We have officially survived another holiday season. This includes thanking people for new shirts or sweaters we won’t ever wear, for gifts we don’t really need and never actually wanted, and of course being nice to relatives and others that we don’t really like all like that much… all because it’s the holidays.
But with the holidays in the rear-view mirror, and New Year’s resolutions being all the rage (just like last year at this time), perhaps some resolutions to spruce up your data center are in order. In 2024, competing with Halloween sales in July, and Christmas trees for sale in October, IBM also made some 4Q announcements. They refreshed their entire mainframe storage lineup, and it may have missed the news amidst all the two-for-one widget sales at your favorite store.
Some customers are going gangbusters on the mainframe. Others say they are getting off of it. But one thing is true regardless: until that last app leaves the server, the mainframe still runs some or all of your major business processes. As such, whether you see the mainframe as a cornerstone or not, keeping it current and running at peak efficiency is in your best interest. For those who get it, the mainframe continues to deliver key business processes with superior cost and availability metrics. But even for those who don’t get it, moving off of a platform that you let fall out of support can mean spending a lot of time fighting fires. Fires that your environment would not have to deal with if the infrastructure was kept up to date. Even if your goal is to drain the swamp, it’s best to begin with a plan to deal with the alligators! So, in that vein, I think every mainframe customer should be aware of what’s available in this space.
A side note: I had a customer that said they planned to move off their mainframe. They froze the environment and went gangbusters in an effort to migrate. Three years later, they replaced that CIO with another who had a more reasonable plan. They acknowledged a move off the mainframe would take ten years, and their first step was to upgrade their entire mainframe environment, so that if they moved off of it, the mainframe would still be stable throughout the process. That CIO is still there and employed!
What I call the IBM mainframe “hardware ecosystem” consists of three components. They require upgrades to stay current just as the operating system software does. These critical components are:
- The IBM Z server
- The DS8000 flash storage subsystem
- The TS7000 virtual tape subsystem
If you haven’t noticed, all three of these now come in industry standard 42U sized racks, with a single-phase power option, and very catchy matching rack doors. They play nicely in Co-Lo environments, especially sitting alongside IBM’s z/16 server, which IBM delivered in 4Q of 2024, a new DS8000 (the Gen 10), and a new TS7000 (the 7780). In my upcoming blogs, I will cover each of these in more detail. But for now, I just want to raise awareness as everyone is coming off a very busy holiday season.
Happy New Year!