
Ask HN: How to Get Started with IBM Mainframe and Z/OS? - st4rbuck
So, the whole mainframe thing is a black box for me. Mainly because it&#x27;s not easy to go hands on a mainframe.<p>What&#x27;s the best way to get into that whole world?
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atsaloli
SHARE is user group / association for people working with IBM mainframe type
products. [http://www.share.org/about](http://www.share.org/about)

I taught CFEngine at one of their conferences (for managing Linux running on
z/OS) and got exposed to more mainframe-y stuff than I ever had before in my
career as a UNIX/Linux sysadmin.

What are you looking to do in the mainframe world?

You can also go to
[https://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/](https://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/) and
then ask for a quote and talk to a sales rep to price one out, you'll see
what's involved and capabilities.

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CyberFonic
I got into doing IBM mainframe stuff by becoming certified by IBM as a DB2 DBA
on AIX/HPUX/Solaris OS, i.e. IBM, HP & Sun *nix systems. The block mode
operations on mainframes quickly drove me away. After decades of experience
with interactive systems, block mode was a rude step backwards. Mind you my
experience was with "traditional" IBM mainframe OS, e.g. MVS. I did dabble
with Linux on 370's and it was a pain doing Unix commands using block-mode.

Mind you, all of the above was quite a few years ago. Things may have changed
since.

