[lug] So much for VMware

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Fri, 2006-12-01 at 22:04 -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
> Ahh yes, mainframes.  Built for a trusted network.  Not the Internet.

Actually, mainframes were on the Internet before any PCs (and the humans
behind them) where.  The "network" was built for mainframes as much as
anything else.

> Apples 'n' Oranges.

Kind of.  Depends on context.

> You *know* who's accessing your mainframe.  (Modern IP connectivity to 
> mainframes aside, I don't think I've ever seen one put on a public 
> network directly.)

Define "public".  Many university mainframes were connected to the
Internet long before the public (and commercial enterprises) knew about
it.  They provided shared access to resources.  Much research was done
this way.  "Trusted" in a sense that you had to register for access.
But The Cuckoo's Egg is a good example of what was easily accessible
before Amazon and Google took charge.  And much of that connectivity was
pre-IP boom.  

I cut my teeth on VM/XA and MVS/XA in the acedemic computing facility at
Texas Tech.  VM was the only way to share the mainframe among the
university, but it was also the best way to allow researchers at distant
sites to share those same resources.  The easiest way to open those VM's
to those researchers was to connect to a common network. The protocols
used were varied back then.  The backbones were many.

Trusted in a contextual way.  The Interent, for certain, well, depending
on what gateways existed between the backbones.

Back to the original subject:  VM makes sense with modern hardware
because most desktop hardware provides far more computing power than
most spreadsheets can use.  Virtualize that hardware and you can share a
single desktop system with a workgroup using thin clients.  It's better
use of resources.  Not in all cases, mind you.  But it does make sense
for many situations.  I know it makes sense in software development
environments if you need to test cross-platform support.  I only need
one desktop, but I can run many operating systems side by side.  Beats
having to try and run Windows remotely to build and test a Java app.  
-- 
Michael J. Hammel           |
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org  |  Books we'll never see:
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