IBM introduces air-cooled z15 T02 and LinuxONE III LT2 – more security, more cloud

Following the introduction of its first z15 mainframe T01 in September last year IBM is introduced the smaller single-frame air-cooled z15 T02 and matching LinuxONE III LT2 models on April 14th. Since moving away from producing x86 servers it has continued to invest in its Power and mainframe lines, enhancing their status as the most secure servers and making sure they can be used for advanced, modern applications fully integrated with cloud resources for a set of very demanding (mainly large) customers.

Enhancing Linux on mainframes

IBM began offering Linux as an alternative operating system way back in 2000. The advantage for users is being able to build open modern applications at a much lower cost than those based on IBM z/OS and run them at scale with better performance and (sometimes) lower costs than x86-based solutions. It designates those processors dedicated to running Linux as Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), the number of which appears in the detailed model numbers (see below).

Machine type 8562 T02 and LT2 models – feature based sizing

CPC draw               IFLs*         Maximum memory

Max4                            4                                 2TB

Max13                        13                                 4TB

Max21                        21                                 4TB

Max31                        31                                 8TB

Max65                        65                               16TB

Source: IBM, April 2020

For those who worry about comparatively vulnerability of Linux compared with z/OS IBM has introduced its Secure Execution for Linux, which allows the creation of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) through hardware-based memory protection of data and code in-use. It prevents administrators and coders from reading the data in the applications they manage or write and can become part of a broad Kubernetes cluster spanning z and x86-based servers.

One major area of use is for users to build cloud-based applications integrated with the high security and resiliency features of z/OS – something it terms ‘cloud native’. Its customers can build and manage Kubernetes container code using Cloud Pak on IBM z and OpenShift from Red Hat, which IBM acquired in 2018.

Resilient mainframe-cloud integration

On a wider basis IBM is helping its users participate in ‘hybrid multicloud’ strategies, which spans application modernization, managing cloud deployments from within a private data center and/or acquiring mainframe services from the IBM Cloud.

IBM has been focusing on data encryption as a way of making mainframes more secure. In addition to the z14’s hardware accelerated, file or data set, database and protected key for high speed encryption, with the z15 it has added encryption for data center security and for controlled access to diagnostic data shared with partners and other z/OS ecosystems.

Protecting individual identity records has become a necessity following the introduction of legislation such as the EU’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). As mentioned in my first look at the z15 IBM has addressed the need by introducing Data Privacy Passports, which provide protection through encryption and revocation, privacy through controls and built-in consent and proof for auditing and compliance and can be used across private and public clouds as well as in third party applications.

In addition to encryption IBM has enhanced the mainframe’s cyber resiliency with a growing set of instant recovery features including Parallel Sysplex, Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS) and storage synergy. It has also introduced its System recovery Boost, which speeds up system recovery for planned maintenance, unplanned outages, disaster recovery testing and site switching by unlocking additional processing power temporarily.

Accompanying the new servers are 2 new storage products – the DS8900F array and TS7770 tape system, which I’ll discuss in my next post.

In commenting on its Q4 results IBM claimed it had seen the strongest growth in mainframe MIPS in history, which I believe was approximately 100%. I expect to see strong growth in 2020 for z System MIPS and revenue. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will probably be to flatten growth and stretch it out over more quarters. Mainframes are the main workhorse of the financial sector and many government systems – their work is even more important at a period when there is going to be significant social and economic disruption and an inevitable increased level of cyber attacks.