Re: Disk Size for Nest OS Release of IBM i

Just for testing purposes I created a 60GB partition ( all virtual ) with 6 10GB drives to see if the LIC and IBM i ( V7 ) would load. It did, so I think the limits are for "spinny" disk rather that virtualized disks. That said, I think my 60GB partition would be nearly full if I loaded all of the LPPs and PTFd them. It's been intimated by some IBMrs that 70GB may become a hard floor. If that's true then we need to look into Larry's idea to load up the first drive with the OS, then have at least 6 more drives of the size you need. Then set the 70GB drive to write only. Use only the other six or more drives..... of course pending a supported configuration....

See archives for a more in depth discussion......

Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects

On 1/23/14 10:07 AM, DrFranken wrote:

It's not a physical disk thing for the SCSI world because no SCSI
machine will run IBM i 7.2 so scratch that.

*IF* (and this is DrFranken's guess) they stuck with the physical disk
thing then 70GB is the smallest physical disk you can attach to a SAS
based machine, which is to say Power6 and up. No you cannot purchase new
70GB SAS disks any longer BUT if i 7.2 is to support a Power6 machine
which might legitimately have 70GB disks in it, there you go.

That said I seem to recall conversations at last year's annual COMMON
conference that they picked 70G for a different reason.

We at iInTheCloud and iDevCloud do not like this 70G minimum for our
small personal partitions especially as that's more disk space than any
of our personal partitions even use today in total!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 1/22/2014 4:36 PM, Kirk Goins wrote:

>It has been mentioned here that V7R2 ( or whatever the new release will be
>called ) will require a 70GB Loadsource.
>
>The real question here is what size to we really need? I believe this 70GB
>drive spec is based in the older SCSI drives not the physical space
>required. Where I am going with is vSCSI disks presented to IBM i from VIOS
>or a Hosting IBM i partition or even the size of disks that a SAN will
>present to IBM i.
>
>Let's talk 70GB SCSI Drives. If I Mirror my LS with a pair of 70GB drives
>then the OS will see 70GB. If my 70GB LS is part of a 4 drive Raid set I
>will see only about 53GB. INa 3 drive set I don't know as I Haven't done a
>3 drive set but if everything is even that will make those drives around
>47GB.
>
>
>Here's why I ask.
>New Power7 with 8 139.5 drives. After Raid5 those drives are 122GB In this
>exampleI want to have an IBM i Hosting partition and 2 IBM i Guests. IBM
>suggest to have a minimum of 6 vSCSI drives in a partition for
>performance. Now in creating cSCSI drives in IBM i for an IBM i Guest you
>loose about 7% if I remember correctly. So each drive on the host needs to
>be about 75GB to present 70GB to the guest. So I need 12 of these. ( 12 x
>75 ) = 900GB that will leave about 76GB in the HOST. or about 71% usable if
>you keep the HOST at 90% used. If I can use slightly smaller drives I would
>a little more breathing room or room for a set of OS Image catalogs etc.
>
>No in this example I don't want run any work other than hosting in the HOST
>partition.
>
>Thoughts, Comments etc?
>
>--
>Kirk
>

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