Capacity On Demand - take it seriously

I have been banging on about IBM's Capacity On Demand offering on system z9 for some time now. So it is good to hear that around the place there are some stories coming out of intelligent use of this pricing structure. The computerworld article Capacity on Demand Retains Mainframe Users reports on The Charles Schwab Corp and their apparently highly successful use of Capacity On Demand.

There are sensible words of caution there also. With IBMs notoriously secretive deals its difficult to guage whether you have struck up the best contract you could have, as having the right level of toughness in negotiations with IBM is desirable.

Temporary scheduled or unplanned rises in capacity are something IT managers and planners have long struggled to deal with on mainframes. The need to avoid expensive mainframe upgrades for what may be just a mere passing peak, conflicts with the urgent business need to keep going, meeting the demands that will fuel profit and growth. Failure to cope with these peaks can be costly, both in terms of current business but also in terms of potential future business. IBMs On/Off Capacity on Demand is designed to deal with this, read more >>>

Hipersockets

Ever wondered what a Hipersocket was - ever needed to sit down quietly with a cup of tea and forget about work while staring at a blank wall ?... well anyay here is some info on Hipersockets:

f you have gone for the zLinux virtual server option as an alternative to multiple external servers then its my guess you will want to maximise the advantage by utilising the superfast speeds of the mainframe.
Putting in Hipersockets gives you high speed network connections between all your virtual Linux servers and LPARs running z/OS or S/390, that looks and feels just like TCP/IP. Of course it is not TCP/IP - the connections move data around from one memory location to another, there is no physical cabling involved. IBM quotes the following improvements in speeds "Benchmarks using two LPARs each with four CPUs, each running 31-bit Linux kernal 2.4.7 on a zSeries 900 HiperSockets demonstrated up to four to six times more throughput than a single Gigabit Ethernet for batch streaming traffic,and up to between two and five times more throughput for interactive traffic. This can translate into shorter batch windows and faster response times".
For access to all the IBM documentation on Hipersockets click here
For information on an upgrade to Hipersockets called Hipersockets accelerator - click here
For an IBM performance evaluation - click here

WH
http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/