The severs include the LinuxOne Emperor for large enterprises and the Rockhopper for midsize businesses.
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The new Linux-only mainframe server is “the world’s most advanced Linux system” and will be powered by the fastest processor in the industry so that it can handle the new application economy and hybrid cloud era.
Global Business Machines Corporation said about LinuxONE Emperor, that it can scale up to 8,000 virtual machines and thousands of containers.
IBM as part of its broader strategy to promote the cloud, analytics and security is hoping to expand the potential market for mainframes by running Ubuntu Linux and supporting a range of popular open source enterprise software such as Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Chef. These additional capabilities won’t just be available to those using the new mainframes; they will be made available to existing z System customers as well. IBM said it has now added the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor as an option for operating virtual machines, alongside IBM’s own z/VM and logical partitions through PR/SM.
IBM has partnered with Canonical Ltd, a UK-based firm, to distribute the Ubuntu flavor of Linux on the LinuxOne and other z systems.
IBM HAS ANNOUNCED what it describes as the single biggest donation of mainframe code to the open source community, despite reeling from even more financial losses.
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John Zannos, from Canonical, adds: “For me what is most exciting is that IBM is working through a paradigm shift and looking at Z systems and the mainframe, expanding them and deepening open source software enablement”.
