Dropping the Mainframe Without Crushing the Users: Mainframe to Distributed UNIX in Nine Months
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper describes the first phase of the evolution of the computing environment at Simon Fraser University from a centralized, long established, mainframe based computing environment to a distributed UNIX based computing environment. The first section of the paper gives a brief history of the site and some of the previous initiatives towards distributed computing. The second section describes the Task Force report that mandated a conversion to UNIX within 9 months and the plan that was developed to do that. The third section details the migration plan versus migration reality. We then extract from this experience the major issues encountered in converting from a mainframe environment to UNIX. We also mention some things that are taken for granted in the mainframe world that don’t seem to exist in the UNIX world. This should be of interest to sites planning to convert from a mainframe to UNIX, and to UNIX vendors that are interested in selling machines in that market. We also describe how we resolved some of the problem areas. Next we describe what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we would repeat if given the opportunity. We also describe some UNIX experiences encountered when pushing the ’shrink wrap’ envelope with an implementation that started out with 18,000 user accounts. The last sections of the paper detail some of the new work we are undertaking to resolve existing problems, and add additional function. Our conclusions attempt to summarize our major points.
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