Big Iron--IBM Debuts System z9 BC 'Baby' Mainframe

Newsletters	Subscriptions	Forums	Safari	Store	Career	Media Kit	About Us	Contact	Search	Home

Volume 2, Number 17 -- May 2, 2006

IBM Debuts System z9 BC 'Baby' Mainframe

Published: May 2, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As we have been telling you in our Big Iron mainframe newsletter, IBM has indeed launched a new System z9 baby mainframe, code-named "Pollux" and branded as the System z9 Business Class, or z9 BC, machine. Big Blue has also decided to rebrand the System z9 "Danu" server that was announced last July, giving it the moniker the z9 Enterprise Class server. The company also made some changes to the mainframe software stack to appease low-end mainframe shops.

IBM, as usual, seems fixated on naming conventions and on using some marketing magic to try to make the time-tested ideas of the mainframe and the thankfully very old-fashioned operating systems that run on its machines seem somehow hip and cool. I doubt very much that calling it the "System z9 Business Class" box will make it clear what makes this make more appropriate for one class of customers, while the System z9 Enterprise Class machine is suitable for another. "Business" and "Enterprise" are largely synonymous in the lingo of the business world, at least when it comes to talking about company size and scope. Calling something "business class" seems to evoke airline seats, which leads inevitably to an expectation of a "first class" system and a "coach" system. And calling it the System z9 BC makes it sound like it is old technology, like a stone wheel, and the z9 EC sounds like it is only for European countries. Sometimes, I wonder if the marketeers in the IT industry actually say the names they suggest out loud, perhaps to themselves in the mirror, before they suggest them to their general managers. If IBM wanted to be truthful, there would be a System z9 Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, Extra Extra Large, Super Size, Humungous, Freaking Huge, and Gigantazoid. But, then again, people lie about their sizes, and that could have an adverse effect on mainframe and related software sales. You can't have companies trying to squeeze into a box that is a little too small and save themselves some money. This runs counter to the entire computer industry--at least for now.

None of this name-calling--er, branding--matters to mainframe shops. What they care about is having a smaller mainframe that costs less money with lower software fees and ever-advancing software function. And luckily for them, IBM has delivered this with the System z9 BC.

The System z9 BC is based on a the same basic mainframe book technology as used in the bigger System z9 EC machines, but it is scaled down to be appealing to customers with zSeries 800 and 890 servers as well as older System/390 machines with a modest amount of MIPS that are getting a bit long in the tooth. The z9 BC machine, which bears the IBM numerical designation 2096, comes in two flavors, which have the sub-number of R07 and S07 associated with them. Both machines are based on a single System z9 processor book, which includes up to eight z9 processors, memory, and I/O in a single package. Together, these two variants of the System z9 BC offer 73 different MIPS performance points, which might seem a little excessive.

The R07 comes with four active mainframe engines, and the base configuration of this machine has a rating of 26 MIPS. The R07 can have up to three general purpose processors and comes with one System Assist Processor (SAP) standard for handling I/O. The R07 can also be configured with one general purpose engine and then up to six specialty mainframe engines, including the Integrated Facility for Linux (for running Linux instances), the Internal Coupling Facility (for parallel sysplexes), the z Integrated Information Processor (for accelerating DB2 workloads), and the z9 Application Assist Processor (for running Java); the machine can be configured with an optional three more SAPs, if customers have heavy I/O needs. This machine must have at least one general purpose engine activated. This machine has 20 different MIPS performance points. Phil Payne, the mainframe watcher from Isham Research, has created tables that estimate the performance of the R07 machine, which you can see here. He figured that the R07 tops out at 172 MIPS on the general purpose engines.

The S07 machine can support a maximum of four general purpose engines and comes with one SAP as standard, with the option of adding up to three more. The S07 can support up to seven specialty engines--IFLs, ICFs, zIIPs, and zAAPs, and it offers 53 different MIPS performance points. The S07 does not have to have a single general purpose engine in it; it can be configured as a Linux or couple box, if that is what customers want to do with it. If Payne's estimates of the S07's MIPS ratings are right, then in offers from 193 to 1,786 MIPS of general purpose processing power (say that three times fast) on from one to four engines.

