Re: NT vs AS/400 -- MIDRANGE-L

Jim,

Are you comparing IBM SCSI drives in the AS/400 to equivalent IBM drives in
the PC servers? Doubtful, if you're talking about Compaq servers. I'm not
comparing an IBM drive to a Maxtor; I'm comparing the same (IBM Ultrastar)
drive being marketed through different channels at radically different price
levels.

If you truly believe that IBM manufactures different hard drives
specifically for the AS/400, then how do you explain the move to a PCI bus
from SPD? Why would they have bothered? Or the fact that iSeries and pSeries
essentially come off of the same assembly line? Or the fact that their
stated objective is to have a common hardware platform across the entire
server line? Of course it's the same hardware! You just get the priviledge
of paying 10 times more than anyone else does for it.

In case you're still doubtful, the evidence that you're looking for is
available, but you have to do your own homework. Consult the System Handbook
for your drive type, then compare it to the IBM Ultrastars. For example,
take a look at how similar the Ultrastar 9LZX is to the AS/400 6717. Seek
times, data-transfer rate, latency, cache size... all either identical or
extremely close. Overall capacity is slightly different due to the different
logical formats.

With respect to reliability comparisons, I'll share a little of my own
anectdotal evidence; I've had a total of five IBM drives fail on me during
the last 12 years. Four of those were on the AS/400, and suffered from the
"stiction" problem. The other one was an old 540MB unit in a PC. During the
same period of time, I've tossed about a dozen or so Maxtors, Seagates, and
Western Digitals.

I've also witnessed NT running rock solid on our IBM servers, yet constantly
blue screen on various PC clones. You don't have to convince me that IBM
produces quality hardware. Big Blue is the only company I buy my hardware
from when it's going into an high availability environment.

My beef is with the price gouging taking place in the iSeries marketplace.
This is arguably the most loyal customer base that any vendor has, yet the
reward for this loyalty is to be consistently raped by IBM marketing. They
encouraged us to develop for this platform and assured us of investment
protection if we remained faithful. We built our 5250
applications --hundreds of them-- and deployed hundreds of thousands of
terminals across the world.

Life was good for a few years with a low TCO and a reliable infrastructure.
Sure, you paid a lot for the hardware, but the value was there; software
upgrades were included, support was all inclusive. It was an easy system to
learn and operate etc. Then they started with software subscription,
separate chargeable support for various LPP's, buggy client software,
inconsistent interfaces (QShell/PASE), and then came the biggest slap in the
face of all - the interactive feature charges. Now they penalize our
loyalty.

And they get away with it time and again because we never take them to task
over it. The AS/400 community praises this platform and it's creators as
though they were holy. The lone voice of reason that I remember hearing was
that of an former News/400 columnist named Bob Tipton. There was not doubt
that he was a fan of the AS/400, but he also realized the importance of
raking IBM over the coals when they deserved it.


John Taylor
Canada

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Franz" <franz400@triad.rr.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 03:46
Subject: Re: NT vs AS/400


> With all the claims & counter claims flying back & forth, I have not seen
> any real presentation of real statistics to back up either claim.
Somewhere
> deep with IBM I know they exist, and IBM does make many announcements
about
> the reliability of the AS400 hardware & microcode. I DO beleive the
iSeries
> is far more reliable than NT (an operating system, not hardware)servers,
> even the IBM servers. I have worked in several large shops, with over a
> hundred as400s, and many NT's (Compaq and IBM, and over a thousand pc's.
It
> was like nite & day. The 400 disk drive problems (very few in many years)
> were usually if the ups was not connected right. Even when properly power
> protected, the NT's suffered many disk problems. If there were 2-3 disk
> problems with over a hundred as400's, we had 5 times that in the NT
servers
> and 10 times that in desktop disk problems. In all cases the 400 drives
were
> "pumped".
> Not truly statistical, but I have seen the same pattern in every shop I've
> worked in. I don't need no stinkin' study to tell me the iSeries400
hardware
> is far more reliable. I would gladly pay a premium for that.
> jim
>


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