[geeks] Windows on a mainframe? Why???

[Lionel Peterson]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>   Here's a link to an article on a company that plans to put Windows on
>>   a IBM series Z mainframe and allow users to RDP to it, just like a
>>   terminal server or remote desktop session:
>>   http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/030409-microsoft-windows-mainfra
>>   me.html
>>   Really?
>
> This would be S-L-O-W.  Slow and pointless.
>
> Peace...  Sridhar
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks

Can't speak to S-L-O-W, but I can say that it seems to be fighting the
basic design of the mainframe and instead wasting cycles to make it
act like a $10,000 Windows Terminal Server.

I remember years ago (20?) when I saw that you could feed an X11
display from a mainframe session, it didn't make any sense then (so no
one did it), and it still makes no sense.

A fully pimped-out Windows Server 2008 Terminal Server can handle a
ton of sessions for a lot less money - their emphasis is on creating
new "machines" and having them usable in under 15 minutes.

I can do that today with Hyper-V, VMware, Xen, Virtualbox, etc. - what
is the real value proposition, unelss you over-bought your mainframe
and have (literally) cycles to burn, but since the software isn't free
(nor is the Windows OS you run on each "machine"), I can't see
cost-savings being a reallistic justification.

Novelty? Is that it?

--
Lionel Peterson
lionel4287 at gmail.com