While most computer science students learn skills on x86 servers, their counterparts at the University of Arkansas will now get hands-on experience on a new IBMsystem z900 running Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise.

A national leader in mainframe instruction, the university (and its Walton School of Business) have taught Linux on the mainframe for five years and were rewarded for their efforts with a free five-year loan, including maintenance, of the System z machine from the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer manufacturer. The university ran pilot programs on the mainframe through the end of the last academic year and will use it for courses starting this week.

The university's fully configured system has 16 processors, 64 GB of memory and 7 TB of disk space. It contains enterprise-size databases donated by Sam's Club, Tyson's wholesale outlets and Dillard's retail stores, with the latter's repository containing 140 million rows. These unusually large databases, which are no longer used by the companies themselves, give students a rich, real-world experience as they learn how to work with relational databases and run SAP's business intelligence application.

More Here