InformationWeek has an interesting article on how Nationwide has consolidated more than 700 Intel and Unix servers on two IBM System z9 mainframes. Nationwide is running a version of Novell’s Suse Linux on the mainframes in VMware and IBM Virtualization Engine software.
I have previously blogged about the IBM System z9 Business Class and its usefulness for virtualization and also about reasons for running Linux on the mainframe.
ReactOS is a free open source operating system based on the Microsoft Windows architecture. ReactOS 0.3 was released yesterday.
A very interesting project that tries to be an open source alternative for Windows users that does not want to switch to a new operating system such as Linux.
The ReactOS homepage has links to reviews of the operating system if you are interested.
If you want to try it out in an easy way then download the VMware image of ReactOS 0.3 and try it out using the free VMware Player.
A draft Redbook on Linux virtual servers on IBM zSeries and System z9 under z/VM is available. The Redbook shows in a cookbook format how to install and configure z/VM in an LPAR and then how to install Linux under the z/VM – thereby enabling Linux on z/Series. The book uses RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 for zSeries as the z/Linux distribution.
I have previously blogged about the IBM System z9 Business Class and its usefulness for virtualization and also about reasons for running Linux on the mainframe.
Ed Brill and others (Andy Piper, DomBlog.de, Sean Burgess) have already blogged about the recent announcement from IBM that a Lotus Notes client will be available for Linux and ready for download via Passport Advantage on July 24, 2006.
It is a very interesting announcement for Linux desktop users.
Via the Mainframe blog I came across a post on reasons for running Linux on the mainframe. The post is very interesting and discusses the I/O difference between a mainframe and a PC based server.
I am currently involved in a project that establishes several Linux servers in both a DMZ and in an internal LAN all running in z/VM on a mainframe. Some of the purposes of these Linux servers is to load balance and reverse proxy requests from the Internet to back end systems.
There has been lots of fuzz lately around whether IBM will move away from Windows (and not use Vista at all) and instead completely switch to Linux for desktop clients used internally.
IBMeye has an article on the subject that clarifies a lot on what IBM is doing with Windows and Linux.
I will not comment on the rumours but I can add that I run the internal IBM customized Windows XP as my primary desktop client on my Thinkpad T40 and that I also run the IBM customized Linux desktop client.