Both machines support from 8 GB to 64 GB of main memory (twice that of the z890), with the R07 having 16 I/O slots, 64 FICON channels, and 240 ESCON channels. The S07 supports 28 I/O slots, 112 FICON channels, and 420 ESCON channels. The z9 BC supports 40 percent more FICON channels than the z890 and offers 170 percent more bandwidth.

IBM has not yet said what the MIPS increments are on the machines. But according to Jim Porell, the distinguished engineer (that's a title at IBM, not our qualification of his qualifications) and chief architect for System z software at Big Blue, the z9 BC offers a lot more granularity than the zSeries 890 it replaces, which only had 28 different capacity settings. Perhaps more significantly, the engines inside the z9 BC box have 37 percent more performance than the engines used in the zSeries 890, which means that if you have the bucks, you can buy a higher-performing box.

Of course, figuring out how much you need to spend might take some time. Because IBM doesn't provide to the public the list prices of its mainframes, Porell was unable to say what a base machine would cost. But because IBM has been bragging about how the specialty engines have been driving business in the past two years, and it has provided pricing on those, Porell was able to say that IBM has dropped the price of these specialty engines from $125,000 on the z890 to $95,000 on the z9 BC. Porell added that IBM has rejiggered the MIPS to MSU ratio on the new z9 BC machines--Metered Service Units are how IBM gauges what price to charge for software. This has the effect of reducing the metered software prices on the machines without reducing the price on the hardware, and Porell said that IBM has cut that ratio by 10 percent, which means for metered software, the price of the software has just dropped by 10 percent. And finally, IBM has also cut maintenance prices on the z9 BC machine so they are 20 percent lower than that of the equivalent zSeries 890 boxes.

Perhaps most significantly for small and midrange mainframe shops, IBM is offering upgrades from the biggest zSeries 800 machines into the z9 BC R07 product, and from all zSeries 890 machines into the line as well. The R07 machine can be incrementally upgraded within its frame using capacity on demand features, and then, if customers outgrow this, they can upgrade to the S07 model. Most importantly for any fast-growing mainframe customers--like the ones in China who are deploying applications on mainframes because they like security and central control--customers with the z9 S07 machine can upgrade into the larger z9 109 EC boxes that were announced last year, which allows them to potentially scale to 17,800 MIPS.

"The z9 BC is a really good machine for VSE customers, who have been looking for an affordable way to grow," explains Porell. "The z9 BC offers a very good level of upgrade protection. And the upgrade paths allow small companies to grow fast and still stay on the System z architecture."

No kidding. But, these days, most server architectures can span that kind of range, so this is not exceptional. And, to be fair, IBM is gearing down those entry mainframe engines, while makers of RISC/Unix, Windows, and Linux boxes never gear down their entry machines; they run all engines full-out, all the time.

Porell says that some mainframe shops have deployed baby mainframes just to act as free-standing coupling facilities for the larger machines in their parallel sysplex clusters, and that still others have deployed such machines as Linux-only boxes and used them to consolidate Wintel and Lintel infrastructure workloads onto the mainframe. IBM expects the z9 BC to accelerate these trends, and also to see many companies pick a z9 BC to use as a development machine. This, perhaps, puts a spanner in the works for Platform Solutions and its Flex-ES mainframe emulator, which it has positioned as a development machine for mainframe shops.

The z9 BC mainframes will be available on May 26, with upgrades within the R07 and S07 machines and from the S07 to the z9 EC machines available on August 25. The z9 BC can run z/OS.e, the cut-down version of z/OS that IBM created for its entry mainframes, and it can also run z/OS, z/VM, Linux, z/VSE, and z/TPF. IBM also put out a statement of direction that it would get z/VSE converted to 64-bit real memory addressing in a future Version 4, but warns that this release will not support 64-bit virtual memory addressing and that applications inside will still run in 24-bit or 31-bit mode. IBM also hinted that it would be cutting the price of z/VSE V4 when running on "select processors," but it did not say which ones. Presumably, this means on the ones running inside the z9 BC R07 box.