Re: i5 Youngsters

May I add something I've not heard exactly - perception and familiarity and origins and purposes.

iSeries started out as a business computer in the form of the System 38 in particular. It had predecessors in the other 30's, et al. But no one put these in their bedroom or den, unless to heat up the house. If they even knew such things existed.

Windows began as a graphic cover for DOS and as a home not business system. It ended up on everyone's radar, for all intents and purposes. Then it expanded, as MS - heh types BS for a minute - Sigmund's petticoat - went into the business and server market that had been the province of such as Bull and HP and IBM and others I don't know of.

Even MS used up to 32 AS/400s for years to run their business and may still do so for all we know, albeit through another company, perhaps - we don't know for sure and frank soltis can't say, either, anymore. I just know, because it was in a Help Systems ad in News/3X/400, that MS had copies of Robot in their machines.

So we have a problem - everyone knows about Windows - very few except IT professionals know about IBM midrange hardware. That perception gap may never be broached.

No solutions here to my/our dilemma of facing the future and our employment prospects. That might be behind some of this discussion, as well. I for sure want to keep working gainfully for at least a couple more weeks.

Morning Musings!
Vern

At 05:49 AM 1/15/2008, you wrote:

This is probably heresy, but I'll ask anyway. If i5/OS is the bestest
OS in the land, why is it losing (or barely maintaining) market share,
and other OSes are gaining? Is it because our relatively small cadre
of i5/OS fans are smart and the rest of the industry stupid? I find it
hard to believe that the majority of computer installations are wrong
and we are right. Of course, that being said, *I* know that i5/OS is
the best OS. :)

On Jan 15, 2008 6:39 AM, Aaron Bartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> A couple comments:
>
> 1) Windows and i5/OS are not created equal. What I mean by that is most all
> shops would agree that i5/OS is more stable than Windows. We can talk all
> day about having the best and most knowledgable Windows engineers, but in
> the case of i5/OS, you simply don't need to have an elite to make
> stability/reliability/security happen. Am I way off here?
>
> 2) I can see where you are coming from with zero-down-time. Guess it
> depends on your business needs. I have some customers with a zero down SLA
> in place where two i5/OS instances are necessary to keep their web services
> available through maint schedules, but the majority can have that 4 hour
> maint window over the weekend to apply what they need. Again, this get's
> back to the history of i5/OS vs. Windows - IMO it just takes more people to
> keep a Windows farm running vs. a farm of i5's.
>
> I do respect your opinion because as far as I can tell you have a fair
> amount of experience in both camps. It just surprises me that you are so
> anti-i5/OS. I get the feeling the root is pricing and that then effects
> most of your other opinions/facts to have people steer towards Windows
> clusters/farms. If the pricing for hardware and OS were a wash between
> Windows and i5/OS, which would you prefer in most cases?
>
> Aaron Bartell
> http://mowyourlawn.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> [mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:15 AM
> To: Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
> Subject: Re: i5 Youngsters
>
> On 1/15/08, Aaron Bartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Here is where I struggle. To me you are simply describing ways to
> > eventually get to the stability of the System i, whereas I didn't have to
>
> A properly setup and maintained cluster will always have better
> availability than the System i. You can apply Windows Service packs
> etc. in a Cluster with Zero Downtime. You can't do that if you only
> have a Single System i. You'll need at least multiple i5/OS instances
> on the same hardware, plus a replication/HA software like MIMIX.