I have to agree with Doug in that the mainframe can push lots of bits. However, in the mainframe environment, I've always experienced difficulty getting resources allocated to TSM. When I had TSM on the mainframe, I couldn't get more CPU even for a critical fileserver restore. I had to go to senior management to get more CPU _temporarily_ so I could try to repair lovebug virus damage. Until I did that, the restore crawled.
Out of curiosity, if you have an undersized processor, how much would it cost to upgrade the processor as opposed to buying an AIX box to run TSM? I don't really know how much 390 processor upgrades cost, but I'm under the impression that a forklift upgrade costs 3-4 million dollars, a "physically add processors" upgrade costs a whole lot, possibly several hundred thousand, and a "license unused existing processors" upgrade still probably costs more than an AIX box with library. Personally, I don't believe most mainframe shops would be willing to upgrade their mainframe just for "a backup application to back up open systems." As far as badly tuned systems, how many shops are going to admit their 390 system is mistuned and correct it? When working with just about anybody, and mainframers are no exception, and heck, neither am I, they know what's best and getting them to admit the errors of their ways is difficult. Wouldn't it still be easier to purchase an AIX box for your backup system? Also, how about the cost of process reengineering, tuning, education, or lost man hours to tune the system? The truth is, in the mainframe world, as long as TSM's not making money and it doesn't have a mandate from God, it's the red headed step child. The mainframe already has it's own backup products, so TSM is viewed as "that thing that backs up open systems boxes." They have no reason to bump TSM's resource usage, and definitely no reason to spend lots of money to accomodate TSM performance requirements. Of course, I'm sure there are exceptions, but _ALL_ of the TSM people I've talked to who had experience with TSM on the mainframe have said their TSM implementation improved in performance immensely when migrating from 390. My opinion is it's due to resource constraints. Alex Paschal Storage Administrator Freightliner, LLC (503) 745-6850 phone/vmail -----Original Message----- From: Doug Fuerst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it is better at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitely more scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace a whole bunch of small UNIX servers. Just my $.02 Doug At 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Hi > >As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects >such as: > >- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of >memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a >problem when running a UNIX box. > >- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 >system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had >existed on both UNIX and S/390. > >- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to >have a IBM representative doing all the work. > >- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for >disk/tape/network I/O. > >Best Regards > >Daniel Sparrman snip>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.. Doug Fuerst Consultant BK Associates Brooklyn, NY (718) 921-2620 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
