What Are the Latest Systems for Supporting Mainframes?
IBM continues to demonstrate its commitment to the mainframe by releasing new IBM Z systems and other solutions that support the mainframe. IBM understands that the mainframe continues to undergo evolutionary improvements and still provides one of the best ways to meet the data processing demands of large enterprises in key industries.
Recently, IBM has introduced new IBM Z systems for supporting mainframes, including IBM Z16, and announced updates to IBM z/OS and Linux.
Here’s an overview of the latest systems that are available for supporting your mainframe.
IBM Z16: A New Generation of Mainframes
Z16 is IBM’s current generation of mainframes. The IBM Z16 family of servers is built with the Telum Processor, which features an Integrated AI Accelerator for high-speed inferencing, as well as crypto, compression, and sort. The Z16 is also the industry’s first Quantum-Safe System utilizing a dual signature scheme to protect the firmware from quantum attacks. Z16 has a 19” frame form factor for energy and cost savings and an industry-standard footprint for the modern data center.
Depending on processing and I/O requirements, Z16 provides a rack-mounted alternative as well as systems with 1 to 4 frames with:
- Up to 200 7 nm 5.2 GHz configurable cores
- Up to 40 TB of RAIM memory
- 32 GB FICON
- Telum Processor with on-chip AI Accelerator
The new features offered by IBM Z16 include 7 nm Silicon Lithography, 32 GB FICON, 25 GbE ROCE, and the new Hardware Management Appliance (HMA).
The Z16 also benefits from IBM System Recovery Boost 3, which continues to substantially improve system recovery from planned and unplanned traumatic events by leveraging additional system capacity on an LPAR basis without any additional IBM software charges.
Updates to IBM z/OS
IBM z/OS V3.1, the latest version of z/OS, supports hybrid cloud and AI applications. z/OS V3.1 is designed to help mainframe users with their modernization and innovation efforts.
This updated version of z/OS integrates more easily into hybrid cloud environments through IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management, which offers a robust software provisioning platform on z/OS. Now, z/OS can use hybrid cloud as an additional storage tier for both structured and unstructured data.
With V3.1, companies can improve their business outcomes by using z/OS Container Extensions to expand their choices of AI tools, frameworks, or libraries to deploy alongside z/OS applications. To accelerate the adoption of AI on IBM Z Systems, a company can deploy prebuilt container images for popular machine learning (ML) frameworks available through the IBM Z Systems platform.
Customer Information Control System (CICS)
Customer Information Control System (CICS) for z/OS is a general-purpose transaction processing subsystem. CICS allows mainframe users to run an application online, by request, at the same time as many other users are submitting requests to run the same applications, using the same files and programs.
CICS responsively manages the sharing of mainframe resources, the integrity of data, and prioritization of execution. With CICS, companies that use IBM Z Systems can authorize users, allocate resources, and pass database requests by the application to the appropriate database manager, such as DB2.
IBM DB2: Enterprise-level relational database management
IBM DB2 for z/OS is an enterprise-level relational database management system that can support mission-critical business applications. With DB2 and its ecosystem of products, companies that use mainframes gain more value from their data.
DB2 allows organizations to readily access IBM Z and DB2 for z/OS data in-place or synchronize that data as part of a data fabric or data lakehouse. Companies can also leverage AI throughout transactions, applications, and operations to take advantage of predictive analytics for deeper business intelligence and understanding of customer behavior.
Staying on Course During Your Mainframe Journey
Companies that continue to rely on their mainframes need to stay up to date on the latest mainframe technology. Working with the right technology partner will ensure that your business knows about current updates to solutions that support the mainframe.
As the only IBM Premier Partner that focuses exclusively on the mainframe, PSR knows about the latest and greatest IBM Z System technologies. We will work with your business to ensure that your mainframe is always performing optimally to manage your data and applications.
Want to make sure you have the most current solutions for supporting your mainframe? Reach out to the Mainframe Experts at PSR.