[press release] IBM introduces LinuxONE system - Linux-only mainframe server

[zMeul]

source: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47474.wss

 

 

SEATTLE (LINUXCON NORTH AMERICA) - 17 Aug 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a significant expansion of the mainframe’s strategy of embracing open source-based technologies and open-source communities to provide clients with the most secure[1], highest performance capabilities for an era where mainframes increasingly anchor corporate analytics and hybrid clouds.

 

The company is betting big on open source in the enterprise:

• Unveiling the most secure Linux servers in the industry – The company is introducing two Linux mainframe servers – called LinuxONE – that are the industry’s most powerful and secure enterprise servers designed for the new application economy and hybrid cloud era.
• Deepening open source software enablement – IBM will enable open source and industry tools and software including Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Chef and Docker on z Systems to provide clients with choice and flexibility for hybrid cloud deployments. SUSE, which provides Linux distribution for the mainframe, will now support KVM, giving clients a new hypervisor option. Canonical and IBM also announced plans to create an Ubuntu distribution for LinuxONE and z Systems. The collaboration with Canonical brings Ubuntu’s scale-out and cloud expertise to the IBM z Systems platform, further expanding its reach and support.
• Contributing the single largest amount of mainframe code to open source community – The code, designed to fuel digital transformation, includes technology from IBM’s mainframe to help enterprises identify issues and help prevent failures before they happen, help improve performance across platforms and enable better integration with the broader network and cloud. 

"Fifteen years ago IBM surprised the industry by putting Linux on the mainframe, and today more than a third of IBM mainframe clients are running Linux,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems. “We are deepening our commitment to the open source community by combining the best of the open world with the most advanced system in the world in order to help clients embrace new mobile and hybrid cloud workloads. Building on the success of Linux on the mainframe, we continue to push the limits beyond the capabilities of commodity servers that are not designed for security and performance at extreme scale."

 

LinuxONE – Industry’s Most Advanced Enterprise-Grade Linux Platform

 

IBM is launching LinuxONE, a new portfolio of hardware, software and services solutions, providing two distinct Linux systems for large enterprises and mid-size businesses. LinuxONE Emperor, based on the IBM z13, is the world’s most advanced Linux system with the fastest processor in the industry.

 

The system is capable of analyzing transactions in “real time” and can be used to help prevent fraud as it is occurring. The system can scale up to 8,000 virtual machines or hundreds of thousands of containers – currently the most of any single Linux system. LinuxONE Rockhopper, an entry into the portfolio, is designed for clients and emerging markets seeking the speed, security and availability of the mainframe but in a smaller package.

 

IBM’s LinuxONE systems, available starting today, are the most secure Linux systems with advanced encryption features built into both the hardware and software to help keep customer data and transactions confidential and secure. Protected-key, available on LinuxONE, provides significantly enhanced security over clear-key technology and offers up-to 28X improved performance over standard secure-key technology. 

 

Company Enables New Open Software and Industry Tools for Mainframe

 

Significantly broadening options for enterprises, IBM has enabled key open source and industry software for LinuxONE and IBM z Systems, including Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Chef and Docker. These technologies work seamlessly on the mainframe just as they do with other platforms, with compelling performance advantages while requiring no special skills.

 

IBM helped pioneer virtualization on the mainframe and is now offering more choices for virtualization by enabling the new LinuxONE systems to be provisioned as a virtual machine through the open standards-based KVM hypervisor, just like any Linux server. SUSE, a leading distributor of Linux, will provide initial support for KVM for the mainframe.

 

Canonical and IBM also announced an initiative to encourage the growth of Ubuntu Linux on z Systems. Canonical plans to distribute Ubuntu for LinuxONE and z Systems, adding a third Linux distribution. SUSE and Red Hat already support distribution. Canonical also plans to support KVM for the mainframe.

 

IBM Joins New Linux Foundation Project as Demand Grows for Mainframe in Open Source Community

 

Enabling greater access in the developer community, IBM’s contribution of mainframe technologies is the largest single contribution of mainframe code from IBM to the open source community. A key part of the mainframe code contributions are IT predictive analytics that constantly monitor for unusual system behavior and help prevent issues from turning into failures. The code can be used by developers to build similar sense and respond resiliency capabilities on other systems.

 

The contributions will help fuel the new “Open Mainframe Project,” formed by the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development.  In collaboration with the Linux Foundation, IBM will support the Open Mainframe Project, a collaboration of nearly a dozen organizations across academia, government and corporate sectors to advance development and adoption of Linux on the mainframe.

