RE: Windows Integration and Longhorn

One you know the maintenance guy for. One you know the reliability of

and reputation of. <

Unfortunately, the IBM san got kicked out of here because of
inadequate/stupid(?)/uncaring(?) support. I was very disappointed to see
another IBM "foot" get removed from the door. 

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Larry Bolhuis
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 9:30 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Windows Integration and Longhorn

Yes it is a SAN. One you know how to use already. One you know the
maintenance guy for. One you know the reliability of and reputation of. 
It's not another thing to learn, to maintain, to expand.

And here's one you cannot do from home with a SAN: Reboot the server. Oh
sure you could get one of those fancy TCP/IP enabled power strips and
turn off the power to the thing but who's gonna push the power on
button? OK Yes you can configure the BIOS to restart after power is
restored but ya gotta sure remember to do that. Or you could add the RSA
card and access the web interface of that (remembering the user id and
password of course) and power it down and up from there. Or you could
load IBM Director on a system and use that as your tool.  But with
System i you just vary off the *NWSD and vary it back on. Don't get no
easier than that.

You say you can add disk 'on the fly' to a windoze machine without a
SAN. I've yet to see that work well. Either the new disk isnt' RAID
protected or you gotta stop and start RAID to get it protected or you
gotta mirror the new disks. In any case you're stuck only with
increments of the drive size. Need 30GB Quick but you're using 140GB
Drives? Sorry gotta ad 140GB and wait for RAID to build etc. On i adding
30GB is just minutes. Adding 5 or 10GB could be only 1 or 2. And it's
ALREADY protected.

You can also reach into QNTC into the file system of an integrated
server and back that stuff up with the SAV command. Can't do that with
external windoze of any sort.

You can use the tape drives and CD/DVD drives INCLUDING Image Catalogs
of the system i with integrated servers. Can't do that with external
windoze of any sort.

You can do SAVE 21. Take that sucker to a DR Site, restore it to the
system there and you got 100% of everything. From SLIC to user apps on
the i, continuing right through the windoze kernel, the registry, it's
users, apps and data. Can't do that with an external SAN.

Sure there are a few things the SAN can do that System i integration
can't (yet) but new stuff shows up in every release. Rumor has it that
san-like Flash copy is coming in V5R5.

I've not seen reason to include yet another piece of hardware to
purchase, license, learn, maintain, power, cool, and expand when i does
it all already.  Does that mean there is no place for SANs? Don't be
silly of course there are but the majority of small and medium shops
simply don't need the hassle.

 - Larry

Walden H. Leverich wrote:

Of course the real and true strength of Windoze (and now Linux) 
integration is when you get to two, three and more servers. You gotta

love the ability to swap to a spare server in 10 seconds plus Windoze

reboot time. Can't do that with the external solution. Ability to add

disk on the fly at any time. Can't do that external. Ability to

'clone'

    
the disk images to make a test server. Can't do that with external. 
    

I've got to disagree here (no surprise). But I've yet to see something

you can do in IXS that you can't do on "external" windows boxes with a

SAN. I can re-target LUNs and reboot a machine on different hardware, 
I can add disk on the fly (actually don't even need a san for that), 
and I can clone the disk image at the san to create the test server 
w/out a problem.

The IXS is nothing more than a windows box with a san. Granted, it's 
all "integrated", but it's just a san.

-Walden