Good that you have all of the source code and migrating to use KICKS
might well work (have not used it as yet) BUT the problem you will have is :
based around what O/S are you going to use ?
If using TK4 with the supplied MVS 3.8 then unless you can install
another, will be forced to use the supplied Cobol compiler.
This does have problems for you as I found out when migrating a
CobolXref tool to it as there is a lot of modern function it just does
NOT have as it is a ANSI COBOL compiler and this came out before Cobol
Level II by about 1 - 2 years as a full release,
I remember working at a site that had the ANSI compiler and we very
quickly realised it was a non starter as involved a lot of extra coding
to support the requirements. I remember contacting my support person
at IBM who advised me that if we could to hold off as a new compiler
would come out that would get rid of a lot of the problems.
I managed to worm out of IBM an advanced copy of said compiler after
giving assurances that I would forward all bugs with it and for a good
while was a multi day occurrence to the point that they gave me a copy
of the sources so I could test a fix before passing it to IBM as an update.
I was so busy with this that I stopped doing any Cobol programming
(other than for testing etc) and just worked on the compiler. Although I
did manage to find time to do some.
Basically avoid using the older compiler if you can.
If your company has a license for z/OS and you can migrate that over to
run on Herc and test it along with a recompile of all the sources.
If you can get KICKS to play nice then that will save you some money of
the license for CICS.
Now for the kit to run Herc on and here I am going to assume that you
will use Z/os or sim.
Herc will run multiple CPU for an O/S that can handle it coming to think
about it I run it even with MVS as a 2 cpu system.
This is run on a AMD FX 8350 8 core with 16Gb Ram and 6+ TB DASD but
where only one or two is for m/f usage.
This runs at least for my work with a light load (under 10%<) but in
batch work only.
As you want to run interactive mode that will increase the resources
requirement but this will depend on the number of users running at the
same time.
Of course you can run one instance of Herc with say 2 - 4 CPUs and
another with say 2 then run some test to see what is the performance hit
for each and adjust the structure of Herc, CPU's and Herc instances as
you may well be able to run say 4 instances of Herc single CPU for each.
Does depend on how CPU intensive your applications are - don't forget
there is a wee overhead for KICS itself.
Hard drive wise (DASD) suggest you consider WD Black or Purple high
performance drives i.e., 10,000 rpm and Sata 3+
You could consider 1Tb SSD's as well to run the system, herc and m/f O/S
and leave the DASD for the application data - does depend on the
applications etc.
If you do play with SSD make very sure you use top of the range versions
that have intelligent controllers such as Samsung 960 using an M.2
interface.
Works very well here on both Linux (Mageia v6 16Gb Ram and a Mac Pro
dual Xeon quad core with 26Gb Ram).
Vince
Post by 'Dave Wade' ***@gmail.com [hercules-390]You may not be able to do this legally, unless itâs a very old version of
CICS as its usually licenced to a >particular CPU.
We were hoping to rebuild everything from source and use KICKS (
http://www.kicksfortso.com/Â ) instead of CICS.
Post by 'Dave Wade' ***@gmail.com [hercules-390]As others have said you havenât provided any sizing info so its hard to
recommend anything. If you are using >TK4 then its basically only a
single CPU so the fastest dual core you can get would deliver the best
CPU >performance,
Post by 'Dave Wade' ***@gmail.com [hercules-390]As performance is all about balance, a fast four core system probably
isnât going to really thrash the i/o so >nothing over the topâŠ
Thanks. That's very helpful. Is there any other hardware you'd
recommend purchasing with/for the PC?
Post by 'Dave Wade' ***@gmail.com [hercules-390]You have not specified just what you are going to be running, from what
m/f also an idea on current timings on the m/f.
Is it run hourly, daily etc.
We're running Mainframe Z/OS. We have Cobol/CICS programs that access
VSAM files. We're thinking of using this in interactive mode, not
batch. We have the source code to rebuild the programs on another
operating system that supports COBOL and similar functions/libraries.
We're just trying to create a backup system in case we need to access
data we may not have migrated. Only a few people will be using the
system, one at a time. The real functionality has already been
migrated to a web based (PHP) information system which our users are
now accessing.
Thanks again.