Opinions please on Sun Mainframe Rehosting

[jbush]

As one of our Technical Architects, I have been asked to evaluate Sun's Mainframe Rehosting, to see if we can selectively port applications from the OS/390 2.9 mainframe to Solaris. The mainframe is creaking at the capacity seams. The applications are (mostly) CICS/COBOL/DB2.

So far, I have found out that:
1) The Sun download datasheets are mostly marketing spin.
2) The main software is Mainframe Transaction Processing (MTP) and Mainframe Batch Manager (MBM).
3) It used to be Unikix, but got bought up by a series of companies leading to Sun in September 2001.

Does anyone have any opinions on this stuff? Are there any sources of technical requirements, or other useful data?
They claim to have an implementation of VSAM and a security framework that is like RACF; are these any good? Is it cost effective?

Thanks, Jonathan
(Also posted in Sun Solaris forum, but no response there...) Jonathan Bush,
Technical Architect
Aseriti

 

[FearsomeFastFemale]

hi,

I dont know anything about the SUN systems but a few years ago looked at simlar CICS emulator type systems. A major stumbling block for us was the Mapsets. None of the system would support maps created on the fly in the programs rather than using pre-defined and assembled mapsets. We also found poor support for called assemember modules. How much this would affect you would depend on the applications but we gave up and performace tuning the mainframe code to ease the problems.

Regards

Charlotte

 

[ldepeuter]

Hi,

If your applications on the IBM mainframe are running stable and your only problem is space, then try to find a solution on the mainframe and save yourself and others the pain of porting your applications to environments like sun and Oracle. The problem with companies like Sun and Oracle is that they have no large experience in running solid applications under stable conditions. In addition people working with these unix products do not have the proper background to manage a huge system, basically they are hackers, techies but have absolutely no idea what an IT infrastructure should offer their company in terms of quality, security, availabiity. Don't believe people that tell you things will run faster, better, and for one thing cheaper. I have 17 years experience in operational environments and worked on midrange computers (AS/400), VAX computers, several mainframe environments for serveral large multinationals. Spend your time and companies money wisely and fix your problem within the mainframe environment.

Regards, Luc

 

[zvidv]

I was involved in a large application transition from IBM MF to Unix (Aix) Db2. Guess that Sun is not the issue here only the application and the Infrastructure transition (Cobol, Cics, Db2)

 

[mpc99]

We succesffuly ported a mainframe based CICS/COBOL/VSAM application to a pSeries AIX platform using Txseries (CICS)/COBOL Set for AIX/ encina SFS with very few problems. The major differences occured on the batch side repated to the SdU external file handler required to access indxed Encona SFs files.