Administrator > Performance

Why Choose the Mainframe?

Understand the perks the System z platform offers

Let’s say you’re a typical IT manager in charge of a large, unruly server farm and overseeing a massive datacenter consolidation project. In the year 2008, is the mainframe still a viable option? Why did your PC server people roll their eyes when you mentioned a possible mainframe solution?

There are a many reasons to consider implementing a mainframe solution, specifically the IBM* System z* platform. For starters, you can run at near 100-percent utilization on your servers without the applications people banging on your door in a panicked state. You don’t have to worry about power and cooling. You can choose to virtualize anything using mature technologies developed through a 40-year period of innovation. And you can do all of this while lowering your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and maximizing your ROI.

Why Implement a Mainframe Solution?

At the end of the day having a successful IT department is really less about technology and more about solving real business problems. In recent years, perhaps no other project in IT has generated as much interest as consolidation projects, whether they’re application-, server- or datacenter-related. The big driving factor is cost reduction. Simply put, it has been much harder to gain approval for technology projects than ever before. While technology modernization is in itself a noble cause, without the financial benefits, you simply won’t be able to modernize your server farm or datacenter.

The single most important business driver to consolidating on the mainframe is cost reduction. When looking at costs, you must be very careful to look at all costs, not just the cost of acquisition of hardware or maintenance of the equipment. A mainframe costs more money than a PC at first, but can be much more cost-efficient in the long run. The mainframe solution offers three major benefits of consolidation: higher efficiency of resource utilization, security of information systems and business continuity.

Higher Efficiency of Resource Utilization

Server consolidation can dramatically increase the overall efficiency of systems. In the distributed decentralized model, virtually every application comes with its own set of hardware. What happens during down periods where nothing is being processed? By the same token, what happens during peak periods, where your system can’t handle the load? Server consolidation, using the right kind of systems, can help you more efficiently manage the distribution of resources.

Underutilization of resources simply wastes money. Whether or not your systems are using the resources, you’re still either paying for them to run—or you have already put in substantial investments into systems that can never be used to their capacity. The key word to consider here is “central,” which leads to better manageability, operational efficiencies and cost-reduction.

“Downtime” has become a dirty word. Eliminating outages (planned and unplanned) has become increasingly important in today’s world where minutes of downtime can translate into millions of dollars of lost revenue. Some companies go as far as implementing daily reliability meetings to discuss outages and upcoming activities while they perform detailed root cause analysis of problems. Mainframes are renowned for their reliability and are typically repaired without being shut down. It’s not unusual for a mainframe to be continuously switched on for six months at a stretch.

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