Getting a System up and running, or even doing administration isn't
possible without learning for a few weeks. And after about one or two
years of experience, you know the kinks of the system. It would be
insane for a company to start using a new hw and os platform without
proper learning beforehand.
And here is the major problem IBM here has.
You can't evaluate the system i.
Want to try out running Windows Server 2003 and ASP.NET? Go to
Microsoft.com, download the Trial version, install it on a old machine
or inside the free Virtual PC. Need Visual Studio? Download the express
version, it's free. Want to see what the better editions are like? Go to
the next torrent site and download it.
With Linux it's the same thing, minus the torrent sites.
Nobody is going to buy a 12500US$ system for development without knowing
damn well what they are getting. They can do that with Windows. They can
do it with Linux. But they can't do it with the System i. I don't see a
way how IBM can fix this, either.
This is not different from Windows or Linux, though. Administrating
windows systems on a professional level isn't more or less difficult
than a comparable Linux or i5/OS.
I've started working with i5/OS about 2 years ago, when I started
working at an IBM BP which focuses on SMB.
My primary problems starting with i5/OS were:
* IBM doesn't spec its i5 hardware precisely - it's not really necessary
with i5/OS, because the hardware is fully integrated and works
automatically, but this is different than Windows or Linux
administration
* IBMs documentation sucks. The info center usually lack information,
it's hard to find detailed information about SRCs.
* It's hard to google for i5/OS problems. There are many, many Linux and
Windows users. When googling for problems, you will find myriad of blog
posts, usenet postings, mailing lists archives of people who had the
same problem before.
That's not the case with i5/OS. I've started blogging my own problems
with the i5, and I'm getting a lot of google hits on these postings.
* The interface is inconsistent - you have to swap between Operations
Navigator constantly - you can't do everything with 5250, but you can't
do everything with OpsNav either. Windows has the same problem, but it's
not as bad as with i5/OS. While debugging active directory replication
requires a command line utility, even basic tasks such as creating a
file share are not possible in 5250, and require opsnav.
* There are nearly no communities in my native language (german).
Midrange-l has been a very nice source of information for me in the past
two years, and I don't have a problem with reading English (writing
isn't really what i'm good at).
There's another problem here - I don't have any collegues working with
the i5 I could ask in case of troubles - not the case with Linux or
Windows, though this is rather personal and not IBMs problem.
* The cheap i5 machines are slow - i don't have my hands on a 515 yet,
but the 600CPW 520 are god damn slow. Nothing worse than wasting 8 hours
at a customers site just for a machine to finish installing PTFs.
* PTFs are a PITA. There is half a ton of them, most of the explanations
are don't really describe much, and each quarter year a new ton of them
get's released. Love the management with temporary and permantly applied
PTFs though - this is unparalled.
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of albartell
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:48 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: IBM will announce two new System i models, 515 and 525 on
Apr. 10.
The possibility of competing at price points is exciting, but are there
any
reliable compare and contrast spec sheets out there the are convincing
enough to make somebody choose a System i5 over a Wintel? Again, I am
guessing this was done in part to gain NEW business and not simply
maintain
existing customers.
I am trying to imagine somebody picking up a System i5 with the
intention of
running PHP or Java web apps on it and what they would have to go
through to
get the thing to work. My experience was interesting in that I fought
for
the better part of a day to get the LAN Console working. Can then
configure
the entire machine without going into the green screen? If they could
then
I think IBM is taking right steps.
Aaron Bartell
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[
mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pete Helgren
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 12:23 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: IBM will announce two new System i models, 515 and 525 on
Apr.
10.
It is all very sweet. I know one entity that has just 3 users on the
system. The best I could do at the time was $25k (with a few growth
tweaks). Now they could have gotten in for around $10k and had a fairly
robust system they could grow with.
This could open plenty of application opportunities. In our case
Nathan, we
compete in a market where very small users will compare a $40k solution
using System i to a $10k system from Dell, HP or even IBM.
Now the System i might be about $15k. This evens the playing field at
our
end of the market, even though it is still early in the game. IBM is at
least trying to breath some new life into the platform.
Pete
midrange.com