 

“Linux on the mainframe has reached a critical mass such that vendors, users and academia need a neutral forum where they can work together to advance Linux tools and technologies and increase enterprise innovation,” said Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation executive director.  “The Open Mainframe Project is a direct response to the demands of Linux users and the supporting open source ecosystem to address unique features and requirements built into mainframes for security, availability and performance.”

 

IBM Provides Access to LinuxONE Developer Cloud at No Cost

 

With today’s announcement, IBM is also providing unprecedented access to the mainframe to foster innovations by developers in the open source community. IBM is creating the LinuxONE Developer Cloud to provide open access to the development community. The cloud acts as a virtual R&D engine for the creation, testing and piloting of emerging applications including testing linkages to engagement systems, mobile applications and hybrid cloud applications.

 

Marist College and Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies plan to host clouds that provide developers access to a virtual IBM LinuxONE at no cost. As part of the program, IBM also will create a special cloud for independent software providers (ISVs) hosted at IBM sites in Dallas, Beijing and Boeblingen, Germany, that provide application vendors access and a free trial to LinuxONE resources to port, test and benchmark new applications for the LinuxONE and z Systems platform.

 

New financing models for the LinuxONE portfolio provide flexibility in pricing and resources that allows enterprises to pay for what they use and scale up quickly when their business grows. The new LinuxONE systems are available today.

 

LinuxOne Emperor:

LinuxONE Rockhopper:

----

 

IBM is moving away from Micro$oft - no wonder after their latest launch, Windows 10 is actively collecting data on people without the option to turn it off

on the server market there is an alternative, but on desktop .. specifically for PC gaming, there is no real alternative to Windows

 

no wonder IBM, recently, made the move from Windows Lenovo laptops to Apple MACs

[Trik'Stari]

Almost all internet servers are Linux to begin with, what's the difference here?

[Nineshadow]

IBM is moving away from Micro$oft - no wonder after their latest launch, Windows 10 is actively collecting data on people without the option to turn it off

on the server market there is an alternative, but on desktop .. specifically for PC gaming, there is no real alternative to Windows.

no wonder IBM, recently, made the move from Windows Lenovo laptops to Apple MACs

 

What does that have to do with anything?

[zMeul]

Almost all internet servers are Linux to begin with, what's the difference here?

IBM is targeting this to all the server market - not just a segment of it

LinuxONE Rockhopper is aimed at mid-sized businesses

[zMeul]

What does that have to do with anything?

everything

IBM started to move away from MS a very long time ago, now they're in full swing

do you think this just happened? IBM wasn't happy with MS' new heading quite a while back

Fifteen years ago IBM surprised the industry by putting Linux on the mainframe, and today more than a third of IBM mainframe clients are running Linux

[Trik'Stari]

IBM is targeting this to all the server market - not just a segment of it

LinuxONE Rockhopper is aimed at mid-sized businesses

Neat I guess. Will have to read entire article later.

[Misanthrope]

Almost all internet servers are Linux to begin with, what's the difference here?

 

Almost no servers have a stupid looking gamer case?

 

[Trik'Stari]

Almost no servers have a stupid looking gamer case?

 

I actually like the look of it lol

[martlart]

Yet another sign that Windows' popularity is past its peak. This is so exciting! :lol:

[Guest]

That sever looks better than most of the cases in the market IMO

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

on the server market there is an alternative, but on desktop .. specifically for PC gaming, there is no real alternative to Windows

If enough people move to Linux, developers will port their games or even develop for the platform. Unfortunately a lot of people don't want to switch as long as there isn't enough game support, so that circle really needs to be broken somehow.

[zMeul]

If enough people move to Linux, developers will port their games or even develop for the platform. Unfortunately a lot of people don't want to switch as long as there isn't enough game support, so that circle really needs to be broken somehow.

I tried to install Ubuntu, even plain Debian, as a 2nd boot option on my desktop

the problem was getting the fcking STEAM to work on a x86-64 distro - it doesn't want to install; there are some dependencies that ValvE still hasn't sorted out

ValvE was hi and mighty about Linux as a real alternative to Windows gaming - I still don't see it

[martlart]

I tried to install Ubuntu, even plain Debian, as a 2nd boot option on my desktop

the problem was getting the fcking STEAM to work on a x86-64 distro - it doesn't want to install; there are some dependencies that ValvE still hasn't sorted out

ValvE was hi and mighty about Linux as a real alternative to Windows gaming - I still don't see it

Did you try starting steam in the terminal? It will tell you what's missing so that you can install it yourself.

