Mainframe Dinosaur Myth

An Evolving Method of
Analyzing and Optimizing a IT
Server Infrastructure
The Dinosaur Myth…
2005
Windows Server, UNIX Server, Mainframe Server

February 2004, 1nd edition

presented by
Dipl. Ing. Werner Hoffmann
EMAIL: pwhoffmann@aol.com A member of IEEE and ACM

Date: 12/07/21 Page: 1

 The Dinosaur Myth…

The Myth was first

published by
Xephon, and is
now maintained by
Arcati
(www.arcati.com)

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 2

 TCO / TCU

The key yardstick of a computer’s cost-effectiveness

is
• not only TCO (total cost of ownership)
• but TCU (total cost per user),

measured over a reasonable time-span to even out

any high up-front costs.

Three to five years is a reasonable period for this

purpose.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 3

 Contents

 Introduction
 Method – Scope and Steps
 Assessing IT Infrastructure
 Service Delivery – People Efficiency
 System Efficiency – Server Utilization
 Quality of Service – Server Availibility
 Outline Solution Designs
 Total cost and incremental cost
 Examples
 Conclusion
 Bibliography
 References to true examples

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 4

 Introduction

- Computing Technology becomes more pervasive

- TCO /TCU Analysis is still a hot industry topic
- Critical success factors are very dependent on IT
organization and IT infrrastructure
- changing realities put huge pressures on standard ways
of understanding and solving business problems
- IT infrastructure analysis methods balance the best
techniques of server infrastructure technical analysis with
financel analysis
Highlights: The biggest breakthrough is in getting to credible outline solution
designs for tactical and strategic projects that can be used as the baseline for
business cases that compare multiple target server scenarios!
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 5
 Method – Scope and Steps

The overall objective of a project can be summerized as defining the

current state of the company‘s IT server infrastructure, describing
alternative realistic future states, showing cost projections of the
alternatives and recommending a better future state alternative.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 6

 Task during a typical project:

1. Define study scope with IT executive management

2. Issue data collection for server inventory, infrastructure budget
and personnel cost data
3. Validate and Complete 2. by interviews
4. Analyze costs by server platform and user
5. Analyze server and application data to identify groups of similar
servers
6. Run a efficiency and service health check for each of the major
server families
7. Identify outline solution areas and a credible migration path
8. Build a investment case for „future state“ based on a five-year
cost projection
9. Deliver final recommendations to the IT executive management

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 7

 How much IT spend per user per
year?

How much do you spend each year on IT infrastructure

for every user?
Although this is essentially a very simple question, it can
be made to appear extremely complicated.
A simple way to get an initial answer to this question lies
in identifying the total amount of IT infrastructure spend
(say $100M per year) and dividing by the number of
users (say 20,000) to calculate a total cost of IT per user
per year (say $5K per user per year).

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 8

 Assesing today‘s IT infrastructure

Broad server health check metrics include:

 People efficiency – broadly measured by “z/OS

MIPS per person” or “UNIX servers per support
person”
 Systems efficiency – broadly measured by „average
processor utilization“ or „Disk utilization“
 Quality of service – broadly measured by quarterly
scheduled and unscheduled outage time and impact
 Service delivery cost – broadly measured by total
cost and incremental cost of additional usable
capacity
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 9
 Sample Server Data

This approach provides invaluable insights into often hidden or “gray

area” personnel costs that should be apportioned to the specific
platforms in the company’s service delivery cost model.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 10
 Data Analysis

Before starting any discussion about the financial analysis it is vital

to identify the core IT infrastructure costs. This is often not quite as
simple as it seems.

 IT Cost Analysis - The Basics

 Financial Analysis
 Technical Analysis

Note: There are typically hundreds of UNIX servers and thousands of

Intel servers in any major enterprise. One of the first steps is to place
these servers into a number of broad major categories and further
subcategories.
This is a very important step towards developing a server solution
strategy for any enterprise.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 11
 People Efficiency - Mainframe

Service Delivery — People Efficiency S/390 Operations

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 12

 People Efficiency - Unix

Service Delivery — People Efficiency

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 13

 People Efficiency - Intel

Service Delivery — People Efficiency

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 14

 System Efficiency -
Server Utilization
Mainframe:

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 15

 System Efficiency -
Server Utilization
Unix and Intel (1)
:

