NASA Unplugs Its Last Mainframe

Kinda like the HP Blade server we have running ESX here at work? It costs a lot less than a Z9 as well:).

Kinda, sorta, a lil:}
To be fair, there are many features in a mainframe that the HP blade server can't do.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the blade server is a pile of crap or anything. It's pretty damn awesome in fact.

But mainframes have some hardware redundancy features more geared towards assuring data gets from one place to another without error.
ECC if not CRC is used in nearly every path data can take through the system.
CPUs can be configured in a dual or tri-system state, where 3 procs do the same task, and at the end compare answers. Data can be redundant in memory too, which can do the same odd-man-out verifications on reads.

An HP blade server can emulate Some of this in software, but it is much slower than in hardware, and even that won't necessarily catch every data path.

The closest I think you can get is having 2 or 3 different instances of the same virtual machine processing the same data, using different CPU blades, memory, and ending up putting the results on different SANs each on their own unique bus.
Then you need at least two manager VMs to do the feeding of data and comparing the results, both of the instances below it, and with its partner manager.
Those two would also be responsible for figuring out which system below it is throwing disagreeing results, and ideally narrowing down from which piece of hardware, in order to raise an alert and hopefully disable the failed hardware at a higher level in ESX. As well as email you to buy it a replacement part of course.

If the two managers disagree with each other, all you can hope for then is a graceful termination of processing, hopefully with a detailed reason why.

You can get pretty close to a similar effect, in that you will not get bad data in the end due to some step in the processing chain going bad in hardware.
But you will likely have downtime of processing once something does go bad, depending on how many resources you are willing to throw at what amounts to the same work.

For the niche cases that need that level of data protection, mainframes pretty much do that all transparently, and as I mentioned a lot in hardware which speeds the over all jobs up.
Handling failed hardware transparently to the running job, and even the user, means the system disables the hardware flagged as bad, and continues on using other resources, all with no intervention on an admins part.

Of course most of what you are paying for is the IBM support, which is pretty much required to have.
One can get such support from HP too of course, at a price. But being optional is nice for those of us that don't really need it.
Email alerts of failed hardware are plenty for me to work it into this or the next budget.
If I had an active HP rep, it isn't much to hit forward on an email after all;}
But on an IBM system like this, the mainframe sends IBM the message directly. 'When' depending on your support contract, an IBM rep shows up at your door either within a couple hours, or a day or two, replacement part in hand, and ready to do the swap under your supervision.

The price on the big iron is definitely about what you get. Thankfully for the wallet, many tasks don't need that level of redundancy, and so HP does quite well in the lower end market, which is of course larger too.

Mainframes serve special niches, and when those details become important for the task at hand, IBM has to make up on the low volume with higher prices. But it's not all for naught, you still get your moneys worth.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/SS5Zv_PSjB4/nasa-unplugs-its-last-mainframe

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