IBM starts renting cloudy bare metal Linux almost-mainframes

IBM has taken a longer-than-usual stride towards making its proprietary hardware platforms cloudier, by offering bare metallic LinuxONE boxes successful nan large bluish cloud.

The LinuxONE servers usage nan aforesaid Telum processor IBM packs into its z16 mainframe but are designed solely to tally Linux – Big Blue’s ain z/OS is not allowed.

But IBM promotes LinuxONE arsenic offering conscionable astir nan aforesaid level of hardware resilience arsenic mainframes. The erstwhile typewriter champion besides asserts that nan LinuxOne architecture teamed pinch Telum trounces x86 for compute density and power consumption.

And of people Linux is acold little exotic that z/OS, making it a level much independent package vendors will happily target. IBM reckons greenfield sites mightiness fancy LinuxONE too, arsenic it tin tally Kubernetes and is truthful suggested arsenic a good level for cloud-native development.

The Register submits it would beryllium a brave purchaser that ignores decades of humanities lawsuit studies astir nan perils of lock- successful to proprietary platforms and makes LinuxONE nan bedrock of a caller IT stack. But alien things person happened.

Wednesday’s news that bare metallic LinuxONE servers are now disposable successful IBM unreality truthful creates an absorbing replacement to nan safe action of hyperscale x86 aliases nan enfant terrible that is cloudy Arm-powered servers.

It besides intends that 3 of IBM’s proprietary hardware platforms are now coming successful its cloud: Big Blue delivered POWER-as-a-service measurement backmost successful 2016 and started renting cloudy mainframes successful 2022, albeit only for trial and improvement purposes.

• IBM teases AI-infused hybrid cloudy upgrade to z/OS - Bingo!
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• IBM shrinks z16 and LinuxONE systems into modular rack configs
• IBM says it's been moving 'AI supercomputer' since May but chose now to show nan world

LinuxONE servers look to beryllium disposable successful IBM Cloud's London, Tokyo, Washington, Sao Paulo, and Toronto regions. Monthly prices commencement astatine $1,490.66 per period for a brace of virtual CPUS (vCPUs whitethorn look an overseas action for a bare metallic server, though that's what IBM's configurator listed erstwhile we tested).

Analyst patient IDC rates nan non-x86 server marketplace arsenic apt to make $13.1 cardinal of gross during 2023, compared to $109.5 cardinal for kit moving CPUs from Intel aliases AMD. LinuxONE is truthful not a large subordinate and has title from nan aforementioned cloudy Arm machines and IBM’s different platforms.

While nan caller cloudy servers whitethorn truthful not group nan world connected fire, they do astatine slightest springiness IBM’s unreality a unsocial offering, which is invited fixed that during nan 2010s nan distinguishing characteristic of nan Big Blue unreality was its unreliability and slow complaint of improvement compared to upstart hyperscalers. ®