From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/02/1632252

Mainframes running linux images in vm'es.

Linux can grip you on a mobile phone or in a vm on a mainframe.

Heck you can even run windows within a linux vm running within a vm on a
mainframe....


For your "Windows only" legacy apps.

I do like "Don't buy into the myth that Unix admins cannot be easily
trained to become Linux admins. We have found it takes hardly any
time.""


Adam

"Nationwide Insurance and Financial Services, a $21 billion company
with 30,000 employees, has turned to virtual servers running Linux to gain
more control over computing power and expenditures.

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Last year, Nationwide's chief architect Guru Vasudeva tested Nationwide's
Unix and Windows servers and found that they were only using about 10% of
the available CPU capacity. Multiple hundreds of servers meant high
maintenance costs and lots of floor space that was being wasted. Adding to
the problem was Vasudeva's expectation that with Web site upgrades and
growing internal business processes, he'd need another 400-500 servers by
the end of 2006.

Vasudeva started looking for a way to cut costs and make more efficient use
of the available CPUs. He discovered that virtualization could help
Nationwide reduce the "server sprawl" it was experiencing, and
also increase CPU efficiency while saving money.

Nationwide considered using Solaris on Sun hardware, but found that by
using SUSE Linux to run the virtual servers, it could save even more money
on licensing and hardware. But Vasudeva had to be sure they wouldn't be
taking on an inordinate amount of risk by using open source software.

"How do we take advantage of the open source movement?" Vasudeva
says. "We felt that some of the tools coming out would benefit us. And
increasingly, it would be impossible to avoid open source. But we wanted to
see what we could do to manage the risk." Vasudeva undertook studies
to evaluate the possible legal, support, and technical risks of using
Linux. "When we compared the economical benefit to the risk, we said
we should go ahead and use Linux," he says. "[It's] an easy one
because most of the legal and support risks are taken out of the
picture."

With the new system, Vasudeva put 400 CPUs on two IBM System z900 servers,
a consolidation that is projected to save Nationwide about $15 million over
the next three years. And instead of buying hundreds of new servers to
handle anticipated growth, Vasudeva is simply virtualizing them, with a
plan to continue the process as older physical servers are due for
replacement.

With several mission-critical financial applications that only run on
Windows, Vasudeva isn't going completely open source anytime soon. "We
need to figure out how to contain that server space," he says,
"so we've looked at VMware as a way to virtualize [them]."

Vasudeva advises other IT managers to look closely at risks before adopting
open source software. "Define and establish a risk management
framework," he says. "Establish an initial proof-of-concept that
demonstrates mission-critical applications can run on this technology, and
then start moving them. Don't buy into the myth that Unix admins cannot be
easily trained to become Linux admins. We have found it takes hardly any
time."

"

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5