

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Using System z with z/VM virtualization, quite a few consolidation examples have been cited. To name a few, one can consolidate many workloads onto a single IBM System z mainframe, just one footprint can allow a replacement of UNIX or x86 processors at ~10 - 28 to 1 IFL ratio and also reduce UNIX and x86 OTC software support costs also at ~10 - 28 to 1 ratio. Another example of consolidation showed Linux on an IBM System z10 Business Class™ (z10 BC™) with 5 IFLs that was able to consolidate up to 134 unvirtualized Sun x2100 2.8 GHz servers.

’Smarter’ Software Differences System z is supported by a number of different operating systems. Among them, z/OS, the flagship operating system with its immense scale and reliability widely used in today’s large OLTP and commercial environments. Also, the z/VSE operating system supports the many smaller and medium sized customers for System z. There is support for z/VM, the ultimate in virtualization hypervisors. TPF and z/TPF is also supported for very high transaction oriented systems, and Linux for z is supported for today’s many modern and open environments.

Economically, it is much more inexpensive to run one or two copies of software than running hundreds of copies as is the case with distributed environments. It is also much easier to operate and maintain one or two copies of software versus dozens or hundreds as may be needed in a distributed environment. The IBM portfolio of software, in addition to its operating systems support, consists of a huge set of programs divided into five distinct areas: Rational®, for application development, WebSphere® for transaction processing and internet, Information Management for managing data, Lotus for interactive and collaborative computing, and Tivoli® for overall systems management.

IBM has recently announced ‘Solution Editions’ in 2009 for several of its major workloads, providing a more economical and lower cost to run these workloads with legendary mainframe quality, security, availability, scale and all priced to be competitive with UNIX alternatives. Solution Editions exist for Data Warehousing, SAP, ACI, WebSphere, Security, GDPS, Enterprise Linux Server, Chordiant and Cloud Computing.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/solutions/editions/index.html

With regard to programs for System z from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), there are now 1,675 ISVs developing code on System z as of year end 2009, with 175 new ISVs being added last year. There are now over 6,200 applications available for System z with over 900 new System z applications and tools being added in 2009. 2,732 applications are now enabled on z/OS 1.8 and above. There are 1,300 applications enabled on z/OS 1.10 and 375 applications enabled on z/OS 1.11. There were 550 new applications added for Linux on z in 2009 with a total now of 3,150 applications being supported on the platform.

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http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/solutions/editions/index.html


http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/software/isv110.html


Green is a ‘Smarter’ Color IBM is in the process of a large transformation of its thousands of internal UNIX systems being consolidated on to a couple of dozen System z with its ‘Project Big Green’. IBM used the very popular ‘RACE’ (Right-Fitting Applications into Consolidated Environments) financial methodology to build the business case for this project. This multi-year transformation and consolidation project began in 2007 and continues in 2010. IBM is planning to save millions of dollars in floor space alone, with an 85% reduction being realized and an 80% reduction in energy usage.

The following are some environmental examples and results we have seen in consolidating onto a mainframe platform: The IBM System z10 BC offers a 113% improvement in performance per KWh over its predecessor IBM System z9® Business Class (z9 BC). A z10 BC may provide up to 16 times the work for the same power consumption of 14 Sun Fire x2100 2.8 GHz servers. With an Opteron server utilized at 10%, a 10 way System z BC at a 90% typical utilization can do the equivalent work of 232 Opteron processor cores with an 83% smaller footprint and up to 93% lower energy costs. One IBM System z10 Enterprise Class (z10 EC™), compared to an HP Superdome, uses less that 1/3 the watts on comparable workloads for total power and cooling, at less than 1/3 the cost. On average, even the latest generations of distributed servers use 4X the energy for the same workload as a z10™. An example is that 8 Sun 64W M8000s were required for what could be done on a z10 with 35 IFLs.

