Re: iSeries configuration

Albert, some thoughts:

1. IBM Systems Workload Estimator, a free tool found at:
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/tools/estimator/index.html
provides some useful capacity planning info.
You can answer detailed questions like "How many concurrent users?" or you can import data from performance collections if the application is running today, and include some growth assumptions.

2. If the application is in use at your client today, can you extrapolate hardware requirements from current performance data?

3. If the green screen application is a package, can the software vendor give you any hardware recommendations (and cost estimates) based on their experiences with other customers?

I know you're looking for approximate costs... That's a difficult question to answer without a lot more information. For example: Are you adding this workload to an existing machine or proposing a new server? You might run the application on a 520-class server or blade, where there's a per-user license charge, an unlimited user option, and/or an external user license option if most of the remote users are not employees of your client. Or you might run the application as an LPAR on a larger 550 or 570-class server, with a completely different license scheme including enterprise enablement for 5250 workloads.

I think you really need to be working with an IBM Business Partner hardware reseller to help you ask the right questions and suggest the most economical options. -Dan R.


On 7/1/2010 2:07 PM, Albert York wrote:

I have a client who has requested a suggestion for an iseries
configuration that will support about 2000 remote users running a
green screen application. At this point I am just trying to get an
idea of some approximate costs to see if this will be a reasonable
solution. The users might be on one lpar or they may be split between
3 lpars, depending on the cost difference.

Does anyone have any reccomendations?

Thanks,

Albert