The new entry MCP machine is actually based on Intel Corp processors, while the two bigger boxes are based on Unisys’ own CMOS mainframe processors. In conjunction with the new servers, Unisys is also launching more granular utility computing and plans to support the open source JBoss Web application server on its mainframes.
According to Chander Khanna, vice president of platforms and systems marketing at Unisys, the new Libra mainframes offer approximately 10% better price/performance than the prior Clearpath Libra 185 machines, which were announced in July 2003. While Chander was not specific about what improvements were made in the CMOS engines in the high-end machines (which hail from the Burroughs half of Unisys), the CMOS motors in the Libra 185 boxes were rated at between 300 and 370 mainframe MIPS, depending on the clock speed. The Libra 185 could have two eight-way partitions, each with an aggregate of 1,910 MIPS, and a max of 24GB of main memory per partition.
The new Libra 580 can support a maximum of eight four-way processor modules, which implies that this box is really an ES7000 series server with CMOS mainframe cards. These can be four-way Xeon MP cards or four-way Unisys CMOS cards. With the CMOS engines, a single native MCP partition can span either four or eight partitions. If all of the engines in a Libra 580 were set up using CMOS mainframe motors, the box would have about 8,400 aggregate MIPS. To create a system image that spans 16 processors, Unisys is requiring customers to jump to the MCPvm emulation environment for Windows 2000 or Windows 2003, and to move to Xeon MP processors. Many CMOS mainframe customers would probably like to see native 16-way MCP running on real mainframe engines. The Clearpath Dorado machines, which hail from the Sperry half of Unisys and run the OS2200 operating system, have been able to scale to 32 CMOS mainframe processors for more than a year. Unisys is supporting the 2GHz/1MB or 2.8GHz/2MB versions of the Gallatin Xeon MP on this box. It is unclear when it will support the version of Gallatin with 4MB cache.
The Libra 590 is the same piece of iron, only it is equipped with a systems management program called Utilization Sentinel, which lets companies pay for metered use of MIPS on a Libra 580 chassis. Khanna says that Unisys has been beta testing this concept with customers since the fall of 2003, and it lets companies establish their average use of MIPS, then dial up capacity from two to 10 times that amount as they cope with workload spikes. The Utilization Sentinel also has a governor on peak performance that is allowed by applications, so companies do not inadvertently spend more money on MIPS than they have budget for. Utilization Sentinel can only meter the use on processors in the box at the moment, but Khanna says that Unisys is working to extend that, so it can meter memory, internal I/O, storage, and networking capacities. If it accomplishes this task, Unisys will be ahead of its server competition in many regards.
Khanna says that pricing on the Libra 590 ranges from $300,000 to $18m. When pressed about the pricing algorithm Unisys uses for the Libra 590, Khanna would only say that, in general, the more MIPS you use, the lower the cost per MIPS. Of course, that is true when you buy a Unisys mainframe outright, too. A 20 MIPS Libra 185 cost $1.1m with 3GB of main memory, a five-year license for MCP, and 180 systems programs bundled in last fall, which works out to $55,000 per MIPS, while a 3,820 MIPS Libra 185 with two eight-way native MCP domains cost $22.4m, or about $5,800 per MIPS. On a big box, a 25 MIPS increment could cost about $145,000, and the question remains: How long Unisys will amortize that hardware to come up with a per-hour fee for use. There are 26,298 hours in the course of three years, and simple math would suggest that 25 MIPS of power should be worth about $5.50 per hour. I somehow suspect that, given the time value of money and the fact that Unisys has to build the hardware whether or not customers use it continually for the same cost, the price will be a lot higher.
In addition to these two big Libra boxes, Unisys has announced the Libra 520, which appears to be a reworked Dylan class ES7000 with Xeon MPs that runs MCPvm, but which can also support four-way or eight-way native MCP CMOS engines. The performance range of this box only spans from 20 to 300 MIPS, and prices for base machines run from $45,000 to $185,000.
Unisys is also getting ready to support Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) on its MCP and OS2200 mainframe operating systems. Support for the open source JBoss Web application server is expected soon for MCP and will come out later in the year for the OS2200 platforms. Khanna says that mainframe customers like the idea of having their Java servers running behind the mainframe security of the MCP and OS2200 platforms, and given that Unisys’ biggest mainframe customers are very conservative government and financial institutions, with four decades of mainframe experience, this stands to reason. MCP and OS2200 don’t suffer from buffer overflows, and their architecture does not allow outside programs to execute.
Khanna also hinted that Unisys will be supporting an almost native implementation of Microsoft Corp’s .NET framework by the end of the year on its MCP and OS2200 mainframe platforms. He would not say how Unisys would accomplish this. The company could port the Common Language Runtime (CLR) to MCP and OS2200, so that the C# programming language could execute on the machines. Alternatively, Unisys could put its weight behind the open source Mono .NET project, much as it has does to support JBoss as it tries to become fully J2EE compliant and certified as such.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
