Serving Web Pages Mainframe Style

ESAWEB: Bringing Web server capabilities to VM-based mainframes

Editor's Note: As this product is available only on VM-based mainframes we were unable to test it. Our review therefore is based on software documentation, discussions with the vendor, and comparisons with other, similar offerings.

Just a few years ago, Scandinavian ISP giant Telia made headlines when it dumped a collection of Sun Web servers in favor of a single IBM S/390 hosting 1,500 virtualized Web servers running Linux. That was made possible by IBM's VM, Big Blue's mainframe software. Velocity's ESAWEB is a product meant to exploit VM to do the same thing: harness mainframes to serve a lot of Web pages.

Velocity is a 15-year-old veteran of the VM market, and much of the company's approach to the ESAWEB product and its communication with customers (both existing and potential) is reflective of the rarefied nature of mainframe computing. That is to say, Velocity's clearly in open dialog with its customers, and things like its todo list reflect that.

ESAWEB is part of Velocity's "Linux Power Suite" (formerly "Linux Performance Suite") package, providing an interface to the suite's components, but its role within the suite is only part of its functionality.

ESAWEB is a fully capable Web server on its own, providing enough functionality to run a Web storefront (e.g., Ducks Unlimited, Canada) with full support for SSL transactions, cookies, and CGI interfaces to manage user sessions and shopping carts. Clearly a product of the mainframe world, ESAWEB can translate ASCII to EBCDIC, enabling the participation of PC-based users in a Web production environment centered on ESAWEB. The product also supports CERN-formatted logging.

ESAWEB does, however, lack in a few features enterprises have come to expect from a Web server. But since many of the problems Web servers running on non-mainframe platforms solve are dealt with in different fashion by mainframes, this may not matter all that much. The lack of WebDAV, for example, isn't really a nagging concern in a mainframe environment. Lack of support for Java servlets, image maps, and proxy support, however, may be more pressing. The system also has yet to be able to communicate with IBM's own DB2 MVS.

Pricing for ESAWEB is $3,800 per year for full support (the company installs the product and is able, if needed, to remotely repair or troubleshoot installations). That price is a flat amount, regardless of how many logical partitions or VM images the user is running on a given system.

Pros: Reasonable licensing policy; Engaged product development from Velocity; CERN-formatted logs; Solid basic feature list
Cons: Probably too simple for the most sophisticated Web operations; Lack of support for Java servlets, image maps, and Web proxying; Lack of support (or any road map for support of) IPv6

Reviewed by: Michael Hall
Original Review Date: 7/21/2003
Original Review Version: 3.3.0