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 16

 System Efficiency -
Server Utilization
Unix and Intel (2)
:

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 17

 System Efficiency -
Servers — Availability
Mainframe - Mission-Critical Application Availability :

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 18

 System Efficiency -
Servers — Availability
Unix / Intel - Application Availability :

 One of the challenges of comparing server

platforms is the lack of real UNIX and Intel availability
measurements.
 Compared with 4-6 mainframes, measured daily, in
many different ways, there are frequently 100-200
UNIX servers and 500-1000 Windows NT servers
which have few measurements.
 An average UNIX service delivery organization has typical
weekday service hours of extended office hours (08:00-20:00
Monday to Friday) for the bulk of the application and database
servers.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 19
 System Efficiency -
Servers — Availability
 A useful classification of service levels based on
scheduled outages is:

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 20

 System Efficiency -
Servers — Availability
NT Prime Shift Availability:

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 21

 Total cost and incremental cost
 In most organizations, total current spend is a direct
result of infrastructure decisions made 2, 5 or even 10
years ago!

 A good understanding of today’s actual IT expenditure

is very important in determining actual, achievable
people efficiency and systems utilization factors that are
central to a future cost comparison.

 It is important to distinguish between three or more

"states", the today state, and two or more future states.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 22

Today vs. Future IT Infrastructure

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 23

 Incremental cost analysis

An example:
Incremental Cost Comparison - Annualized

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 24

 Outline Solution Design

The next major step is to identify alternative future end states for two
or three solution areas such as Web serving, e-mail or a specific group
of application servers.

Useful Tools and Techniques:

1. Machine virtualization
2. Development and deployment standardization
3. Hardware packaging
4. Manual “best-fit” techniques

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 25

 Tools and Techniques for Server
Optimization

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 26

 What are the key factors in this
analysis? (1)

• A good technical analysis and outline design of the future state

is an essential starting point. Enough detail, or a set of realistic
assumptions, is required to identify the main transaction
volumes, main software options and likely service quality.
Typically three future configurations will be needed, Intel,
UNIX and S/390 or z/OS, each of them capable of handling, say,
1000 units of the application load.
• The difficult next step is to ensure comparability of the
performance and throughput of the Intel, UNIX and S/390
configurations. In most cases industry standard benchmarks,
(such as TPC-C, SpecInt, SD steps/hour), actual benchmark
data, or actual measurements can be used.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 27
 What are the key factors in this
analysis? (2)

• The final key assumption is the number of IT support people to

deliver the S/390, UNIX or Windows NT service. Clearly today’s
actual experience relative to industry averages is a very
important starting point. There are many measurement points
over many years in the S/390 arena. With UNIX and Windows
NT, people support costs dominate the platform cost. In the case
of UNIX, we find total people costs usually account for 35-45%
of the total IT spend on the platform. This can be compared
with 45-55% in the case of Windows NT, and 20-25% for S/390.
It is worth noting that the heaviest people costs are incurred in
supporting uncloned application and database servers, which
require people-intensive monitoring, problem determination,
tuning, backup, and recovery processes.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 28
 Defining the business case to
support the technical roadmap
IT Server Infrastructure Study helps weigh
the potential cost for change

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 29

 Conclusion (1)

A clear perspective on today’s actual IT infrastructure cost, by technology

platform (e.g., Windows NT, UNIX, mainframe) is extremely important
in determining future IT strategy and investment decisions.
The following four action points are recommended:
1. Establish a realistic estimate of the actual IT cost
per user per year,
2. Conduct an IT health check of all major server
platforms,
3. Build a simple financial model to estimate the
incremental cost of each server platform,
4. Ensure that PC and distributed server
proliferation and data fragmentation are strongly
controlled.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 30
 Conclusion (2)

A credible, simple, constantly updated IT vision and

blueprint of the target IT infrastructure linked to
business needs. This IT infrastructure blueprint
needs
to describe selected strategic technical components,
such as the primary server platforms (e.g., S/390,
z/OS, RS/6000, Netfinity®,) database (e.g., DB2®),
core
middleware (e.g., CICS, MQ), development paradigms
(e.g., Java, WebSphere, LINUX®) and the data
network (e.g., TCP/IP).

