Hal, the point of this appliance is to bring server
consolidation and allow for better demand amnagement
in the mainframe world . The only sticking point is
that some apps. may required to be ported to
linux/390. While what you are saying is that one may
as well run hercules along with other apps, without
a VM layer, that dosent really bring about any
isolation of applications or virtualisation of
infrastructure that may be being used by the other
apps. too. Dosent it.
OK, my background on mainframe is z/os (or rather its predecessor MVS/ESA) and z/VM (actually its predecessor VM/ESA). I don't have experience of Linux/390 or z/Linux but I do have x86 linux experience.
Now z/VM would be considered the usual mainframe tool, indeed o/s, for server consolidation and it does the job brilliantly. You would typically have z/vm and z/os guests running under z/vm. IBM certainly thinks z/VM is an excellent way of utilizing Linux/390: z/VM resources for Linux on IBM System z.[/url] I would think if you have licenced z/VM you will use it - it does give excellent isolation and virtualisation, etc.
I'm not saying don't use a virtualization layer, I'm saying use the best one for the job and don't use an extra one that is effectively redundant.
If you haven't got a licence for z/VM, wouldn't it be better to try running multiple instances of Hercules which would also give isolation - the virtualization is already provided by Hercules.
So I still can't see the need or benefit of using vmware but I'll post something in the Hercules forum and let you know what comes back.
Hal.
