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Sorry I can't let that disk dog lie.

YES the DISK unit to DISK unit price wasn't even. Similar 18 or 36 units,
both SCSI, both 15K RPM etc were priced quite differently with the i disk
being more expensive. BUT you absolutely positively cannot stop there and
if you did you missed the entire point. Beyond the disk itself you have
to consider the entire disk storage subsystem. How good are the RAID
cards? Do they have large caches to improve disk performance? Are those
caches redundant to survive failures? Do they ever flag their batteries as
'too old' and require replacement BEFORE you find out they've failed and
dumped your cache? Do they phone home when a disk unit fails, or errors
are occurring, or a power supply or fan is misbehaving? Do they even have
fully redundant power and dual I/O paths. In all my years I've seen AS/400
iSeries System i machines fail only twice due to disk subsystem failure. I
cannot count the number of reloads required in the Wintel/Lintel space.
You can pay me now or pay me later.

When you look at the average windoze server the disks are usually below
about 15% full or over 90% full. This is due to the fact that servers are
out there either for file storage such as email (you know it's really just
another place to store stuff!) file and print, or database or they are
used for services that don't need hardly any disk at all, just enough for
the O/S and the application. So for that latter group you have to purchase
WAY more disk than you need because even if you simply mirror two drives
to get some protection you bought way more than you needed. So cheap $ per
GB purchased but you purchased way more GB than you needed. With
integrated disk you use only what you need so the initial $/GB cost looks
larger but you often used far fewer GB.

And for those servers where the disk is 90 and up percent full those poor
systems are often there because they cannot add more disk easily. They
hold 5 or 9 or whatever and the slots are all full. Sure you can add an
expansion box of some flavor but that's a bunch of money and of course you
have to put in a reasonable number of disks there to start a new RAID set.
And then there is the 'how ya gonna spread your data over that?' question.
Or you can swap the smaller units for larger ones - yah that's easy. With
integration this is near trivial. Create another storage space, assign it,
extend the disk volume and done. No fuss, no reboots, no rebalance, just
add what you need when you need it. And if you only need a few disks you
still get your data spread over the many arms in your i for good
performance. And how many servers out there can you add disks to an
existing RAID set? Sure they exist but it's still comparatively rare and
we've done it for 10 years and we KNOW ours works and works every time.
And it works the same on EVERY system i from the lowly 40 MB 2740 RAID
card to the impressive redundant 3GB 5778 units.

And DR is near magical. Get a good Save 21 from time to time and you've
got everything, EVERYTHING. All your servers with apps loaded, patched,
and running. For daily backups you may need to think outside the box a bit
but you certainly can do it. Some of my customers use windoze software and
write to an IFS file which gets backed up with their i backup. Others do
write to a separate tape drive. Some reach right into the server through
/QNTC and back up thataway. But it can be done.

Ever try to swap the disks from one wintel server to another? Dang near
NEVER works. Different disk controllers different mother boards different
CPUs. Swaps in the integrated i environment can often be done in seconds!
Really! And you can use the same technology to clone servers for testing
or debugging or whatever.

Its all about the planning, the design, and the implementation. If your
methodology is 'order and install' then that's what you have to live with.
Trust me, Dell and company hate this sort of solution because it stops
them from selling piles of little servers and hundreds of disks to feed
them.

- Larry

Larry Bolhuis IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert -
System i Solutions
Vice President IBM Certified Systems Expert:
Arbor Solutions, Inc. System i Technical Design and
Implementation V5R4
1345 Monroe NW Suite 259 eServer i5 iSeries LPAR Technical
Solutions, V5R3
Grand Rapids, MI 49505 IBM Certified Specialist
System i Integration with BladeCenter
and System x V1
(616) 451-2500 System i IT Simplification: Linux
Technical V5R4
(616) 451-2571 - Fax iSeries System Administrator for OS/400
V5R3
(616) 260-4746 - Cell

If you can read this, thank a teacher....and since it's in English,
thank a soldier.





Jim Steil <steil@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
11/11/2008 03:58 PM
Please respond to
Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


To
Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc

Subject
Re: Windows on an iSeries?






Michael

After setting a number of these up for various companies (quite a few
years ago) I finally stopped because the benefits were not worth the
drawbacks:

* limited upgrade options
* no simple file-level backup (still had to purchase PC backup/recovery
software)
* disk is a lot cheaper for PC Servers (even good disk) that for the i
* not ubiquitous - you always had to do things in just the right way to
get it to work. Not always the way that the same task would be
performed on a 'standard' windows server box.

Some things may have changed since my experience with this, but I won't
go down that road again. Just my $.02...

-Jim


Michael Naughton wrote:
I'm looking or people who know more than I do, so of course I came right
over here :-). My company is looking to consolidate its windows servers,
and I ran across this article:


http://www.infordata.net/inforweb.static/documents/newsletter/ISSE1007.pdf

that makes it sound as if we could do it all on our iSeries (we've got a
model 9406-520). From the article, it looked as if we could

* set up several windows servers using the Integrated xSeries Server
cards

* dynamically allocate disk space among the iSeries and the various
windows servers

* use our existing tape backup system to back up the windows data at the
same time we're backing up our iSeries data

Then we talked to our BP, who said it's not that simple. According to
them,

** the integrated server cards aren't recommended because they're hard
to upgrade, and we'd be better off with the Integrated xSeries Adapters
(and some boxes to put them in)

** the disk would need to be split between the windows servers and the
iSeries, and we couldn't just dynamically shift it around

** we'd need a separate LPAR to handle the windows stuff

** we'd be better off with a separate backup system for the window stuff

All of which makes it look a LOT less worth it, but I'm not convinced --
hence my question. Does anyone have experience with either of these
environments? Is it as great as the article makes it sound, or is our BP
closer to the mark? If we're looking to
centralize storage, management, and backup, is this a good option, or we
better off just going with a windows SAN (the other option)?

Thanks very much for your help,


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA 01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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