What is PopUp Mainframe?

The PopUp Vision

PopUp Mainframe was born from a simple idea: what if we could make deploying real mainframe capability as simple as spinning up a virtual machine image on Linux on Z or x86?

Well, it took some truly concerted effort and a lot of manpower but that's exactly what we have built.

Learn more about the PopUp Vision.

The Challenge of Mainframe Environments

All mainframe clients have a common problem: The shortage of non-prod environments for development and test.

PopUp directly addresses this with instantly available, fully functioning mainframes.

It's easy to make PopUp look and behave exactly the same as your physical mainframe environments as you can install any mainframe subsystem or bespoke application on your PopUp. We also provide migration utilities to make the conversion of mainframe data to your PopUp mainframe simple.

PopUp revolutionizes your mainframe SDLC, accelerating delivery and cutting hardware costs.


How does PopUp work?

PopUp Mainframe comes packaged as a fully featured, optimized virtual machine image which can be run on Linux on Z, or any x86 architecture, on-premise or in the cloud. This provides a turnkey solution enabling rapid, elastic deployment of z/OS capability suitable for all non-production use cases (including dev, test, training, issue replication & troubleshooting).

Functionally equivalent to z/OS , PopUp Mainframe runs under Linux on Z, LinuxOne, or Cloud / On-prem x86 servers.

  • Flexibility – Fasttrack facility enables rapid restart of development/test activities; Ansible playbooks automate admin tasks.
  • Integration – Compatible with IBM, BMC, 3rd party, and open source mainframe tools; supports DevOps and data masking tools.
  • z/OS Equivalency – Runs on Linux (Z or x86), behaves like z/OS, and supports all z/OS software and subsystems.
  • Start/Stop in Seconds – Can be initiated or shut down in under 2 minutes, providing full flexibility and saving power/emissions.
  • Accelerated Delivery – PopUp environment accelerates the mainframe delivery process by 400%.

PopUp can explicitly support improvements in the areas of speed, flexibility, cost, sustainability, risk, and skills.

A PopUp Mainframe image consists of an optimized Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, with pre-installed and pre-configured IBM's ZD&T software, a popular selection of IBM's Enterprise software offerings and a bunch of handy utilities from us to make everything run sweetly.

A PopUp mainframe is functionally equivalent to running a physical mainframe: it can be used for any non-prod purpose you might use a physical mainframe for.

Note: the software license excludes performance testing and production environment use.


Using PopUp

The PopUp Lifecycle diagram shows the typical lifecycle of a PopUp, including:

  • installing and tailoring your PopUp
  • moving applications and data across
  • creating a PopUp Gold Image
  • and integrating with Delphix for virtualisation and masking if applicable

Our Best Practice guidance helps you to get the most out of your PopUp.


What is the Difference Between PopUp and ZD&T?


What is the Difference Between PopUp and ZD&T? from PopUp Mainframe.


PopUp Mainframe is built on IBM's tried and trusted ZD&T software. However, ZD&T is complex to install and configure, requiring a significant time investment from senior resources across many diferent teams. And that's just to get z/OS working properly.

What differentiates PopUp Mainframe from a self installed and configured ZD&T instance is the years of subject matter expertise we have built up to make the adoption of ZD&T as quick and painless as possible.


Platform

The standard PopUp image contains the following pre-configured IBM capabilities, ready to run. (Using standard ZD&T, these would need to be installed & configured by you.):

  • CICS
  • IMS
  • Db2
  • MQ
  • and more...

Full list of subsystems, applications, and utilities which come with the PopUp.

PopUp overcomes multiple challenges around reliably provisioning ZD&T mainframe environments. The supplied image encapsulates the learning and experience the PopUp team have built up over the years and includes many handy utility programs to streamline common administrative tasks. Such as:

  • Data and application migration
  • Allocation and management of storage volumes
  • Start & stop scripts
  • Master console message interaction and automated action trigger routines


Standalone PopUp

Go here for an overview of the latest PopUp Mainframe product release.

The stand alone "vanilla" PopUp Mainframe ships with the pre-installed components mentioned here.

Overview

For more information, see PopUp Architecture & Integrations.


FastTrack PopUp

Imagine being able to turn back time, and restore a previous version of your PopUp in seconds. FastTrack offers a guaranteed way to go back to the last working version of your PopUp environment, no matter how badly it's broken.

With FastTrack, you can take a snapshot of your entire PopUp at anytime, then rollback your environment to one of your previous snapshots on-demand. Current changes are not lost either, so you can jump back and forth between snapshots and the latest changes to your heart's content, without worrying about losing work.

  • Building or configuring a new PopUp? Snapshot as you go so that you can rollback if anything should go wrong, and you don't lose your work.
  • Testing a new feature? Snapshot before you start testing - that initial snapshot can be used time and time again to provide a clean test environment for test reruns, with no test setup activities required.
  • Upgrading a subsystem? Snapshot the current state before you upgrade so that you can compare the old and new versions side by side (2 PopUps are needed for this).
  • Doing development? Snapshot before and during your development so you are empowered to innovate and try new things and not worry about breaking your PopUp. If you do, just rollback to a previous snapshot, then continue to innovate.

What's more, with FastTrack you can send any snapshot to a remote PopUp. This essentially allows you to clone an entire z/OS environment in seconds. Find out more here.

See FastTrack for more details.


Delphix Integrated PopUp

We partner with Delphix to provide industry leading solutions for data masking and data virtualization on the mainframe. We have created innovative plugin capabilities which provide access to game changing agility with minimal effort on your part.

Overview

  1. Data and applications are migrated from the physical mainframe to the PopUp, to build a "Gold copy PopUp". This gold copy would typically be sanitized by masking data.
  2. Masking of sensitive data is automatically actioned using Delphix Continuous Compliance engine (masking).
  3. The secure, "Gold copy PopUp" is ingested into the Delphix Continuous Data Engine (virtualization).
  4. A working instance of the "Gold copy PopUp" is stood up in the dev environment.
  5. Once the use case is complete, changes are promoted to the physical mainframe test environment.

For more information, see PopUp Architecture & Integrations.


We have partnered with BMC to make their popular DevOps tooling available, pre-configured and pre-integrated for your convenience.

For more information, see PopUp Architecture & Integrations.


From Azure MarketPlace, you can have your own PopUp Mainframe running in the cloud in minutes.

The PopUp virtual machine has been built, configured and performance tested to run optimally in Azure cloud. It gives the excellent performance and reliability you expect from Azure infrastructure.

For more information, see PopUp Architecture & Integrations.


The PopUp Image

The PopUp Mainframe virtual machine image runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Ubuntu. See Release Notes for details.

Learn more about the configuration and supported versions of subsystems, applications, and utilities which come with the PopUp.

Learn more about PopUp architecture and integrations with third party tools, e.g. Delphix, BMC.


Page last revised on: 2025-08-19