Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Lance H. Vaughan
Reprinted here with his permission
by Lance H. Vaughan
Reprinted here with his permission
What is a Mainframe?
Definition from SDS
Mainframes used to be defined by their size, and they can
still fill a room, cost millions, and support thousands of users.
But now a mainframe can also run on a laptop and support
two users. So today's mainframes are best defined by their
operating systems: Unix and Linux, and IBM's z/OS, OS/390,
MVS, VM, and VSE. Mainframes combine four important
features: 1) Reliable single-thread performance, which is
essential for reasonable operations against a database. 2)
Maximum I/O connectivity, which means mainframes excel
at providing for huge disk farms. 3) Maximum I/O bandwidth,
so connections between drives and processors have few
choke-points. 4) Reliability--mainframes often allow for
"graceful degradation" and service while the system is
running.
What is a Mainframe?
By Mike
Over the past couple of years, I have had more email then I
can answer regarding "What is a mainframe?" Mostly from
students and newbies to our chosen profession as a
mainframe systems programmer.
It was once defined that a mainframe, was a room or more of
computer equipment. To describe a mainframe as a host
system whose OS origins predate the PC and primarily used
a text dumb terminal model for user interaction. That is no
longer the case in the general sense of the words. Yes,
mainframes can still occupy a room full of equipment and
cost million of dollars and support thousands of users. Today,
a mainframe can also run in a laptop and support only a
couple of users.
I would define a mainframe today as a operating system.
Namely, IBM's z/OS MVS/ESA (OS/390), VM/ESA & VSE/ESA.
All are considered as a mainframe operating system in the
old sense of the word. Some people may argue that UNIX /
LINUX is a mainframe operating system. In the true sense,
they are a mainframe operating systems.
The mainframe operating system can support the UNIX
operating system, known as USS (UNIX System Services)
from IBM, also true of LINUX. UNIX / LINUX can have OS/390
run on it powered by INTEL chips. So, the concept of a
mainframe is a room full of equipment is not true any more.
A mainframe, these days can be no larger then your
desktop!
For purposes of this website, we will define a mainframe as
one that runs, z/OS (OS/390 or MVS), Linux, VM and VSE, in
today's environment, not yesterdays. It's time to move on...