Re: No more 4G Drives

This announcement is not a surprise... but it is amazing and will
without a doubt hurt the performance of a lot of machines.  But if
the short term goal is to kill the iSeries in favor of a more popular
platform like Unix or Linux or Windows, it won't hurt a bit to have
unhappy customers that keep buying bigger processors and can't
make their performance problem go away.

About 2 years ago I attended an IBM performance briefing
where a group of IBM disk engineers
explained that 4 gig drives were expensive if you are
measuring cost per megabyte and comparing them to larger
disks. (DUH!)  At that time the 4 gig drives were actually 9 gig drives
with a jumper to only use half of the platter.  The "lead dog"
was adamant that by the end of 1999 we would not be able to purchase
4 gig drives.  The roomful of performance experts erupted in
a frenzy of loud frustrated arguments trying to convince someone
who could not be convinced...  So it happened at the end of 2000.
not the end of 1999.  Long live Linux!!!  Long live NT!!! Real
platforms for the masses!!!  Give them what they want!!!

If you end up with larger disks than you would like, and therefore
fewer disk arms, try to get the newer model IOPs with as much
cache memory in them as you
can, and don't put the maximum number of drives on each IOP.

There is a technique for partially filling up a larger disks
with empty-space "pillows" when they are brand new,
thereby simulating the performance advantages of smaller
disks.  But try to explain that concept to the NT bigot making
the buying decisions.

Charly Jones CSP
Geezer in Gig Harper

Long live Sander Sauls!!!

>From: Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@arbsol.com>
>
>OK here's one that we flat missed: All 4G drives were withdrawn as of
>Dec 29 so they are no longer available.
>
>
>  - Larry
>
>Announcement detail here:
>
>http://www2.ibmlink.ibm.com/cgi-bin/master?xh=1TE3aJU6jiw8yQ1USenGnN9332&request=announcements&parms=H%5f900%2d192&xhi=announcements%5e&xfr=N

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