[lug] CSU hub for IBM mainframe running thousands of Linux VMs

[Neal McBurnett]

Check out http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/PR/releases/ibm_21.6_million.html

Excerpt:
 COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY PARTNERS WITH IBM TO BECOME NATIONAL
 TECHNOLOGY HUB; PROJECT IS VALUED AT $21.6 MILLION

 FORT COLLINS-Colorado State University today announced that IBM is
 providing the university with a fully supported, rich, technical
 environment through use of a sophisticated mainframe - valued at
 $21.6 million by IBM over the course of two years. The project will
 position Colorado State as a technology hub for universities across
 the country.

 IBM will provide Colorado State's College of Business students and
 faculty with the use of a powerful mainframe. The unique capabilities
 of the IBM mainframe allow it to be partitioned or carved up into
 thousands of virtual stand-alone servers. Users are assigned their
 own individual server to develop, test or port applications with
 complete autonomy, allowing them to work independently without
 affecting the thousands of other users on the same physical
 machine. Developers can even re-boot or recompile programs without
 interfering with others on the system.

 ...As an IBM national technology hub, Colorado State will in turn
 provide support to universities across the country that wish to offer
 their students the same unprecedented experience of working with
 virtual Linux servers.

Looking past the hype (c.v. vmware), this looks good.  Set up some
virtual networks of virtual machines that are easy to recreate,
practice sysadmin on, study network security, etc....  The machine
itself will be at IBM's Boulder facility.

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/      (with GPG/PGP keys)