The mainframe’s new best friend: OpenSolaris

There was a time not too long ago when IBM would have called out the National Guard to keep anyone other than IBM away from its mainframe technology. Not so much any more.

The latest evidence: Last week Big Blue along with Sine Nomine Associates demonstrated Sun's Solaris operating system running on the Big Iron:

Specifically OpenSolaris was running on the mainframe's z/VM subsystem which allows more than 1,000 virtual images on a single hypervisor. Sine Nomine, an independent research and engineering firm based in Ashburn, Virginia said last year they were working on porting the OpenSolaris OS to IBM System z mainframe and this was the first public demonstration of their labor. Sine Nomine had been involved in getting Linux on the mainframe as well about 5 years ago. None of the companies said when an actual OpenSolaris for System z product would ship.

Such as system addresses a number of goals for both companies. For IBM it wants the mainframe to be the virtualized server of choice for all sorts of systems. It already runs Linux and there are specialized java processors and security applications it can run.

IBM has an ongoing project to consolidate nearly 4,000 PC servers onto mainframes running Linux in a move that will cut $250 million from the cost of operating its six major data centers.

For Sun, who could get in the neighborhood of $15,000 for each OpenSolaris instance on the mainframe, the financial benefits are obvious, plus it could give them access to a whole new world of customers.