RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

I fully agree with your comments, Joe.  

A WAS-only partition doesn't help as the OS is licensed based on the
P-tier of the overall machine.  I had inquired about adding CPUs running
AIX or Linux and was told we couldn't do it.  I'm not sure off-hand if
it was an Oracle or an IBM thing but it was a vendor thing and not a
technology thing.

However, the idea of a couple of small 520s or maybe a 550 standard
edition does appeal to me.

The 570 upgrade we've been presented with (a 4/8-way) bumps us from a
P30 to a P40.  520s are P05-P20 and a full 4-way 550 is still just a
P20.  Could be some savings there while keeping things iFriendly.  As
again it wouldn't store data and wouldn't be used for anything other
than WAS I wouldn't have to buy BRMS, iSeries Access, and other
price-bumping LPPs.  I could get by with existing LTO2 drives I have
lying around from before the last upgrade for backup.

Nuts, now I've got to look some stuff up.

A big part of the upgrade expense is RAM. 16GB for a 570 has a $32K list
price and I'd be loathe to put in less than 32 as we've seen WAS as a
single job consuming 13+GB.  Not sure if we can overcome that.  Is 550
RAM cheaper than 570; i.e. is it DDR or DDR2?  I'd likely be in good
shape if the 550 with it's 1.9GHz CPUs could use the RAM features from
my existing 570 (1.65GHz CPUs).

Gotta run for today.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:08 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

From: Jones, John (US)

Joe, you might have missed a couple of my recent posts on this so I'll

recap my problem.  We're running Oracle EnterpriseOne (E1) a.k.a. JDE 
OneWorld.  End of recap.  ..  Well, for clarity I'll continue. The 
main
E1 layers are:

Thanks for the clarification, John.  I know I saw your earlier posts,
but I kind of zeroed in on the specific question, because it's one that
lots of people are asking.  In fact, the very high incremental costs of
WAS are exactly the type of thing that actually lends credence to Steve
Richter's regular refrain of "geared down expensive CPU".

I think somebody might have mentioned the idea of creating what would in
effect be a "WAS-only" partition, in which memory and CPU would be much
cheaper than the same components for i5/OS.  This is an appealing
notion, but one which then begs the question of why not make it cheaper
for i5/OS?
Which would lead to in effect unbundling i5/OS and then seeing if it
really could stand on its own... but that's a completely theoretical
discussion and thus not particularly germane to your situation.

I agree that WAS isn't really a great app for the iSeries to run.  My 
personal fear (which can be at odds with what's best for the firm) is 
that if WAS moves off, what's to keep the app logic and/or database 
from moving off when the system needs the next upgrade and management 
balks again?

This is indeed the issue, especially with a vendor that is clearly
marketing a cross-platform solution.  This is a tough nut, and is
ultimately the one that will make or break the iSeries.  As other people
have suggested over the years, more and more it is application software
that ultimately sells boxes, and unless vendors take advantage of the
strengths of the box, it's unlikely that the box will receive any
impetus from those applications.

Unfortunately, most large software vendors have a hard time justifying
separate product lines and so unless there is a specific move by IBM to
make i5/OS a fiscally successful separate revenue stream, these same
vendors will continue down the path of less powerful but more lucrative
"platform independent" architectures.  And companies like yours will be
hard pressed to justify the ongoing cost of the more expensive box.  In
effect, the iSeries will be perceived as a luxury item.

However, as I've pointed out, if you compare the real costs of moving
non-appliance level code (that is, your business logic and database) to
a non-integrated solution, the costs quickly mount.  As a simple
exercise, try pricing the sort of backup devices that you would need to
reliably protect a server farm and you'll see what I mean.

Joe


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