WepSphere Application Server platform choice

[Martin Rowe <martin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

For those of you running WAS, what platform are you running it on? We're 
about to start development on a new order entry project that will use 
WebSphere and initially I just assumed we'd want WAS running natively on 
the iSeries. Then in talks with a BP about hardware upgrades (two 730s to 
upgrade by October), running WAS on an xSeries was mentioned. The BP had 
recently finished a project which had WAS on Linux on an xSeries, and it 
was performing very well. It got me thinking, as the cost of the extra 
RAM we'd need to put on the iSeries to cope with WAS should easily cover 
the cost of a suitably equipped Lintel server. Plus there's the cost of 
activating another processor if the extra WAS workload on the iSeries 
slowed other processes down.

How much difference is there in running WAS on a different platform (or 
even LPAR) to the database (plus a large number of legacy RPG batch apps 
in our case). Is there much latency introduced or any other big 
disadvantages to non-native WAS? Does a lot depend on the type of 
workload - transactional vs enquiry etc?

I'm sure we'll get good advice from the BPs involved, but I'd appreciate 
thoughts from those of you who've already gone down this route.

Regards, Martin
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