[bhouston]

I understand in big deployments IBM (e.g. Verizon cell phone billing) puts a few extra machines on site at no cost so that if one of your primaries go down you can start one of the backups and then they start to charge you for that one. I understand they do this with disks as well.

[crispyambulance]

It almost certainly is not "no cost"-- typically that kind of stuff is rolled into a line item under "service agreement". And if the line item cost does say "zero" that's because of negotiation and sales engineer magic (possibly after a few $20 martini's). The cost is folded in SOMEWHERE. IBM ain't no non-profit!

[bhouston]

Of course. :) I figured it was "no cost" because the servers that are in operation are insanely overpriced to begin with.

[bridanp]

IBM does suggest purchasing one production mainframe and one at CBU (Capacity Back Up) pricing if the company runs their own warm/hot/cold Business Continuity location. As great as these mainframes are at staying online, we have to account for storms and other threats to the data center, and need that redundancy somewhere. The CBU box will usually be much cheaper to run than the production box, but they are not free.

[valarauca1]

They do this with RAM and processors as well. If the mainframe sees a hardware fault it'll email IBM to send a service staff member to fix itself.