Very nice history lesson with respect to containers and how we got were we are.
Vmsprawl, it was called. Now free from a purchase order and a network switch port, virtual machines could spawn faster than rabbits. But their lifespan would be much longer.
Indeed, in the context of this article, I often wonder what a timesharing web would look like. Here I’m reflecting on the mainframe era, and imagining what a mainframe web server would look like. Instead of containers, websites would run in timeslices on a massive machine.
One could say that’s essentially were we’re at today, but I disagree, and this vm sprawl is just one difference; many vms with possibly massive amounts of duplicated deployed code. In a mainframe web world, there’d be only one set of deployed artificacts. Another difference would be; in a containerized world, you have near total freedon of language, framework, and environment. In a mainframe web world, it would be the ultimate walled garden, ensuring no request could disrupt another request; in terms of cpu usage, heap memory usage, or other resource utilization.
Regardless, seems like the world is all containers now, so the point is moot. Fun to think about though.
Very nice history lesson with respect to containers and how we got were we are.
Indeed, in the context of this article, I often wonder what a timesharing web would look like. Here I’m reflecting on the mainframe era, and imagining what a mainframe web server would look like. Instead of containers, websites would run in timeslices on a massive machine.
One could say that’s essentially were we’re at today, but I disagree, and this vm sprawl is just one difference; many vms with possibly massive amounts of duplicated deployed code. In a mainframe web world, there’d be only one set of deployed artificacts. Another difference would be; in a containerized world, you have near total freedon of language, framework, and environment. In a mainframe web world, it would be the ultimate walled garden, ensuring no request could disrupt another request; in terms of cpu usage, heap memory usage, or other resource utilization.
Regardless, seems like the world is all containers now, so the point is moot. Fun to think about though.
Look at KeyKOS (System/360-based) if your interest in a mainframe solution includes minimal code, security, and flexibility.