From the sounds of it everyone recommends the RAID approach vs. mirrored
so I think I am sold on that. I will probably go with 4GB of memory for
now (not the cheapest stuff that's for sure).
>Why do you need the WAN card? Are you going connect a modem to this
machine? Toss the WAN card, you shouldn't need it.
Bingo - exactly why I wanted to call on people that know more than me :-)
Yeah, i will not be doing any modem stuff (or at least I haven't to date
so i don't know why I would start now). I will pitch it (unless IBM
requires it like they are requiring me to get a $1600 tape drive even
though I told them I don't need it).
Thanks Pete,
Aaron Bartell
[1]
http://mowyourlawn.com
From: Pete Massiello Date: 08/06/2009 04:17 PM
I have to agree on the number of disk arms. I would go with 4 disk arms in a Raid-5 config. You can get away with the memory, but you will DEFINITELY not be happy with 2 disks in a mirrored config. Go 4 SAS 139GB drives in a Raid set.
4 GB of memory is fine unless you expect to do a lot of Webshere, then I would go at least 8GB.
Why do you need the WAN card? Are you going connect a modem to this machine? Toss the WAN card, you shouldn't need it.
Pete
Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions
[2]
http://www.itechsol.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [3]midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [[4]mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 4:02 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Getting a new IBM i - need advice
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 21:01, Aaron Bartell[5]<aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Right now I have a 3yr old 520 with 2GB memory and 600/30 CPW and for
*most* things it performs perfectly fine. Given that fact and given that
out I am/was planning on getting 4GB memory and will have something like
4x the CPW (I believe, though I see they didn't include that on this
quote), I am wondering why the recommendation? Again, this is *just* a
developer machine (I am actually limited to just that per the Partnerworld
ISV lease agreement).
Well, in the end different people have different expectations on performance.
CPW, in my opinion, are an almost useless marketing number. The
problem is that CPW are only for machines with everything maxed out
(memory, disk, etc.). And then there's the problem with IO constrained
workloads.
At least for the model 515 (first unrestricted entry-level model),
there was the 3800 CPW number which was only valid for CPU constrained
workloads, and then the 800 CPW number which was for IO constrained
workloads (the 515 allowed 8 disks at maximum).
That's why i think about the specs of the hardware, instead of
thinking in CPW. Unfortunately, IBM doesn't publish benchmarks of the
1 core machines running IBM i, making comparison difficult.
([6]
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/520/perfdata.html)
Currently, a decent laptop ships with a 7.2kRPM SATA drive, 2 cores at
2-3 Ghz and 4GB of RAM.
Of course, a server should offer a lot more than that - the single
core makes the machine rather laggy when multiple people are accessing
it, running CPU intensive workloads (like WebQuery, which you
ordered!). A server should have a lot of RAM compared to a client, and
better IO performance.
Now i'm rambling about IBM's pricing again, which isn't really what i
wanted to. So i'll leave it at that.
I've deployed quite a few 1 Core Power 6 machines with 4GB of memory
and just two arms. They're awfully slow, and i wouldn't want to work
on them on a daily basis. i5/OS eats memory for breakfast, and the
base OS requires quite a lot of IO just for it's housekeeping.
So as you can see I am not necessarily in need of more horsepower but
instead just a second up-to-date machine.
Well, in the end it's you who has to work on the machine and not me. I
find the performance in machines configured as yours absolutely dismal
compared to my laptop. I remember doing benchmarks of DB2 on my laptop
against a 520 (600CPW) with 1GB of RAM and two 36GB disks drive. Guess
who won :)
References
Visible links
1.
http://mowyourlawn.com/
2.
http://www.itechsol.com/
3. mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
4. mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
5. mailto:aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx
6.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/520/perfdata.html
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