Re: No Power7 to Power8 MES upgrade option, entitlements, cores, etc. -- MIDRANGE-L

They are always working within the rules.

Jim is right on the IRS part. I believe the stated rule is that when you return your old system it must retain 20% of it's initial value in order to qualify as an upgrade. They could not meet that standard with POWER7 to POWER8 on the low end. Potentially on larger servers later as was also mentioned.

This is really a statement of how fast the industry as a whole is moving forward. WHat was 'state of the art' just a few years ago is now below 'ho-hum' in many cases.

As to IBM i licenses that rule hasn't really changed. Yes there used to be certain licenses that were part of the base box and as such were 'welded' to that server. When you upgraded you could not transfer those base licenses. Often this didn't really hurt much as the increase in CPW per core has frequently meant that fewer cores were needed and in other cases the drop in P-group more than made up for it.

With POWER7 and I believe PWOER6 as well there are no cores that are 'base' and so what you have should transfer to a new server.

Your expectation that no more than one core is used is out of the ordinary for sure. Back when we installed the very first 2-core machine in my customer base (a model 310) their constraint was single thread RPG batch so we wondered if the second core would do anything. Turned out both cores maxed right out, likely one running the RPG and the other doing I/O and DB work plus the O/S code.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

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

On 4/30/2014 3:46 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:

Jim,

That's not totally true on transfers. When we went from P5 to P7, new purchase, only 2 of our 3 i5/OS licenses would transfer. One had to stay with the old box.
So we had to anity up (44,000) and purchase anther i5/OS license to keep us at 3.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Oberholtzer
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 3:44 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: No Power7 to Power8 MES upgrade option, entitlements, cores, etc.

Keep in mind that IBM does not always have the ability to offer an upgrade with a same serial number option. Reason: Internal Revenue Service rules.
If the new asset is sufficiently more powerful than the old asset, IRS requires a new serial number so they can get their skin out of it in the new depreciation schedule. I think that is the situation with the current batch of P8 boxes.

Even when the serial number changes, IBM will transfer your software to the new box and since that's the biggest dollar value of the deal (usually) it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.

--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steinmetz, Paul
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 2:19 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: No Power7 to Power8 MES upgrade option, entitlements, cores, etc.

1) Is IBM doing away with MES upgrades?
No MES upgrade path from Power7 to Power8 Over the years, IBM always gave you an upgrade option, up to a point.
If you upgraded within that timeframe, you saved $$$$, if not, the new machine would be quite a bit more, you lost all value from old machine.
This is what kept you current.
We had our same serial# for over 10 years from our original 510 (mid 90's) Also, on MES, all entitlements would transfer.
On a new machine, the base entitlement had to stay with the old machine, so you had to repurchase an additional entitlement to remain at the same level.

9406 AS/400 RISC Series Processor was our original 510. (mid 90's)
9406 System Unit MES # 19262 from 510 to 640 upgrade. (2nd quarter 98)
9406 System Unit MES # N26616 from 640 to 830 upgrade. (2nd quarter 2001)
9606 System Unit MES # 129707-6 from 830 to 550 upgrade (3rd quarter 2005)
8205 new purchase - (1st quarter 2012)
S814 new purchase - TBD

2) Also related to number of cores.
We currently have an 8-core 8205, but only 3 cores licensed for i5/os.
The remaining 5 active cores are useless.
We needed to purchase them to get the 8205 features we needed.

I see the same issue, but only worse with Power8, number of cores has increased.
Also, not sure if many know this, but if you have more than 1 full processor allocated to an LPAR, and your running RPG or RPGIV, that 2nd processor will probably never be used.
RPG and RPGIV is all single threaded, most work will always only use the 1st processor.
Way back on Power5, our BP sold us additional processors with the perception that more work will get done quicker, not the case.

Thank You
_____
Paul Steinmetz
IBM i Systems Administrator

Pencor Services, Inc.
462 Delaware Ave
Palmerton Pa 18071

610-826-9117 work
610-826-9188 fax
610-349-0913 cell
610-377-6012 home

psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx<mailto:psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
http://www.pencor.com/

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