The main server at NMSU is an IBM z800. This server was installed in September of 2002 and has proven to be a very good one. We are pleased with its performance and are looking forward to exploiting more of its capabilities.

The z800 is the latest technology from IBM. It has 8Gig of real memory and is a 64-bit machine. The high performing I/O subsystem is supported by fast, high capacity fiber optic cabling.

Storing the data for the z800 is 1 Terabyte of raid disk devices. These raid devices are outstanding in performance and reliability. NMSU has never lost data in these devices due to hardware failure.

An excellent feature of the z800 is a separate processor (called an IFL processor) that can be used just for Linux systems. This processor is in addition to the processor currently being used and will be dedicated to just Linux processing. This is a great capability as many Linux boxes can be consolidated onto one physical box sharing the same disk storage. This should ease system administration and help reduce the costs associated with server proliferation.