Mainframe attraction: Large-capacity server vendors positioning for mainframe market

Despite initial resistance from the telecom community, the server environment has become an integral part of carrier operations because of the functionality and ease of management it provides.

Now a new generation of super-servers and large-scale clustered solutions is settling into place in carriers' networks. However, in what at first seems almost a nod to the past, many of these systems are bringing the attributes of big iron to open environments.

"There are reasons that mainframes have been so successful with the carriers-performance, availability and reliability," said Shahin Khan, director of marketing business systems at Sun Microsystems. "We want to bring these benefits to open systems and provide customers with an alternative to mainframe computing for functions like data warehousing."

The first of Sun's high-volume, high-availability servers, the Ultra Enterprise 10000, was designed to function alongside legacy mainframe systems. While the server is part of a scalable family of servers, it also provides mainframe-style features such as dynamic system domains. This setup provides physical and logical partitioning so that users can reconfigure the server on the fly-without rebooting-for conducting multiple operations from a single device. As in a mainframe environment, this limits the effect of software failures because a failure in one domain can't affect another domain onthe same device.

The partitioning capability also allows carriers to test domains without taking the entire server off-line.

The single large units also eliminate the need for management software required for clustered servers and can scale up from lower-capacity servers in Sun's line.

Other companies, including Tandem with its line of Himalaya servers and Silicon Graphics with the high-end members of its Challenge family, also are emphasizing traditional mainframe values of high volume, high performance and high dependability.

"There are a lot of people within the carriers who are attached to the mainframe view of the world, and for good reason," said Mark Davis, manager of marketing strategy and programs for the storage products business unit at Sun. "These servers are not intended to replace mainframes-at least not yet. They're meant to supplement them and provide an avenue for our customers to grow in the future."

This slow movement into the mainframe's turf is the easiest way for server-based systems to replace their older counterparts, one analyst said.

"Those who still have mainframes are not likely to rush to convert to server systems," said Richard Partridge, an analyst at market research firm D.H. Brown and Associates, Port Chester, N.Y. "If they were that inclined to switch, they would have done so five years ago. It's sort of like NASA's rationale for using many of their older computer systems-if it got a man to the moon and it still works today, why replace it?"

More telling may be the server vendors' efforts to explain their high-capacity systems in mainframe terms, Partridge said. "It may be a long process of redefining what servers are, but it's going to indicate to people that the open environment really is a viable alternative for applications now."

Sun Microsystems' Enterprise 10000 H Designed to be positioned as a mainframe "supplement," with features such as dynamic system domains that permit mainframe-style partitioning and dynamic reconfiguration

H Manageable through Solstice for the enterprise

Tandem's Himalaya family H High-volume server family, scaling up to a mainframe-class capacity top-of-the-line unit

H Multiple partnerships offer a variety of management approaches

H Not so clearly targeted toward the proponents of the mainframe as Sun's offering

Silicon Graphics' Challenge family H High-capacity devices that combine low-cost, high-performance CMOS RISC technology, advanced parallel system architecture and an intuitive shared memory programming model

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