🚀 go-pugleaf

[ I've taken the liberty of re-crossposting this to comp.unix.large,
  where Peter hangs out.  Peter, feel free to correct me or add
  your own comments.  mi.misc is the Michigan general discussion
  group.  Neither Ed nor Peter says this explicitly -- the mainframe
  they dropped was running MTS in a usage model very much like the
  University of Michigan.  --scs ]

emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) writes:

>The folks at Simon Fraser University have managed to 
>get themselves out of using MTS and onto other computing
>systems (Unix and VMS) without an undue amount of grief.
>I know that there's a lot of angst building up at the
>U of Michigan about the same sort of transition, and in
>the absence of strong central planning here's at least some
>hint of what some other organization facing the same
>move has gone through.

>[ Article crossposted from comp.unix.large,comp.org.usenix ]
>[ Author was vanepp@fraser.sfu.ca ]
>[ Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support ]
>[ Posted on Mon, 9 Nov 1992 20:36:30 GMT ]

>I have just made a copy of our LISA VI paper "Dropping The Mainframe
>Without Crushing The Users: Mainframe to Distributed UNIX in Nine Months"
>availible for anon ftp from ftpserver.sfu.ca in directory
>/pub/ucspapers/LISA-VI.paper.ps.Z 
>(which as the file name implies is in PostScript).

Peter's paper and talk were quite interesting.  He did stress a few
points in the talk that are worth repeating.

There was not an overall reduction in cost when you count many of the
conversion costs.  It was not clear to me how much was conversion (new
network stuff, etc) and how much was CPU and disk.  IMHO, the cost
benefit will probably improve over time as distributed UNIX boxes
continue to decline in cost.  For a site like University of Michigan,
much of that conversion wouldn't be needed -- they already have the
network, AFS, etc.

There was *very* strong central control.  Last year at LISA he
mentioned the project had just been started, and they had some doubts
about their ability to execute.  Fortunately for him, he was wrong.
The central control got behind the project and pushed with resources
and political support to get it done.

Many MTS utilities were not ported to the UNIX environment.  I asked
specificly about MICRO and we talked briefly about a few others.  They
seem to have adopted a policy that if there was already a UNIX
equivelent, conversion would have to be done.

Some users just couldn't get it.  They had people claiming not to know
the change was coming even after the mainframe was turned off.

Tapes were a big issue.  They found the unix tape facilities woefully
underpowered.  Lack of ability to read IBM formatted tapes was a big
lose (they've got years and years of backup and archives), and tape
thruput speed left a lot to be desired.

Mainframe I/O speed was a big issue.  They had a small number of people
who put huge (by mainframe standards!) datasets onto 250
inch-per-second tape drives and did data processing.  There is no UNIX
box on their site which can do this; such processing is now farmed
out.

One thing that came out stronger in his talk was "the mainframe
attitude".  I don't know how to put it any better than that, and it's
meant as a compliment.  They did serious work evaluating, benchmarking,
and testing performance of the various pieces they installed, much more
thorough than I see at most installations.  Then they tested afterwards
to see what they'd actually done.  Very refreshing, almost inspiring.
-- 
scs:  Currently tied for 2536th on the Zwicky list with `zwicky'.  The
      list was compiled by Elizabeth Zwicky (not Fritz, not Arnold),
      zwicky@erg.sri.com.