Re: What Was Discussed At the Big LUG Meeting

Exactly right on the storage. The suppliers tell IBM that 'End data of manufacture for item x is xx.xx.xx' and that's that. IBM DOES consider the quantity and demand and MAY order a bunch before EOM or they may not. (Of course it's imperative that they have enough for maintenance purposes as well!) They they look at sales and inventory and publish an 'end of marketing' date based on that.

I think the 139GB Drives lived longer than even IBM expected. Not sure if that was because they ordered a bunch, or sales were less than expected, or the suppliers didn't shut down as soon as they said. (Or a combination) We had been 'warned' that they were 'going away soon' quite some time back.

And of course when new stuff comes on the market and it's bigger and faster and cheaper IBM is always interested in that. Otherwise Rob calls them and chides them for not offering it. :-) :-)

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 1/27/2017 12:15 PM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

Rob,

I agree with your assessment but those costs are going to mitigate fast as
more and more of the SSDs show up in the market.

IBM basically cannot offer items its suppliers don't make. So when the
suppliers say, "we are not making 141GB disk drives anymore" IBM cannot
offer to sell them. That's what's happening if you think about it. The
suppliers are saying "this is what I'm going to build now" and IBM needs to
buy them. It's not like back in the day when IBM owned the entire vertical
manufacturing chain and had control over all of it. Those days are long
gone.

So one does not need to ask IBM what they are doing, rather pay attention to
the suppliers. That's where the real action is.


--
Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rob
Berendt
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017 10:13 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: What Was Discussed At the Big LUG Meeting

I'm not so sure about replacing all spinning disks with SSD's.
I have three Power 8's, all with multiple LPARs. Two of them are all SSD
(except for the VIOS partitions) and the third one is all spinning disks.
The third one is more of a 'double backup' and sandbox machine. We cut
costs a little on that one.

SSD's have a separate maintenance. After just a few years the maintenance
on them goes through the roof. Basically to the point you're buying them
new on a monthly basis. Those who like to hold on to their machines for
ever and still have them on maintenance will not like that at all. And,
yes, they do fail on occasion. I've had a number replaced. Most of them
we're within a short time of using them.


Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1 Group Dekko Dept 1600 Mail
to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe,
or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.

Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.

Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link:
http://amzn.to/2dEadiD