IBM is expanding support for Linux on mainframes with a few new initiatives announced today, including plans for an Ubuntu distribution.
The announcement also includes a new Linux mainframe server called LinuxONE and mainframe code contributions to a new “Open Mainframe Project” formed by the Linux Foundation.
IBM and Canonical are teaming up to create an Ubuntu distribution for LinuxONE and existing z Systems mainframe hardware.
“z Systems clients have enjoyed the performance, security and transactional capabilities of mainframes for decades,” Canonical CEO Jane Silber wrote today. “By bringing the Ubuntu operating system that developers love to the IBM z Systems mainframe, we will make the cloud and scale out applications (e.g., Apache Spark, MongoDB, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL) customers love to run on Ubuntu available to the mainframe.”
Ubuntu already supports IBM’s Power servers, which run Unix and Linux. IBM and Canonical did not say exactly when Ubuntu for mainframes will be available.
There are already SUSE and Red Hat distributions for LinuxONE and z Systems hardware. Though IBM has its own z/OS operating system, it has supported Linux on the mainframe for 15 years.
LinuxONE comes in two sizes for large enterprises and mid-size businesses. The larger one, based on z13 hardware, can “scale up to 8,000 virtual machines or hundreds of thousands of containers—currently the most of any single Linux system,” IBM said. SUSE is the first Linux distribution for mainframes to support KVM, a hypervisor for the Linux kernel.