RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

I've never bought-in to the mirrored kool-aid - I prefer RAID-5.  When
cost is an issue, you're going to have bottlenecks.  And it's true that
IBM charges more out of country than inside the US (usually).  So - be
that as it may, you've got a system with a disk bottleneck and no amount
of CPW will fix that.  You can put a 32-way 595 with 1 TB of RAM on 2
arms and you'll be DYING.  I'll bet lots of body parts on it.  Because
I've done it to prove a point.

And before anyone gets cute, I didn't say 64-way with 2TB because the
limit is 32 processors in a LPAR.  A 64-way 595 with 2 TB of RAM must be
a 2+ LPAR machine.  Trivia for the day. 


--
Justin C. Haase - Solution Engineer
IBM Certified Systems Expert - System i
Kingland Systems Corporation

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 9:11 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

The point I'm making is that I personally would never configure a 
machine with two arms to sell to a customer that I'd have to support

in

the future.  It just doesn't have the performance.

When our sales has the choice between selling no machine and a 2 arm
machine, he will sell the 2 arm machine.

And it's an official IBM offer, so it can't be that wrong. Of course
it's always nicer to have more disks in a system, but the customers
can't/won't pay for it.

Put two more arms in your System i and I **GUARANTEE** you you'll have

markedly better performance.  Don't hit me with a 4-arm Windows box 
against a 2-arm System i.

I've setup a few 4x36GB systems, with mirrored protections. I didn't
notice a speed difference two the 2x36GB Systems. I didn't do any
benchmarks though, so the difference could be just smaller than
"noticeable".

And if by 4 arm you mean 8x36GB when using mirrored protection, the
price point is just even MORE ridiculous. Who will sell upwards to 30k
on a single machine just to get decent performance?

--
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