Calling all system admins!
Would you ever consider starting to use a IBM midrange / mainframe / power series / HP Integrety server instead of x86/x64 for a "new" project ?
Does anyone even care about these types of platforms anymore ?
What are your thoughts ?
Mainframe-type and Power systems are still very relevant. x86/x86_64 environments are typically built to run 'reasonably' reliably with redundancy built into the software layer.
Mainframe/Power systems are built with huge RAS features - properly managed, they are not going down. Another advantage is the massive virtualization partitioning that they can handle - you can have thousands of Linux or AIX instances running in parallel on a single high end Power server.
Yes, they are still being sold and deployed for new projects.
Yes - depending on what the project is.
Linux on z-Series, for example, could be a strong contender for cloud computing.
It's impossible to tell which platform is right for a generic "new project".
It totally depends on what the "new project" is.
The choice of platform is often dependent on the availability of software. There are a number of manufacturing, point-of-sale, statistical analysis and scientific applications available only on midrange/mainframe.
Software and usage requirements should dictate the hardware used.