Re: Scalability (both vertical and horizontal)?

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Christopher Browne wrote:

> scott.marlowe@ihs.com ("scott.marlowe") writes:
> > TPF on a mainframe is highly recommended by Sabre, the Airline
> > reservation folks.
>
> Sure, but they have 17 mainframes in the "bunker" in Tulsa.  And that
> seems more reflective of having Really Really Really Big Iron (the big
> boxes are BIG BOXES) than of it scaling across a bunch of cheaper
> hardware.  Parts of that are multihosting applications; quite a number
> of those MFs are probably devoted to running the information systems
> for AMR.

The last time I had dinner with some of the folks from Sabre, I was told
that 12 mainframes were running the tpf, with 6 online and 6 in a failover
/ sysplex mode I'm note that familiar with.  I.e. they had it spread
across 6 machines.  I'd say that's wide and tall.

> Furthermore, a vast number of the projects since STIN was initially
> created at Sabre have been directed at replacing it.  None have been
> notably successful.

Same story I heard :-)

> It looks a whole lot more like vertical scaling
> ("the biggest box with the mostest spindles and the mostest terminal
> interfaces") than anything else...

If they had TPF on one mainframe with a failover, I'd agree, but like I
said above, it looks both wide AND tall scaling.

either way, it makes my poor little dual PIV 2800 machines seem puny by
comparison. :-)