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 31

 Conclusion (3)

Last and most difficult, is a realistic technical migration

plan from today to the future state.
This typically is a phased multi-year project, which
migrates selected business applications and
functions to target platforms.
Often this cannot be achieved directly and involves the
selection of technical "stepping stones" as the locus
of interim strategic service.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 32

 Examples

Case Study A: e-business IT infrastructure

• describes 2 alternative scenarios for a major application:

• 1) 750 real UNIX servers costing $40M over 3 years,

• 2) centralized S/390 environment

• from a technical perspective this study highlights the

potentially massive infrastructure costs of running
hundreds of real servers rather than „hundreds of
cloned virtual“ servers...

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 33

 Examples

Case Study A: e-business IT infrastructure

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 34

 Examples

Case Study B: implementation of 4 e-business appl.

• describes 2 alternative scenarios:

• 1) UNIX front-end servers running WebSpere

connected to legacy data,
• 2) runs WebSpere on the existing S/390

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 35

 Examples
Case Study B: e-business load growth estimates...

for the mathematical; load(n) = {atan([n-N]*pi/(2*N))+1}*plateau/2, where plateau is

the final load, N = growth phase in periods

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 36

 Examples
Case Study B: UNIX scenario — main assumptions

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 37

 Examples
Case Study B: implementation of 4 e-business appl.

• UNIX scenario — the timeline...

• UNIX scenario — incremental cost analysis...

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 38

 Examples
Case Study B: UNIX scenario ...

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 39

 Examples
Case Study B: The S/390 scenario ...

• S/390 — cost assumptions

• MIPS,
• IT people,
• hardware,
• software.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 40

 Examples
Case Study B: The S/390 scenario – Summary costs

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 41

 Examples
Case Study B: The S/390 scenario – Conclusion

a) ...it is unwise to mix applications with different

characteristics in the same UNIX server...,
b) Each application has different growth and failure
characteristics, -> people intensive operational env....,
c) Technology changes, -> in UNIX env. There is a constant
conflict between people productivity and newer function...

...case study illustrates that UNIX server proliferation is costly,

and in the range of 1.6 - 1.8 times more expensive than the
S/390 scenario in a three-year TCO case.
Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 42
 Examples

Case Study C: ... A complex application suite with

rapidly growth

• describes 2 alternative scenarios:

• 1) expand UNIX servers, or

• 2) porting the application to S390

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 43

 Examples

Case Study C: ... A complex application suite with rapidly growth

• describes 2 alternative scenarios:

• 1) expand UNIX servers, or

• 2) porting the application to S390

• ... people costs, operational complexity, maintenance

window, outages etc...

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 44

 Examples
Case Study C: ... A complex application suite with rapidly growth

• Incremental cost of Ownership,

• Incremental People Costs,
• Availability Costs,
• Costs of unscheduled outages,
• Costs of scheduled outages

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 45

 Examples
Case Study C: ... A complex application suite with rapidly growth

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 46

 Examples
Case Study C: ... A complex application suite with rapidly growth

Conclusion:
• Porting the application to the OS/390 (z/OS) environment
significantly improves the availability of the application
while reducing the operational complexity as the
environment grows

• the UNIX scenario is 1.73 times more than the S/390 (z/OS),
• with including porting cost the UNIX/S/390 ratio is still 1.35 times
• availabilty costs shows a significant advantage to S/390 (z/OS)

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 47

 Examples
Summary / Conclusion:

• All of these case studies are based on real situations.

• All of them show that an objective analysis of the total

three-year cost of ownership of large e-business
applications, can show mainframe scenario costs that are
often 40%-50% lower
than UNIX, and 50%-60% lower than Windows NT, even
for relatively small applications.

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 48

 Questions
???
Questions, comments, further information?
Please feel free to e-mail me!
Dipl.Ing. Werner Hoffmann
EMAIL: pwhoffmann@aol.com
Date: 12/07/21 Page: 49
 Bibliography

 GF22-5168-01 IBM – Scorpion – Simplifying the Corporate

IT Infrastructure
 GM13-0189-00 IBM . Scorpion Update – An Evolving
Method of Analyzing and Optimizing the Corporate IT Server
Infrastructure
 GF22-5176-00 IBM – Gemini – Generating Meaningful
Incremental IT Costs
 GM13-0329-00 IBM – Orion – Opportunities for Systems
Rationalization in an IT Organization

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 50

 The End….

Date: 17.01.2005 Mainframe Dinosaur Myth 2005 Page: 51