HiperSockets is an IBM technology for high-speed communications between partitions on a server with a hypervisor. The term is most commonly associated with System z9 and later IBM Z mainframes which can provide in-memory TCP/IP connections between and among LPARs running several different operating systems, including z/OS, z/VM, and Linux on IBM Z.
Although applications perceive no functional differences, HiperSockets require less processing overhead on either side of the connections, improving performance. Since they are memory-based, they operate at memory speeds, reducing network latency and improving end-user performance, especially for complex applications which would otherwise require multiple network hops to fulfill requests. HiperSockets also provide security benefits, especially on the memory key-protected mainframe, even without encryption, because there is no opportunity to intercept a network connection. Moreover, HiperSockets improve reliability and availability because there are no network hubs, routers, adapters, or wires to break.
The main disadvantage to HiperSockets is that they can only exist within a single physical system, so they are not applicable between and among physical systems. Server consolidation can help more applications use HiperSockets.
A motherboard is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems, such as the central processor, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general use.
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing. A mainframe computer is large but not as large as a supercomputer and has more processing power than some other classes of computers, such as minicomputers, servers, workstations, and personal computers. Most large-scale computer-system architectures were established in the 1960s, but they continue to evolve. Mainframe computers are often used as servers.
Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) is an IBM real-time operating system for mainframe computers descended from the IBM System/360 family, including zSeries and System z9.
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very large (main) memory".
z/VSE is an operating system for IBM mainframe computers, the latest one in the DOS/360 lineage, which originated in 1965. Announced Feb. 1, 2005 by IBM as successor to VSE/ESA 2.7, then-new z/VSE was named to reflect the new "System z" branding for IBM's mainframe product line.
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn followed a string of MVS versions. Like OS/390, z/OS combines a number of formerly separate, related products, some of which are still optional. z/OS has the attributes of modern operating systems, but also retains much of the older functionality originated in the 1960s and still in regular use—z/OS is designed for backward compatibility.
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has also been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT and IBM which opened the door for the 3D graphics animation revolution of the late 1990s.
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture, created in 1974. It is a complete protocol stack for interconnecting computers and their resources. SNA describes formats and protocols and is, in itself, not a piece of software. The implementation of SNA takes the form of various communications packages, most notably Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM), the mainframe software package for SNA communications.
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. They initially supported the relational model, but were extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and XML. The brand name was originally styled as DB/2, then DB2 until 2017 and finally changed to its present form.
VM is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers.
IBM CICS is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE.
In computing, a Parallel Sysplex is a cluster of IBM mainframes acting together as a single system image with z/OS. Used for disaster recovery, Parallel Sysplex combines data sharing and parallel computing to allow a cluster of up to 32 systems to share a workload for high performance and high availability.
A logical partition (LPAR) is a subset of a computer's hardware resources, virtualized as a separate computer. In effect, a physical machine can be partitioned into multiple logical partitions, each hosting a separate instance of an operating system.
Dynamic Logical Partitioning (DLPAR), is the capability of a logical partition (LPAR) to be reconfigured dynamically, without having to shut down the operating system that runs in the LPAR. DLPAR enables memory, CPU capacity, and I/O interfaces to be moved nondisruptively between LPARs within the same server.
IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers from the z900 on. In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family now includes the newest model the IBM z15, as well as the z14 and the z13, the IBM zEnterprise models, the IBM System z10 models, the IBM System z9 models and IBM eServer zSeries models.
IBM System z10 is a line of IBM mainframes. The z10 Enterprise Class (EC) was announced on February 26, 2008. On October 21, 2008, IBM announced the z10 Business Class (BC), a scaled-down version of the z10 EC. The System z10 represents the first model family powered by the z10 quad core processing engine. Its successors are the zEnterprise System models introduced in 2010 and 2012.
A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software.
In computer science, memory virtualization decouples volatile random access memory (RAM) resources from individual systems in the data centre, and then aggregates those resources into a virtualized memory pool available to any computer in the cluster. The memory pool is accessed by the operating system or applications running on top of the operating system. The distributed memory pool can then be utilized as a high-speed cache, a messaging layer, or a large, shared memory resource for a CPU or a GPU application.
Linux on IBM Z is the collective term for the Linux operating system compiled to run on IBM mainframes, especially IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE servers. Similar terms which imply the same meaning are Linux on zEnterprise, Linux on zSeries, Linux/390, Linux/390x, etc. The three Linux distributions certified for usage on the IBM Z hardware platform are Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and Ubuntu.
Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI), is a high-speed processor expansion bus standard, initially designed to be layered on top of PCI Express, for directly connecting CPUs to external accelerators like GPUs, ASICs, FPGAs or fast storage. It offers low latency, high speed, direct memory access connectivity between devices of different instruction set architectures.
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