z/Linuxor

Linux on the Mainframe

Eric K. DickinsonPresenter

Agenda

• Biography• Disclaimer• The Mainframe Must Die!• zLinux

What Qualifies Me to Present?

• Been a nerd since 1979• Fixed computers and radars in the army• AT&T Computer Systems System 5v4 1986• Became Richard Stallman fan 1989• Became Patrick Volkerding fan in 1993• Installed first z/Linux 2007• Became Government production 2009

Presentation

• Not sponsored by the Government• Not connected with the Government• Not endorsed by the Government• This is purely presented as a hobbyist.

The Mainframe Must Die!

• Perceptions of the Mainframe– Words Hurt– Expensive– Huge– Dinosaur

• zSeries Servers– Enterprise– Scalable– Velociraptor

zSeries Server Vocabulary• LPAR• FICON and FCP• DASD• Cryptography Accelerator• z/VM• 64bit Operation• IFL• Books

LPAR

• Hypervisor• Virtualized Systems• Physically Unconnected• Hipersockets• 60 LPARS• Memory Isolation• Variable Workload

FICON and FCP• Both– 4-8G– 1600 MBps

• Fiber Connectivity– Multiple Concurrent– Additional CRC– Same Cables as FCP

• Fiber Channel Protocol– Switched Fabric– SCSI

DASD

• zLinux uses– Direct Access Storage Device• CKD Count Key Data• FBA Fixed Block Architecture

– FCP • SAN • NAS• SCSI

Cryptography Accelerator

• Off-loads Cryptography Processing– 128 bit AES– DES– SHA– Independent Random Number Generator

z/VM

• Hypervisor• Monitoring• Tunable• Isolated Memory• Hipersockets

64bit Operation

• 31 bits?• 64 bits?

IFL

• Integrated Facility for Linux• Tuned to Only Linux Processor Instructions• 256 Theoretical guests.

Books

• Processors and Memory are in “Books”• Hot Swappable• Add Processors Hot• Add Memory Hot

z/Linux

• Is It Really Linux?• Distributions• Configurations• Strengths • Weaknesses• Well Suited For• Who uses it?• How Do I do it?

Is It Really Linux• Not Emulated• Complete Native Operating System• Formally Released 2000• Linas Vepstas• Big-Foot, Think Blue• Open Source• Gartner Reports the Future of Government and

Big Business• Makes IBM OSS friendly

Distributions

• Red Hat RHEL6• Novell SuSE SLES 11• Debian• Gentoo • Slackware • CentOS • Fedora• Etc

Configurations

• Just Like Real Linux• Multiple Network Interfaces• Logical Volume Management (Grow on the Fly!)• RPM, APT-GET, YUM, YAST and Source• LAMP• Oracle, DB2, MySQL• PHP, Perl, JBoss, Java, Ruby (This list goes on)

Strengths• Costs (Most Important)• Enterprise Class• High Availability• Standard Development• High I/O• Industry Direction• Security• Support• Ubiquity

Weaknesses

• Processor Intensive• Package Availability• z/VM Knowledge

Well Suited• LAMP Applications– CMS (Content Management System)

• Wiki (Mediawiki, Twiki, Swiki…..)• Blogs (WordPress…..)• CMS (Drupal, Openpublic, Joomla, OpenPublish….)

• Databases– MySQL, Oracle, DB2, Postgress ……

• Email– Sendmail, Postfix….

• Security– Scanning (Nessus, Satan, Sara…– Firewall – IPTables

• So Many Others

Who Uses z/Linux?

• CMS Center for Medicade/Medicare Services• NIH National Institutes of Health• SSA Social Security Administration• State Farm• Many others

How Do I Do it?

There is plenty of help on the internet.Detailed instructions may be found• http://www.turbohercules.com/projects/zlinux/• http://linuxvm.org/info/howtos/hercules.htmlSupport may be found at• http://www.turbohercules.com/services/• http://www.hercules-390.org/

Greening the Data Center

• No Additional Power• No Additional Cooling• No Additional Floor Space• Use Resources More Efficiently

•Questions?