2009 Mainframe Linux Workloads Survey

This report contains an analysis of the results of the survey titled “2009 Mainframe Linux Workloads.” Ptak, Noel & Associates in partnership with Z/Journal conducted the survey. Five thousand readers of z/Journal were asked to participate. Almost 5% agreed to participate which is an excellent hit ratio. Two hundred and twenty nine (229) responses were received from individuals who indicated that they were familiar with Linux on the mainframe. (21 respondents said that they had no familiarity with Linux on the mainframe. These were dropped from the survey).

Most participants were in technical jobs with Systems Analysts, Programmers and Systems Administers being the most common. Technical consultants were the next largest group followed by DBA managers. Respondents came from 18 different industry groups with Insurance, Finance, Government, Healthcare and Education were the most popular. The distribution of responding organizations ranged from those with revenues less than $250 million to a good number with greater than $2 billion. Most respondents were North American with a scattering from Europe and Asia. The typical organization had either one or two mainframes installed. A majority said that their organization did not have a z10 installed.

Some of the key findings of the study include:

  • Reducing facilities costs or achieving energy saving were the most important reason for selecting Linux on the mainframe for new workloads.
  • For companies using Linux for production tasks, most projects to move Linux workloads to the mainframe from distributed systems have been successful. Very few projects failed. However, approximately ½ of the respondents indicate Linux is not being used on their mainframe at this time.
  • 3/4 of the respondents said that z/VM was installed in their company. A majority of respondents said that z/VM had been installed for more than 2 years.
  • IBM/Tivoli, CA and BMC were identified as their mainframe systems management vendor. The same three were identified as managers for Linux on System z.

In sum, the survey provides a good picture of the status of Linux on the mainframe. It details how many organizations have Linux on the mainframe. It explores how the Linux workloads compared with other mainframe work and how much UNIX/Linux work in the installation had been consolidated onto the mainframe. The report also examines the respondent’s reasons for not adding more Linux workloads. Finally there is a brief look at the systems management environment both on the mainframe itself and specifically in the Linux environment.