IBM Mainframes Really Do Have Nine Lives

If your customers are looking for some Big Iron or are planning to deploy large-scale data-center applications, take a look at IBM's latest mainframe.

The z9, IBM's ninth-generation mainframe computer, is the culmination of three years of development involving 5,000 engineers and developers for a total investment of $1.2 billion. The z9, IBM says, is the first of a new generation of mainframes that will be able to manage security and systems resources across an entire enterprise network. It's capable of processing 1 billion transactions per day--more than double the version it replaces, the T-Rex z990--scales to 54 processors (up from 32) and supports up to 512 GB of memory.

But what really has IBM excited is the z9's ability to support advanced encryption--up to 6,000 SSL handshakes per second--plus the upcoming release of its new Virtualization Engine 2.0 (VE). The VE will run across IBM's pSeries, iSeries and zSeries server platforms, and on Network Appliance's V-Series and FAS storage systems. IBM says it intends to extend VE to support the company's SAN Volume Controller when linked to zSeries mainframes. VE will also support network virtualization via a partnership with Cisco, and will link to other vendors' wares, including those from Nortel and VMware.

The mainframes will start shipping next month. The company has not disclosed availability of VE 2.0.