Joran Siu from the IBM Java team installed Minecraft Server on the mainframe. In this entertaining talk he shows the results and the optimizations used, some of them only available on zEC12 and z13.
August 19, 2015
Minecraft on the Mainframe
Joran Siu from the IBM Java team installed Minecraft Server on the mainframe. In this entertaining talk he shows the results and the optimizations used, some of them only available on zEC12 and z13.
August 18, 2015
Linux on System z - Financial Trading demo from LinuxCon
Donna Dillenberger is showing a pure open source demo on the mainframe combining all the new technologies like Spark, MongoDB, Postgres, MariaDB, Node.js, Docker, Chef etc.
It's using live analytics for streams from Twitter and S&P financial data, showing the power of realtime analysis on the mainframe.
She is also providing a look at the infrastrucure driving this and even shows a fail over from one site to another using Hyperswap.
Towards the end she is providing real performance data for some of the components used.
During this presentation your probably want to pause and playback to get all the information she packed into those 18 minutes. Here is a breakdown (minutes:seconds) for reference:
- 0:00: demonstration
- 7:48: a look at the infrastructure
- 11:22: failover by killing one storage subsystem
- 13:45: performance data
- 17:00: agility & summary
August 17, 2015
LinuxCon announcements for Linux on z
Today IBM made some interesting announcements at LinuxCon. I'm going to cover more of the technical stuff in separate posts - this is for the overview.
- Announcement recording on Youtube
- Open Source & ISV Ecosystem Enablement for LinuxONE and IBM z presentation with quite interesting performance results
- IBM press release
- Ubuntu is coming for the mainframe (Mark Shuttleworth joined Ross Mauri on stage today for this announcement)
- KVM for IBM z Systems
- Linux Foundations announces Open Mainframe Project
- A cloud for ISVs to test their applications called Linux Test Drive Program
- A community cloud hosted at Marist and Syracuse university
- White paper Delivering Business Agility with Open Source Solutions on IBM LinuxONE and z Systems
- MongoDB support
- MariaDB blog post
August 14, 2015
Node.js 1.2 for Linux on z is available on developerworks
IBM has updated the Node.js environment for the mainframe (SDK) to the latest stable community release (version 0.12.7). You can find it here on developerworks. Besides functional enhancements it also contains an important security update for openssl. The release notes and the updated documentation are also available.
The Linux on z Systems downloads are now also linked from the official download side at nodejs.org right at the bottom of the page.
August 12, 2015
International Oracle on z Systems SIG Conference 2015 - presentations available
The presentations and some demos from the recent conference are availble for download. Besides the general overview presentations, there have been a few more specialized ones this time:
- Migrating to Oracle 12c database on Linux for z Systems
- Oracle System z Customer support and z Systems Support Update
- Oracle on z Systems CPU Reduction Tips
- Oracle Databases on Linux for z Systems - PoC and beyond
August 11, 2015
Example for using Apache Spark on the mainframe
August 10, 2015
z/VM 6.3 achieves common criteria certification at EAL4+ level
Earlier this year z/VM 6.3 including SSI (single system image) has achieved the EAL4+ certification from the German BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik).
All z/VM certifications can be found at the "z/VM Security and Integrity Resources" site.
All z/VM certifications can be found at the "z/VM Security and Integrity Resources" site.
August 7, 2015
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 released
On July 22, 2015 Red Hat has announced the availability of RHEL 6.7. The kernel level is now kernel-2.6.32-573.el6, for the main bug fixes see the kernel update description.
As usual there are the release notes and the technical notes in two separate documents. The complete documentation can be reached from the Red Hat documentation page (you need to select "6" on the left bar).
For System z this has been a mainly a fix release. Only a few small enhancements have been added all described in the technical notes. Here are some of them:
As usual there are the release notes and the technical notes in two separate documents. The complete documentation can be reached from the Red Hat documentation page (you need to select "6" on the left bar).
For System z this has been a mainly a fix release. Only a few small enhancements have been added all described in the technical notes. Here are some of them:
- s390utils update
- crypto updates: libica, opencryptoki (including EP11 support)
August 6, 2015
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 4 (SLES 11 SP4 ) released
On July 16th 2015 SUSE has announced the availability of the latest service pack to their SLES11 distribution. This release is a maintenance release, keeping the major kernel version stable. Here is the usual collection of links:
- release notes (s390x version)
- z Systems spcific information for SLES 11 SP4 (11.4)
- release notes for High Availability Extensions (System z / s390x version)
- release notes for SDK (System z / s390x version)
- kernel level: 3.0.101-63.1
- Here are some interesting features with links to the respective release notes entry:
- QSAM Access Method for Data sharing with z/OS
This is the first stage - allowing read only access to offline devices - 10GbE RoCE Express support
- Crypto enhancements:
- src_vipa: IPv6 Enablement
- Keywords for ipl and console device for use in cio_ignore (ipldev, condev)
- Documentation
- SUSE page updated to SP4 level
- documentation as large zip file (updated to SP4 level)
- IBM documentation for SP3 on developerworks
- SUSE tuning guide updated to SP4