‘Smarter Schools’ For the past seven years IBM has been supporting its ‘Academic Initiative’ by providing System z mainframe education for our younger and upcoming professionals at many colleges and universities around the globe. The Academic Initiative is world-wide program, supported by many IBM brands and technologies. It encourages open standards and open source and provides easy access to hardware, software, courses, textbooks and other IT resources. We have conducted numerous System z mainframe contests around the world. We have succeeded in training over 65,000 students enrolled at over 643 schools on System z technology and architecture, surpassing the original goal of 20,000 students trained by the end of 2010.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/academicinitiative/

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‘Smarter’ Security’ The IBM System z has, what I like to call, a complete security architecture built into it which goes all the way back to the original S/360 architecture announced and delivered in 1964. Storage protection was achieved with the implementation of ‘storage protect keys’, this again is the ability not to overlay or write into another memory space belonging to another user, and continues to be an integral part of the System z architecture today. The IBM System z also enjoys the following with respect to ‘data privacy’: Data encryption with both clear key and secure key, tape encryption, disk encryption, secured key and storage management, and a data base oriented multi-level security (MLS) function using a combination of z/OS and DB2. With regard to ‘platform infrastructure’ System z is the only server that has achieved the Common Criteria EAL 5 certification. System z also supports a whole host of functions such as z/OS Java SDK, RACF®, ICSF, ITDS, Network Authentication Services, z/OS SSL, z/OS Communications Server and PKI Services. Regarding ‘compliance and audit’ the IBM System z supports SMF, the IBM Tivoli Security Compliance Insight Manager, the IBM Tivoli zSecure Suite, and the DB2 Audit Management Expert. For the ‘extended enterprise’ System z supports the Tivoli Identity Manager and the Tivoli Federated Identity Manager. On the other hand, many distributed solutions do not even come close to this set of products and system capabilities. None of them have anything close to ‘storage protect’, and their data encryption is typically an ‘add-on’ in the channel. Their operating systems are just starting to implement some security and integrity features that have been on the mainframe for many years.

One ‘Smarter’ Benchmark Example IBM ran a benchmark for Domino® which produced some staggering results. An IBM System z10 EC running Domino R8.5 with 64-bit support and Linux supports 75,000 users per 30 square feet, or 2,500 users per square foot. This is 75,000 users per 7,300 watts, or approximately 10 users per watt. This is over 1,000 users for the energy of a 100 watt bulb. The System z10 EC with 8 IFLs can support 90,000 active Domino 64-bit users and Linux on System z users. One System z10 BC will support up to 70,000 active Domino Benchmark users, and you need to add merely one Domino IFL for up to another 7,500 users. This benchmark was conducted at the Washington Systems Center in September 2008.

Cost/Value the ‘Smarter’ Way IBM has conducted hundreds and hundreds of cost/value studies using several methodologies such as ‘Scorpion’ studies, ‘RACE’ studies and ‘Eagle’ studies. Most of these studies have concluded that the System z value proposition is the most inexpensive way to implement IT today versus a distributed one. When a study is implemented, one of the key items to ascertain is to make sure we obtain all of the data that make up an IT solution or

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environment. This includes the following: installed hardware inventory, all software licenses implemented, both operating systems and middleware, all maintenance costs and support/subscription costs, disk storage and maintenance costs, all environmental costs such as power, floor space and cooling costs, all network costs and all administration costs. Once these costs items have been collected and agreed upon, a study can be initiated using all customer data and the output played back to the customer typically showing a solid business case for the mainframe. Some data also shows some surprises, like a distributed network cost of up to 3 to 4 times of a mainframe, just to cite just one example.

A ‘Smarter’ Summary When it comes to ‘smarter’ computing and implementation of new workloads or modernizing existing workloads, the obvious, the safest, the least risk and overall best choice is today’s ‘smarter’ mainframe, the IBM System z.

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Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, New York 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America, 03/2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, IBM logo, DB2, Domino, ESCON, FICON, GDPS, Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex, HiperSockets, MVS, Parallel Sysplex, PR/SM, RACF, Rational, S/360. S/370, S/390, System/360, System z, System z9, System z10, System z10 Business Class, Tivoli, WebSphere, z10, z10 BC, z10 EC, z/OS and z/VM are trademarks or registered trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation. Adobe, the Adobe logo, PostScript, and the PostScript logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States, and/or other countries. Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both and is used under license therefrom. InfiniBand and InfiniBand Trade Association are registered trademarks of the InfiniBand Trade Association. Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Intel, Intel logo, Intel Inside, Intel Inside logo, Intel Centrino, Intel Centrino logo, Celeron, Intel Xeon, Intel SpeedStep, Itanium, and Pentium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. ITIL is a registered trademark, and a registered community trademark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. IT Infrastructure Library is a registered trademark of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, which is now part of the Office of Government Commerce. All statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only. Performance is in Internal Throughput Rate (ITR) ratio based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput that any user will experience will vary depending upon considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user’s job stream, the I/O configuration, the storage configuration, and the workload processed. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve throughput improvements equivalent to the performance ratios stated here.

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ibm system z, the smarter mainframe

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