Re: Cost Justifications

Well the 720 and the 250 are about a wash in 'spec power' at 750 amd 782 watts respectively. That said, what you GET for those watts is a little different. The biggest 250 was 75 (Seventy five!) CPW (20 interactive) while the teeeeeeniest 720 is nearly 6,000 CPW (one core) and as much as 46,300 with all eight cores going. So a one core 720 is equal to Eighty 250s in CPU capability. IN practice I would expect the 720 to draw far less than that and I measured a 2-core system with 6 drives closer to 100 Watts with IBM i 7.1 simply idling. (No user work at the time.)

The 720 also comes with a 3 year warranty so you drop maintenance cost.

I also did a comparison of a POWER5 550 to a POWER7 750 and the ratio there is 100 to 1 on power per CPW. That is the 750 generates 100 times more CPW per input Watt than a 550! That's a lot of savings!

- Larry

On 3/8/2011 2:40 PM, Jerry C. Adams wrote:

I am trying to do some cost justifications that will convince the owners to
discard this Model 250 and upgrade to a better System i. One has to bear in
mind that, when I started here (first week of January), every application
program was written in RPG II and all application files were "flat" files.
Plus one owner uses a dumb terminal and the other one doesn't access the
system. The "network" was built by one owner's son (who is quite good with
PCs). Heck, I recently had to install SQL Development Kit and Query/400
(for which they had already paid), but the fact that I was able to build a
simple report using SELECTs, instead of a gazillion logicals, is not the
kind of thing that impresses or motivates them; bottom line does.



I read an article this morning about the energy cost savings of a Power7
machine, but no actual figures were given. Reminded me of a controller I
worked for years ago who justified moving from a 5362 (Baby/36) to the Model
236 (first RISC box) based solely upon the utility bill savings. I'm
looking for that kind of thing (things I can put into a spreadsheet, if you
will), but cannot seem to find any links or reports that I can use to
quantify the benefits in dollars and cents. If anyone has or knows of links
with this kind of stuff, I would appreciate receiving them.



Jerry C. Adams

IBM i Programmer/Analyst

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
reason as fear. -Edmund Burke

--

A&K Wholesale

Murfreesboro, TN

615-867-5070