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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| VolumeV, Issue 2 | February 2002 |
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By Joe Kilcoyne
On Sunday, February 17, 2002, the Bureau of Information Services (BIS) is scheduled to upgrade its IBM 9672 R24, which was put into production 5 years ago, on November 30, 1996, to a new IBM 7060 H50. The primary reason for upgrading is that IBM’s current Operating System, z/OS, which is based on 64-bit architecture, will not run on the 9672 R24, but it will run on the 7060 H50.
The 7060 H50 will be purchased under a new IBM offering which reduces IBM software costs to encourage customers to migrate to more current hardware, which makes this upgrade the most affordable Central Processing Unit (CPU) upgrade the State of Maine has seen. Unfortunately, licensing fees for some of our other non-IBM third-party software will increase, but as the 7060 H50 is one of the smallest of the newer computers capable of running IBM’s z/OS Operating System to which we can upgrade, these costs are unavoidable.
The newer 7060 H50 is a single processor CPU rated at 120 Million instructions per second (MIPS) while two 43.5 MIP processors make up the 9672 R24; a single job or transaction can run up to three times faster on the 7060 H50. The Maine Bureau of Revenue Services’ (MRS) workload is more dependant on the speed of Bureau of Information Services’ IBM processors and this increase in speed should help them to process tax returns more quickly and allow them to catch up more quickly those few times each year when they fall behind in their processing due to a variety of problems.
Other agencies using the IBM will also benefit from the faster CPU when they need to re-run jobs due problems in processing. These include Human Services’ Child Support Enforcement (NECSES), as well as the MFASIS Human Resources and Accounting applications. BIS will also benefit by the creation of a larger Sunday morning window, which is needed for necessary technical work including software and hardware upgrades.
It is important to note, however, that as most work run on the IBM is limited by the speed of Input / Output (I/O) Operations, including tape and disk, and not by the speed of the processor, the impact of this upgrade will not be noticeable on most jobs and on-line (CICS) transactions.
As would be expected, the new 7060 H50 is smaller and consumes less electrical power, and air conditioning than the 9672 R24. It also holds very fast internal disks which may be a future performance consideration. Upgrading to the 7060 H50 also makes planning for recovery from a possible disaster easier, as it can be installed in a much smaller emergency machine room should the need arise.
While the impact of this IBM upgrade may not be noticeable or apparent to most of our customers, it does put the Bureau in a better position to continue to support the workload run on the IBM, without drastically impacting the rates our customers pay.
Joe Kilcoyne is a Systems Software Manager, in the BIS Production Services Division. He has been a State employee for 32 years, and may be reached with questions and comments by e-mailing joseph.kilcoyne@state.me.us.
