Porting a large system to Unix

[Tom Littauer]

In article <1990Nov12.180317.4619 at midway.uchicago.edu> cjdb at ellis.uchicago.edu (Charles Blair) writes:
>
>My group is administering a large database on an Amdahl 5860 running
>MVS/XA. The system resides on seven 3380 diskpacks; a 3380 holds about
>1.2 gigs. Our two largest files are over 2 gigs, and growing; these
>files are spread over several disks.
>
>Several hundred users access the database daily. Typically only a few
>users are accessing the database simultaneously, but during peak
>periods this number is as high as 25. About 65,000 transactions are
>processed daily. Response times average slightly less than a second.
>
>The system uses a PL/I host interface to the Model 204 database
>manager.
>
>The question came up whether and how successfully systems of this size
>have been ported to run under Unix. For us, "success" would primarily
>be measured in terms of response time -- keeping it as low as it is
>now. We are interested in knowing whether currently it is feasibile
>even to consider such a port.

If you haven't done so already, ask your Amdahl rep. about UTS (System V
UNIX for mainframes). Most of the major UNIX world databases run on it, at
speeds comparable to and surpassing MVS (e.g. Oracle on UTS is faster than
Oracle on MVS, all else being equal).

You don't even have to junk your 5860 and disks. UTS supports both. With
Multiple Domain Facility (MDF) you can port, run parallel, and convert all
on the same machine.

BTW, you might also want to ask about this on comp.unix.large.
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