Home | Articles | About | Contact | Forum |
Friday, March 29, 2024



Lunarpages.com Web Hosting

Mailing List

E-mail:
By Joining the mailing list you will be notified of site updates.


Show Your Support For
This Site By Donating:











Audience: Newbies - Self Learners
Last Updated: 10/16/2010 4:44:48 PM
**All times are EST**





Mainframe Servers

By Erik Rodriguez

This article contains information about mainframe servers.


What is a Mainframe Server?

A mainframe server is a very large and powerful server or group of servers. There are only a few companies that produce true "mainframe servers." Mainframes are sometimes called "Enterprise Servers" or "Super Computers." While the term server can refer to hardware or software, mainframe server always refers to hardware.


Chassis and Operating System

Mainframe servers often resemble a refrigerator. They are very large and usually designed in a modular format. Each module contains arrays of CPU's, memory, and disk drives. They have hot-swapable power supplies, and all components such as disk drives, CPUs, and memory cards can be hotswapped. Companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, HP, SGI, and Cray produce some of the most powerful mainframe computers in existance. Most of these machines run some type of proprietary operating system. For instance, the Cray SV1 system runs an OS called UNICOS. IBM mainframes can run a variety of OSes but they commonly run OS/390, z/OS, or AIX UNIX. Modern IBM mainframes are commonly running Linux. All mainframe OSes are some derivative of UNIX compiled to support the extremely powerful architecture of these machines. These machines usually contain some special type of CPUs. Some of these CPUs are designed specifically for mathmatic computations. These CPUs are commonly found in mainframes that need do number crunching for medical research. The image below shows a picture of an IBM mainframe server. You can get an idea of its size by the CRT monitor located on the ground to the right.



Mainframe Usage

You might wonder what a mainframe server is used for? While its use is limited, a mainframe server can be used as a an application server that also houses all the data. Often large corporations develope custom applications that run on their in-house mainframes. Large universities and research organizations also use mainframes for various projects. Mainframes can be clustered together to harness the power of multiple servers and perform a single task. Cancer researchers use clusters of IBM servers to perform linear algebra and other mathematical operations needed to complete research. On the fun side, Sun Microsystems is now leasing their enterprise servers to certain groups such as animators and graphics producers to perform rendering.


Contact Us

If you found this information useful, click the +1 button



Your E-mail:


Subject:


Type verification image:
verification image, type it in the box

Message:


NOTE: this form DOES NOT e-mail this article, it sends feedback to the author.




TCP vs. UDP
Juniper SRX anti-spam filtering config
Windows Server 2008 Clustering Configuration
Windows 2008 R2 Network Load Balancing (NLB)
Extreme Networks: Downloading new software image
Juniper SRX save config to USB drive
Juniper SRX logout sessions
Extreme Networks Syslog Configuration
Command line drive mapping
Neoscale vs. Decru
Data Security vs. Data Protection
Juniper SRX Cluster Configuration
HOWTO - Create VLAN on Extreme Switch
Using a Non-local Colocation Facility
Linux Server Administration
IT Chop Shops
Flow Viewers: SFLOW, NetFLOW, and JFLOW
Exchange 2007 Back Pressure
IPtables open port for specific IP
Politics in IT Departments
HOWTO - Block Dropbox
Cisco IOS Cheat Sheet
Subnet Cheat Sheet
Design a DMZ Network
How DNS works
Firewall Configuration
Juniper SSG Firewalls
Server Management
Configuring VLANs
Runlevels in Linux
Server Clustering
SONET Networks
The Red Hat Network
Server Colocation
Complicated Linux Servers
Dark Fiber
Data Center Network Design
Firewall Types
Colocation Bandwidth




Copyright © 2002-2016 Skullbox.Net All Rights Reserved.
A division of Orlando Tech Works, LLC
By using this site you agree to its Terms and Conditions.
Contact Erik Rodriguez