On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 17:14, Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ÂBeing that everything runs on Power I am curious
what a System x or p would cost to compete with your laptop.
Entry level System x servers with 4 drives, basic RAID controller,
Quadcore CPU, 10GB of RAM or so cost around 3-5k.
ÂI am guessing
the price would be closer because it doesn't include the cost of a DB and
proprietary OS (both of which are worth their price).
Of course. No disagreement there.
It's quite clear with IBM i OS costs:
M0FJU4 OTC per Proc w/ 90-Day SWMA (E4A 1-Core) 1
4'714.00 OTC B
M0F0T4 OTC per 5 Users (E4A 1-Core) 4
8'136.00 OTC B
I don't really have an issue with this price. While it's not cheap,
it's not expensive either. It's the hardware that concerns me, things
like this:
5746 Half High 800GB/1.6TB LTO4 SAS Tape Drive 1
6'239.00 85.00 Mth
4532 4096MB (2x2048MB) RDIMMs, 667 MHz, 1Gb DRAM 1
1'740.00
3677 139.5GB 15k rpm SAS Disk Drive 6
6'624.00
I guess, in the end, just comparing performance doesn't give anybody much of
anything - know what I mean? ÂThat would really only be good if we were
concerned about how many CPU cycles we could fit into a single second - and
a business need is more complex than that. ÂSo maybe that is where our
disconnect is.
I think it's very important if you analyze an issue from the ground
up. We've started to deploy WebFocus at a variety of customers.
WebFocus is multi-platform and can run on the IBM i.
However, we had to cancel that. The single-core machines are not fast
enough to deal with both WebFocus and the database queries. Running
WebFocus alongside on a System x servers gives us 4 cores to run
WebFocus/Java on and a single core on the IBM i to run the ERP and
WebFocus's database queries.
But the issue is - we have to sell our customers a second servers. And
the customers have to maintain that. Now, if IBM would sell quad-core
IBM i's at a reasonable price (e.G. a quadcore what you pay for a
single core today), the customer would just have the IBM i - no need
for a second server.
Explaining this to customers can be very hard. It's understandable.
After all, they paid a real boatload of money for a server just a few
months ago, and now need a second server just to run WebFocus.
I would be curious to know your thoughts on the ITG report that was recently
published that puts IBM i as an excellent choice over Windows and Linux:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/strategy.html
I've read through it. They make some glaring mistakes, such as this one:
For example, SQL Server and Oracle database products are priced on a per
core basis, which tends to increase costs for production
database servers as well as for development systems.
SQL Server is licensed per socket, not per core. If you have two
quadcores, you don't need to buy 8 licenses. You need to buy two.
From the staffing perspective: Might be the case in large
environments. I don't know. I and my team maintain about 130 IBM i
systems deployed to customers, and about 100 Windows servers. I can't
say that we have more issues with the IBM i than Windows, and i can't
say that we have more issues with Windows than the IBM i.
If a customer decides not to keep his IBM i current on Firmware and
PTFs, he may fall on his face someday - or not.
If a customer decides not to keep his System x Windows Server current
on Firmware and Windows Updates, he may fall on his face someday - or
not.
midrange.com