[patrickjp93]

Almost all internet servers are Linux to begin with, what's the difference here?

Mainframes are a specific flavor called the scale-up server and are built for very specific workloads which Intel's x86 is actually lackluster at, such as analytics and databases where very low latency, very high bandwidth, low core count, low node count, and high thread count all result in a better end far faster program execution. Where Intel can at most run 36 threads on an 18-core CPU at 2.8GHz (to grow to 56/28 with Skylake E7 flagship), IBM can currently run 96 threads on a 12-core CPU CPU running at 4.3 GHz (flagship Power 8 chip). IBM and Oracle own the SAP business benchmark top scores by enormous margins over Intel for this design reason. Intel's great for scale-out workloads like scientific computing where IBM and Oracle's costs just grow to obscene heights (hence very few supercomputers being built on Power or Ultrasparc architecture, but the very cream of the crop throughout history being built on them).

 

That said, IBM's and Oracle's system costs to buyers are almost 4x Intel's while having 6x the performance of Intel's for these particular and sometimes crucial workloads. In other words, IBM just announced that banks will be even more secure by having all their infrastructure software being open source even though their own proprietary inner systems will of course be open to the banks' eyes only.

[patrickjp93]

I tried to install Ubuntu, even plain Debian, as a 2nd boot option on my desktop

the problem was getting the fcking STEAM to work on a x86-64 distro - it doesn't want to install; there are some dependencies that ValvE still hasn't sorted out

ValvE was hi and mighty about Linux as a real alternative to Windows gaming - I still don't see it

For resolving dependencies, try launching Steam in the command line. It will usually tell you what packages need to be installed.

[zMeul]

For resolving dependencies, try launching Steam in the command line. It will usually tell you what packages need to be installed.

yes, I tied everything, extensively

there are some dependencies overlapping and I couldn't get around them; and I'm not alone - stopped trying

[patrickjp93]

yes, I tied everything, extensively

there are some dependencies overlapping and I couldn't get around them; and I'm not alone - stopped trying

There should be online guides to this. I had no issue, but I also run Fedora 22 instead of the hulking mass that is Ubuntu and Debian. You may want to try it. It's a differently laid out UI, but it's also far lighter weight. And instead of using "sudo apt-get install xyz" it's "sudo dnf install xyz."

[zMeul]

There should be online guides to this. I had no issue, but I also run Fedora 22 instead of the hulking mass that is Ubuntu and Debian. You may want to try it. It's a differently laid out UI, but it's also far lighter weight. And instead of using "sudo apt-get install xyz" it's "sudo dnf install xyz."

as I already said, I tried everything, and I mean everything (almost)

I looked at a lot of guides - the funny thing is that installing it on x86 distro just works

[AlexGoesHigh]

I'm going to be that guy and say what does a custom built server has to do with windows? Not even MS competes in that space of the market to begin with.

Anyways, that's awesome non the less, that server chassis looks awesome.

[patrickjp93]

I'm going to be that guy and say what does a custom built server has to do with windows? Not even MS competes in that space of the market to begin with.

Anyways, that's awesome non the less, that server chassis looks awesome.

Microsoft doesn't compete? Windows has had server distributions for more than 2 decades. Further, Microsoft's Azure is the newest swing in this space. Get your facts straight next time please.

[aom]

I tried to install Ubuntu, even plain Debian, as a 2nd boot option on my desktop

the problem was getting the fcking STEAM to work on a x86-64 distro - it doesn't want to install; there are some dependencies that ValvE still hasn't sorted out

ValvE was hi and mighty about Linux as a real alternative to Windows gaming - I still don't see it

I run Ubuntu on my laptop. x86-64. Steam worked out of the box.

[zMeul]

I run Ubuntu on my laptop. x86-64. Steam worked out of the box.

on my laptop I did it too, but on the desktop it doesn't want to start

it's something to do with the video card drivers - if I recall, you must install and run STEAM (at least once) before installing proprietary nVidia drivers

it doesn't like anything beyond Mesa drivers

[RexinOridle]

By the way, am I the only one who thinks the IMB logo is ugly?

[Dabombinable]

IBM is still persisting with mainframes?

[BuckGup]

Yay linux