RE: First time buying System i5

First of all you should look at the used market if you want to run an
older OS to compile back to V5R1.  You can only compile back two levels
therefore your system must be at V5R3 or earlier.  Brand new 520 will
come with V5R4 and may have hardware features that require the latest
and greatest.  www.redwoodcomputer.com can get you a used 520 at V5R3.
If you do go new, make sure it has V5R3 NOT V5R4 installed.

5250 CPW of 30 will handle a lot more than 5 developers on Green Screen
if they don't run interactive queries or compiles.  They should run
those in batch.
Disk Drive or DASD is your storage just like the hard drive on your PC. 
Stay away from Twinax and go with the LAN console.  This is a dedicated
Ethernet port for your system console.  You may not need the HMC for a
basic LPAR.  But again it depends on what type of partitioning you want
to do.  If you do go with an HMC, you do not need the twinax or LAN
console, the HMC become your console for each partition.
The comm. adapter is a serial port that can be configured as RS-232 or
V.35
Look at upgrading to 4 disk drives and the RAID controller.  You can do
this after market.  Also look at going with 2GB memory if you are going
to do a lot of JAVA.

Christopher Bipes
Information Services Director
CrossCheck, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of albartell
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 6:06 AM
To: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: First time buying System i5

Hi Everyone, 
 
For a variety of details I wont dive into, I am now tasked with
purchasing/leasing my first System i5.  I am actually quite excited
because it is the same feeling I get when I buy a new PC, except this
time I have next to zero knowledge on what I need to tell the friendly
guy on the other end of the phone.  I am coming at this from an
Partnerworld ISV standpoint where they give what seems to be pretty
darned good deals for leasing or buying (i.e. 1% of list price per month
or 50% off list price). Note that this is strictly going to be used for
development and does not need to be HA.
 
Here's what I need to be able to do on the machine:
1. Develop RPGILE/CLLE/CLE/SQL code (need to be able to compile at V5R1)
2. QShell environment.
3. Ability to run Java natively AND in a servlet container (Tomcat is my
app server of choice) 4. Ability to have more than one LPAR (rep tells
me I need an HMC to accomplish this. The HMC is some sort of Linux
appliance that gives you control over your different LPARS) 5. Backup
code and files (talking less than 1 or 2GB). Do I need addtl hardware
for this or can I back to a network device?
6. Less than 5 profiles on 5250 at any give time.
7. DB2 and Query and SQL capabilities
8. WDSC and PDM (I already have WDSC 6.0) 9. Apache and SSL capabilities
 
My retail price range is $10k to $15k which from what I can tell will
get me a solid entry level machine.
 
Based on the "Quick Pricer PDF" emailed to me, here is what I THINK I
need, but I am lost as to if I have everything covered.
 
Model/Server Feature SW Tier: 520-0975 P05
CPW: 600/30 cpw
Edition Name: Value
Processor Speed: 1.9 Ghz Power 5+ includes L3 cache on 1200/60 cpw
version Processor Feature: 8325 Edition Featue and Price: 7350 $8,200
ESA 24x7: $110
 
Some things I don't understand or need clarification on:
1. What are "feature codes"? (i.e. 8325, 7350, etc).  For instance, it
appears as though feature 7350 is a package deal of some sort.
2. From what I understand ESA gives me 24x7 access to support vs. just
within business hours (seems like a good deal for only $110 more).
3. What is "5250 CPW 30"?  Is that how much processing power is given to
green screens?
4. When they say "Disk Drive" on this page: http://tinyurl.com/pbpxa,
what are they referring to? A harddrive? A backup drive of some sort?
5. Do I need a "Twinax Adapater"?  Is that if I want to connect an old
school console directly to the machine?
6. What's the difference between the "Comm Adapter" and "Ethernet Lan"
on this page: http://tinyurl.com/pbpxa 7. Is 600/30 cpw enough
horsepower to run a machine with less than 5 developers on it at a given
time?
8. Is 1GB of memory enough to do general RPG development with some small
Tomcat/Java and native Java mixed in there?
 
Thanks to anyone that can help this lowly programmer buy his first
iSeries
:-)
 
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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