RE: i5OS running as a VM on PC

Well,

I spoke to soon apparently. I'd never heard of PearPC.

Thanks Lukas!

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 9:24 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: i5OS running as a VM on PC

Hi,

According to what i know about i5/OS, this should be
feasible, but not trivial.

There are two possibly ways I see:

a)

Create a new platform that i5/OS runs on. That would be PC
based Systems. This would feel like a CISC to RISC migration
in terms of headaches. I think quite a few components will
need to be updated. The end effect would be an i5/OS that can
run on PCs. TIMI will enable legacy programs to be
retranslated and running on the PC platform.

IOPs are no longer necessary for i5/OS operation (though
still widely used - so a few adjustments would be necessary).
This would probably support a very limited set of hardware,
and could be run barebones on a PC, or within vmware.
Essentially, it would be a full migration, and systems like a
next generation machine could use the x86 platform in it's
lower end (like SUN does with AMD machines, and SPARC in the
higher end).

This would be quite a lot of work, and would only make
financial sense if the lower end platform would get switched to x86.

b)

PearPC for example emulates PPC5 CPUs, for running Mac OS X.
With a large amount of work (still less then a)), one could
change that emulator to a Power5+ emulator, and then create
appropriate virtual devices for use by i5/OS, emulate IOPs
for when they're necessary.

a) might happen if it decides that it wants to grow the
market for the System i by Offering more competitive prices.
I seriously doubt that.

b) is something that System i evangelists with enough knowledge of the
Power5+ platform could start on today. Support from IBM for this
experiment would still be somewhat necessary for a smooth
experience, but it might be possible to hack this together
without support from IBM.


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of albartell
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:55 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: i5OS running as a VM on PC

Hi All,

Just got done reading two stories on ITJungle.com:
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh071607-story03.html and
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh071607-story01.html. The two
things talked about were a shortage of new i5 talent coming
from educational institutions and market share that IBM is
losing to Oracle - nothing surprisingly new to any of us.

In the end I think we are seeing these stats simply because
it is fairly difficult to get your hands dirty with an i5 and
corresponding technologies vs. developing a business around
PC based technologies, or more directly
stated: I can't download RPG and i5OS to my PC and start
developing applications. Again, nothing really new here - we
have talked about availability before. This leads me to the
question/statement of this thread.

Based on my limited knowledge, I am wondering what the
complexities would be to "port" i5OS to something like a
VMWare instance running on my PC. I would only consider this
potentially possible based on hearing about the different
hardware changes where statements like "pSeries has the same
guts as iSeries" and "single level storage, hiding hardware
implementation"
are
made here an there. In my mind if IBM could make i5OS more
available to the general population, it would start catching
on more, or rather, much faster.

For the sake of argument let's leave timeshare OUT of the
mix. We all know they exist and are relatively inexpensive,
but they are very restrictive in letting you "mess around"
with a machine to learn how it works (and rightly so).

To reiterate my question: What are the complexities to "port"
i5OS to something like a VMWare instance running on my PC?

Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com




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