Linux on System z

Linux on System z ( zLinux and z / Linux) is a port of Linux to the IBM mainframe platform system for System z implementation is characterized above all by its 64- bit architecture. Linux versions for the older S/390 hardware architecture with 31-bit addressing are called Linux390 or even Linux for S/390.

History

The porting of z / Linux was first performed in 1998 in two independent projects. The project initiated by Linas Vepstas Project Bigfoot Linux and by Marist College ( Poughkeepsie, NY) as a Linux VM on port. Both projects were later discontinued.

On 18 December 1999 IBM released the self-developed adaptations of the source code for the Linux kernel version based on 2.2.13. In addition, changes are also important for other Linux packages such as glibc or bootloader provided. The port is run directly on the S/390 hardware, as well as in an LPAR or as a virtual machine under z / VM.

Today, a number of non-commercial (eg Debian, CentOS ) and commercial Linux distributions (eg Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) are available for System z.

Hardware

Z / Linux running on IBM System z hardware in one or more LPARs or as a virtual machine under z / VM. The 31 -bit version, which was not written for S/390 hardware can run on S/390 hardware without LPAR virtualization. On machines of the 64 -bit architecture of the LPAR hypervisor enabled esame is no longer disabled.

To reduce software licensing costs of others, inserted in the same system operating systems IBM developed a special-purpose processor Integrated Facility for Linux, the operating systems Linux and z / VM can be run on the exclusive.

An additional special feature, the HiperSockets dar. allowing multiple servers within the same computer communicate with each other without having to resort to an external physical network.