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IBM Previews z/VM Version 6.1
When IBM has announcements to make it's usually on a Tuesday (U.S. time). There's a big one this week: IBM revealed many details of the forthcoming z/VM Version 6.1.
z/VM is the ultra-refined virtualization operating system ("hypervisor") for the mainframe and routinely supports hundreds or even thousands of guest operating systems on a single machine. z/VM is a critical ingredient in the mainframe's Linux prowess.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for mainframe geeks (and many other people) is that IBM also declared a new Architecture Level Set (ALS) for the mainframe. So far all 64-bit machines implemented a single ALS called z/Architecture. All current IBM software can run on every machine to implement z/Architecture, starting from the z900. (Whether it makes sense to do that is a separate question, but in pure technical terms you can run any current IBM software on any machine starting from the z900 which first shipped in the year 2000.) That's despite the fact that each new model implements new and enhanced CPU instructions. IBM software might exploit those instructions, but (currently) it doesn't require them. Most vendors have done the same thing: all their current software works with all z/Architecture machines. The one exception I can think of is OpenSolaris for System z, which requires a System z9 or higher.
That just changed, because IBM is giving advance warning that z/VM Version 6.1 will require a new ALS. (IBM says that z/VM Version 6.1 is scheduled to become generally available in 4Q2009.) I didn't see the name for this new ALS yet, but for now you can probably call it ARCHLVL 3 or perhaps z/Architecture 2. The System z10 EC and BC machines implement this new ALS, but prior machines do not. This ALS declaration establishes a significant distinction between System z9 (and prior) and System z10 models. If the past is any guide (and it usually is), z/VM Version 6.1 will only be the first software product to require ARCHLVL 3. There will be many others to come. The same happened with z/VM Version 5, the first product (that I remember anyway) to require z/Architecture (ARCHLVL 2).
| by Timothy Sipples | July 7, 2009 Permalink |
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