As one of those potential z/OS hobbyists, I would think it so cool to be
able to run z/OS inexpensively (which for me means at most a few $100's
per year) in my home environment, and it would be great for educational
purposes; but I can also understand IBM's position.
One of the big selling points of z/OS is its reliability and
availability, but one of the things that helps achieve that is a synergy
between the Operating System and the hardware that allows hardware
errors detection, dynamic recovery from hardware errors, and dynamic
hardware repair. With IBM in total control of the hardware environment,
they can maintain quality control over that environment and insure that
hardware issues don't introduce random acts of strangeness. Contrast
that with Intel desktop/server environment with its myriad of
processors, support chips, motherboards, memory, graphics cards, BIOS
settings, and peripheral combinations from different vendors, some of
which don't play well together, some with questionable vendor driver
support, and in many cases with minimal or no error detection support if
the hardware does fail in some way. And, if an emulator like Hercules
is also involved, one has to add the possibility of subtle differences
in behavior from IBM z-architecture that might affect reliability.
If many were only to experience z/OS running in non-IBM hardware
environments, they inevitably will see a less robust and reliable
system, and the reputation of z/OS could be unjustly damaged by the
reliability of those underlying hardware/emulator platforms. For the
differences in those two worlds, I don't have to look any further than
my own home systems: For over a month, I have been dealing with a
stability issue with my main desktop system, frustrated that there is no
way to positively determine whether it is a software problem or some
unreported hardware error. The last time I saw an undetected hardware
error and undetected (by hardware) data corruption on an IBM mainframe
was circa 1979, and that turned out to be in 3rd-party-vendor air-cooled
memory which had previously endured some inappropriate "water cooling"
due to an environmental failure.
I suspect IBM would be concerned that disassociation of z/OS from
hardware that IBM controls would also make detection and enforcement of
license violations much more difficult, and that license abuse would
affect IBM's bottom line.
"Inexpensive for a home hobbyist" obviously translates into too little
revenue for IBM to provide active maintenance support, so any
maintenance would have to be by total replacement, and when such systems
were found to have significant bugs or security flaws, the exposure
would probably have to be tolerated until a future system replacement.
Production z/OS installations should also be concerned that wide
availability of inexpensive hobbyist z/OS systems in non audited
environments could both encourage and facilitate development of malware
and human engineering attacks that target z/OS systems. Although the
victims might more likely be poorly-configured and/or
back-level-maintenance instances of hobbyist z/OS systems, unnecessarily
encouraging unsupervised efforts to uncover z/OS points of weakness does
not sound like goodness.
Joel C. Ewing
On 05/16/2013 07:08 AM, zMan wrote:
First sentence: What?
Second: It might. That's certainly the hobbyist's argument. IBM doesn't see
it that way, clearly.
On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:11 AM, Scott Ford <[email protected]> wrote:
You run just about any system in vbox or VMware we do, including various
variants of Linux ..
I understand IBM fighting hercules but ...wouldn't it also bring in more
business like zpdt does ?
Scott ford
www.identityforge.com
from my IPAD
'Infinite wisdom through infinite means'
On May 15, 2013, at 4:51 PM, Phil Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
John McKown wrote:
According to IBM, you cannot get a z/OS license for a Hercules based
machine. It has been asked for by many, for a hobbyist environment.
Right. And Platform Solutions not only proved that IBM wasn't
interested, but that IBM would aggressively fight attempts to exploit
loopholes.
Another emulator is Boch. It is an x86 emulator. As I recall, one person
used this to run Windows, slowly, on an old pre-z machine. It would be
interesting, to me, to have somebody do this on a zEC12 running full
speed.
I don't know if Windows can be licensed on this configuration, or not.
That's Bochs. Adam Thornton, then of Sine Nomine Associates, did this on
an MP3000 in about 2001: Exchange under Windows under Bochs under Linux for
System z under z/VM. "Slow" doesn't begin to describe it, but Exchange did
(eventually!) come up.
I believe - but IANAL - that you can run Windows legally in a virtual
machine as long as it's a unique use of that license copy etc. So sure, why
not? ("Is it on an Intel or AMD CPU?" "Um, IBM zEC12, actually..." - now
THAT would be a fun conversation!)
...phsiii
--
Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected]
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