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.
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.
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.