IBM set to ship mainframe AI providers, help | TechVerse Hub

Because it previewed in March, IBM is about to ship an AI-infused, hybrid-cloud oriented model of its z/OS mainframe working system.

Set for supply on Sept. 29, z/OS 3.1, the working system grows IBM’s AI portfolio to let clients securely deploy AI purposes co-located with z/OS purposes and information, in addition to a wide range of new options corresponding to container extensions for Purple Hat and Linux purposes that higher help hybrid cloud purposes on the Massive Iron.

On this launch of the mainframe’s OS, AI help is carried out in a characteristic bundle known as AI System Providers for IBM z/OS model 1.1. that lets clients construct an AI Framework that IBM says is designed to help preliminary and future clever z/OS administration capabilities.

It contains help for key AI lifecycle phases together with information ingestion, AI mannequin coaching, inferencing, AI mannequin high quality monitoring, and retraining providers, IBM says.

“AI System Providers is meant to supply a seamless and simplified set up, setup, and administration expertise of the AI-infused capabilities with out requiring further information science or AI abilities,” IBM wrote within the Announcement Letter detailing the brand new launch.   “It’s designed to pave the way in which for AI use case suppliers that may harness the foundational AI capabilities to deal with AI mannequin operationalization necessities, simplify the method to place future AI use circumstances to work, and speed up time to market.”

The AI System Providers bundle contains:

• A Knowledge Assortment engine that delivers a typical approach to ingest, filter, and accumulate IT information supposed for use for AI mannequin coaching and to carry out inference. It parses and collects the uncooked IT information, and streams it to the information retailer, an AI Framework for IBM z/OS part that holds information to coach the AI fashions and information for use for inference functions, IBM wrote.
• An AI mannequin server that gives a set of capabilities used to operationalize AI fashions by use case suppliers. It focuses on coaching the prebuilt fashions or AI mannequin coaching purposes together with your information to take your information patterns into consideration, deploy the skilled mannequin, and apply inference and AI mannequin administration, together with mannequin high quality monitoring, retraining, and versioning capabilities. The AI mannequin server makes use of IBM Watson Machine Studying for z/OS Core version, IBM wrote.
• An AI-powered Workload Supervisor (WLM), designed to foretell upcoming batch workload and react accordingly to proactively optimize system assets.

Whereas supporting AI purposes is a core part of the z/OS technique (which runs on older /14 and z/15 fashions in addition to the brand new z/16) the working system additionally continues the cloud transformation help of the mainframe, IBM said.

Using the mainframe to help cloud environments is a rising development in line with {industry} watchers.

A latest mainframe buyer survey by Aracti requested mainframe websites whether or not they function in a hybrid cloud surroundings that discovered 42% of respondents presently used their mainframe in a hybrid cloud surroundings (up from 21% final 12 months).

An extra 16% suppose that they may run a hybrid cloud surroundings at a while sooner or later (down from 21% final 12 months).  Nonetheless not everybody desires to help clouds on the Massive Iron.  Some 42% of the websites surveyed (down from barely from 47% final 12 months) don’t use hybrid cloud and don’t have any plans to take action.

“z/OS 3.1 is designed for shoppers to leverage {industry} commonplace expertise to extend improvement velocity and modernize their purposes with new environments and APIs to persistently construct, deploy, and handle workloads, each Linux and z/OS, throughout a hybrid cloud surroundings,” IBM wrote.

Alongside these traces z/OS 3.1 contains Container Extensions (zCX) and help for zCX Basis for Purple Hat OpenShift enhancements designed for improved efficiency and safety, with new options and capabilities to help NFS, HTTPS, IBM WebSphere Hybrid Version, and IBM Storage Fusion OpenShift Shared Persistent Storage, IBM wrote.

It additionally features a new bodily file system designed for z/OS UNIX utilities to supply clear entry to information in a safe and constant method, IBM said.

IBM has added different cloud-related providers.  For instance, final 12 months IBM added IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack 2022, and Wazi as-a-Service that lets clients extra simply develop and check mainframe purposes as-a-service in a public cloud surroundings.

IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack 2022.1.1 affords industry-standard instruments to modernize z/OS purposes on a pay-per-use foundation. For instance, the service contains help for options together with:

z/OS Join, which makes use of a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) interface to tie into and hyperlink with current purposes to make Z purposes and information a part of a hybrid cloud technique.

z/OS Cloud Dealer, which integrates z/OS-based providers and assets into Purple Hat OpenShift, which may let organizations create, modernize, deploy, and handle purposes, information, and infrastructure.

Developer help for IBM Wazi, the cloud-native improvement surroundings. A Wazi Sandbox lets builders construct and check z/OS software elements in a virtualized, containerized, self-service, private sandbox operating on Purple Hat OpenShift that runs on x86 {hardware}.