Can IBM’s LinuxONE mainframe compete with cloud computing?

Grazed from ExtremeTech. Author: Todd Ogasawara.

IBM has announced two mainframe computers under the LinuxONE branding that will eventually be able to run Canonical’s popular Ubuntu Linux operating system. This latest move is part of a near-30-year history of IBM running UNIX and, later, Linux-based operating systems on its hardware products. IBM’s first UNIX-like product for its mainframes AIX/370 appeared way back in 1988. While the ability to run Ubuntu on a mainframe may have been the news that attracted attention, the announcement really has several parts.

First, there are two LinuxOne mainframe models. The LinuxONE Emperor is designed for large enterprises. IBM claims it can run up to 8,000 virtual servers, tens of thousands of containers. and 30 billion RESTful web interactions per day supporting millions of active users. The Emperor can have up to 141 processors, 10 terabytes of shared memory, and 640 dedicated I/O (input/output) processors. And IBM claims it can provide all this with a cost that’s half that of a public cloud infrastructure solution…

On the lower end, the LinuxONE Rockerhopper model is an entry-level mainframe aimed at mid-sized businesses which can be upgraded to an Emperor system. Both LinuxOne systems support KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) with the initial work being done by SUSE (best known for tis SUSE Linux distribution)…

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