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back to article Big Blue animates VM control freak

Look out, VMware. And Citrix Systems. And Microsoft. And Red Hat. And Novell. And Oracle. Here comes IBM crashing the server virtualization management party. IBM could have - and, some might argue, should have - done its own x64 hypervisor to be a serious software player in the server virtualization racket. Up until now, the …

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  1. sigp

    TPM I think what you meant to say was..

    "VMControl in the z/VM environment can currently only be used to manage z/VM partitions running mainframe Linux".

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    yawn...

    sounds like IBM finally doing what HP has been doing for a couple of years with its Insight Dynamics / Virtual Server Environment tools...

    so are we sayting IBM are at least 2 years behind the comeptition?

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  3. Andrew Austin

    IBM maybe slow to the party...

    but if I were HP for example, I would be concerned as IBM have a knack of selling stuff.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    More front-end tools

    It used to be that you could manage Mainframe and RS/6000 systems (I use the antiquated term deliberately) using the command line. Then along came GUI tools that plugged in to the command line API to make some operations easier, but you would still use the command line for most systems management (or at least I would).

    In the pSeries (and I use this antiquated term deliberately as well) when they stared adding virtualisation, although the GUI was the preferred and documented mechanism, the command line equivalents were still there, and still documented. This allowed you to still write bespoke management tools, and we did.

    In the most recent round of IBM front-end software for Power, the command line or remote command facilities are just not there (you try scripting something to drive ASMI or some of the HMC features!) There is no technical documentation for the interfaces, and you are left using the GUI as the only option.

    Sometime in the near future, when IBM Director is sold as THE way to manage IBM systems, you will have no way to go in under the covers, and will be beholden to IBM for all of your automation tools. IBM will introduce an arcane proprietary macro language based around a Java interface, with no documentation, to 'satisfy customer demand'.

    Then they can sell you consultancy, training, or even system management services. Good for their bottom line, bad for the rest of us. Will make managing the systems more like i/OS (or is it just i) than an Open System box.

    I must write this as an AC, as although I do not like the current IBM path, they are still paying me.

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