RE: iSeries Disk Pricing

["Andy Nolen-Parkhouse" <aparkhouse@xxxxxxxxx>]

Friends,

While it is good news that IBM is significantly reducing the price of
their disk drives, for many workloads there may well be no change.  This
announcement prices the 17 GB drives at exactly the old price of the 8
GB drives ($1,400).  For those who require raw capacity, this represents
a significant savings.

For those of us who have routinely sized DB2-based transaction systems,
frequently we end up configuring excess storage capacity in order to
obtain an appropriate number of disk arms to ensure adequate
performance.  This general rule applied for me in most systems using 8
GB drives.  I needed the arms more than the capacity.  Because the 17 GB
drives seem to have roughly the same rotational speed and seek times as
the 8 GB drives, it stands to reason that a number of systems will
require exactly the same number of drives at exactly the same price.
There will be a significant increase in the amount of excess storage
using the 17 GB drives, but the end result could well be no cost
reduction.

I'd welcome comment on this, but I think my reasoning is sound.  Some
systems would be better served by reducing the cost of 8 GB drives
rather than discontinuing them.

I would prefer to be wrong because I'm trying to focus on the good news
of the announcement, and there is a lot.

Regards,
Andy Nolen-Parkhouse

> As to the specific question regarding disk, as part of this
announcement
> we
> are announcing significant price reductions on 18 and 35 GB drives  -
in
> effect providing them at or near the same price as pSeries and the
Unix
> competition including HP and Sun.  This provides Fritz with the
ability to
> purchase and configure a set of disks at nearly the same price as our
> pSeries system, with the added advantage of our integrated storage
> management to do all of the disk and volume management most Unix
customers
> have to hire administrators for or purchase additional software for.