RE: Thin console capabilities (was Denying TCP connections basedon IP)

1800$ looks quite okay to me. I'll recheck this with our
sales/purchasing guy, but I think this stuff is much more expensive here
in Europe.

(Example, a single disk unit (70GB, 15kRPM) retails here for about 1400
US$).

The prices that I've had in mind were about 4000US$ for the desktop, and
about 8000US$ for the rack mount HMC - with the 515 at about 13000US$
for the baseline version, that's quite an impact. Especially if the only
advancement over the 1000US$ Thin Console is "remote management".

And I really don't think outsourcing the console of the system that's
usually most important for the Business (most people can live for some
short amounts without their mail and files - ERP is more important) to
an old, unreliable machine is a good idea.

And it adds maintenance work - you'll have to keep the windows machine
updated, make sure that the antivirus is up to date and everything (you
can skip that if it is just connected to your System i - but then you
lose the remote access). Again, not a problem for a big company which
uses SMS, WSUS, central AV management - but many of our customers don't
have that.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Larry Bolhuis
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 4:08 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Thin console capabilities (was Denying TCP connections
basedon IP)

The HMC is /not/ only meant for Big Companies! Desktop and Deskside
units list at $1800 (Less than two disk units). Great for connecting to
your own KVM. You must be looking at the rack mount version with the
rack mount keyboard and flat panel display which is north of $5000. I
agree that the windoze solution isn't great but since the requirements
for the thing are pretty minimal (for the console part alone) most of my

customers who use that have allocated an old W2K cast off machine to
that function which mitigates the cost significantly.

The TC is a good replacement for twinax but it is what it is and it's as

cheap as it is because of that.

My System i customers include organizations as small as ones who train
guide dogs for blind and deaf people. Many still run 170s and others are

on 520s with only two disk units and base memory. Sure we have large
customers but by raw count they are but a small part of my business.
Unfortunately, I can count the number of Billion Dollar customers that I

have on one hand without using most of my fingers!

- Larry

Lukas Beeler wrote:

The HMC is only meant for big companies, as it costs nearly as much as

a

baseline 515 ;)

And Operations Console isn't that much of an option, it requires a
separate, full fledged PC that needs to be maintained etc.

The Thin Console is a good replacement for Twinax terminals, and it's
what we use exclusively for our new system deployments.

I work for Small Businesses, not the multi billion dollar companies
you're used to. This means that "just buy a HMC", "just buy an
additional PC" are usually not really options. I would like to ship
every new system we sell with a HMC, believe me. But the cost is
prohibitively high.

Lukas Beeler wrote:

(I still think that the TC is a rather poorly done product, since it
doesn't offer remote access).

If you want remote access the HMC is the way to go. Sure it's more

money

but it's got all that support built in that you need for that

including

security. It has the ability to restrict users to functions based on

job

role etc, to access ASMI, to share consoles for multiple partition and

systems. Thin Console was brought to light for those customers who

just

simply couldn't live without a dedicated terminal based console.

Having

to add a twinax card for this is expensive and wastes two slots (IOA
plus IOP) and locating a supply of good twinax terminals is getting

more

and more difficult these days! If you want remote console access you
can also choose Operations console with either LAN or direct connect.
Thus adding remote capability to Thin Console would serve only to
increase cost and complexity, it wouldn't provide anything else that
doesn't already exist.

- Larry