NASA Unplugs Its Last Mainframe 230
coondoggie writes "It's somewhat hard to imagine that NASA doesn't need the computing power of an IBM mainframe any more, but NASA's CIO posted on her blog today that at the end of the month, the Big Iron will be no more at the space agency. NASA CIO Linda Cureton wrote: 'This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA's last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe.'"
Re:Why stop there??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in some aspects, and GPGPU clusters have a hard time matching the transaction rates and number of concurrent I/O's of a Z9. I wouldn't want to use a GPGPU cluster for financial/payrolls, just as an example.
Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the workloads a mainframe is designed to perform, I can't imagine NASA would have much use for one. They are database and transaction processing monsters. NASA does not handle large volumes of either. I imagine their scientific computing needs are pretty fair-sized, but mainframes are indeed rather cost-ineffective for scientific workloads.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainframes are not supercomputers, and are not marketed as such. Not sure what you mean by 'modern hardware' - you don't think mainframes are modern hardware?
Mainframes are used for high-volume transaction systems, where uptime and data integrity is absolutely essential. Clusters of PS3's are not going to match that.
No mainframe = shuttered data center? Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't follow why a data center would be kept open for one puny mainframe (or closed because it's gone.) I'm pretty sure there's other stuff there. A modern mainframe is about the size of three deep rack cabinets. Even with associated storage and support peripherals, I could fit a complete mainframe installation in my living room. I doubt the only thing in the data center was the mainframe.
Also, NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NOT National Manned Space Flight Agency. They DO accomplish lots of other stuff other than manned space flight.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much. The vast majority of mainframe systems are used with active network connections, and you probably use them without ever realizing that they are the back end to a variety of web engines you touch. Booked a hotel room, car rental, airline seat? Maybe you got money from an ATM? Bought something online? These are common modern uses of the mainframe's vast I/O capacity and reliability.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you think you can get your bank account balance if the machine storing that info is not connected to anything? The major use of mainframes is high-volume transaction processing, and those transactions come from somewhere (POS terminals, ATMs, reservation systems, web pages, etc).
No, mainframe security comes from the fact that every part of the mainframe - the architecture, the hardware, the OS, the middleware, the applications, the management is concerned with security from the very start.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to IPL every LPAR in the sysplex at the same time...
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the HP Blade cluster has nothing on the mainframe in terms of reliability and data integrity.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if not always better performance, usually more predictable performance, which can be far more important.
For some apps, it is better to have a guaranteed transaction time of 10 ms than an average transaction time of 1 ms with no guarantees.
Linux RT and GRIO are getting better, but not quite there yet.
It's also easier to scale with big iron - you pay for more performance, Big Blue delivers it, and you won't have to go through painful migrations.
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
But cmon, you gotta admit, that initial bid sure was cheap... before you city put in a bunch of change requests, new features, etc.. First hit is always free..
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is silly. You do it all in RAM, and you don't even need that many gigabytes of it to do it. I think that if you look back at how one did programming on IBM's 360 (in assembly, for example), it was all pretty lean. I think that there are applications where even an SQL server is a bit much in the way of overhead. Just think of how much data per person you need to calculate everything that goes onto a payroll. I'm sure that 1kb per person would be enough for input and output (binary data with structure). So then, with a million people you need say a gigabyte of RAM, and I'm sure you don't need more than one core to go through it and be done in a couple minutes. A modern 64 bit desktop machine with 64gb of RAM would probably be more than enough to do Comcast's payroll in a couple minutes, not hours. Of course you'd probably need a more state-of-the-art programming environment to code it up so that it'd be inherently safe (C is out) and productive (even a subset of C++ would be out).
Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now now, not all of us slashdotters fear documentation, dependability etc :p
I don't work on mainframes, but I've worked in projects where mainframes have been involved as well as mainframe people, and in many ways it reminds me of my days in the military, the amount of dedication to logistics etc. Sure, to the run-of-the-mill "geek", it probably looks stifling, but for those of us who are used to teamwork etc, it's actually refreshing to have decent planning. Contrast that to working for academia... *shudders*