RE: i5 Youngsters

I don't doubt that the layout of the 515 is not service-friendly but not
having seen one I'd have to wonder if the layout is designed for better
airflow or makes sense from some other strategic standpoint.

Disks being the same: Agreed. I'd add that prior gen drives will lose
little from being 'older' but will tend to have the most stable and
performance-tuned firmware. I hope we can skip 2.5" platter-based
drives and go straight to SSDs, either 2.5" or 3.5".

Not sure I agree on the PSU quality. From a size factor alone the PSUs
in my 570s are much larger than anything I've ever seen in an x86 server
(exception: blade chassis). While I haven't opened one up, having a
larger PSU provide space for bigger heat sinks, and other PSU components
that do better with larger size and/or better airflow. I also think IBM
tends to size them a little larger than necessary so they aren't as
stressed if the chassis is maxed out.

There's nothing wrong with PCI-X beyond it not being popular.
Performance-wise we aren't maxing it out (yet). Not being popular will
drive up adapter expense some, but they can engineer bridge chips easily
enough to adapt PCI-E cards to PCI-X. That said, POWER6 systems have
both PCI-E and Infiniband in addition to PCI-X. See section 2.1.2 of
RedBook 5052.

Sure, i5/OS has problems and PTFs are released pretty much daily, but
how often do you have to actually load a PTF to address a problem you're
having? It's exceedingly rare for most shops to have to do that. Also,
the OS is huge and includes the database and all of the other bits we
love so PTFs cover a lot of territory.

Bind and other OSS-type apps do tend to be behind the latest. But as
long as there isn't a critical bug in the old version I don't really see
anything wrong with that.

The reasons for multiple teams is that it's no longer on a single
platform. The Server Team handles Windows & VMWare issues. The Network
guys for infrastructure components. We're a large company (over 25K
employees, 1000+ servers, locations in 45+ countries) so we can't get by
with too much cross-department/team responsibilities.

FWIW the box in question isn't sub-2GHz; it's a POWER5+ with 48GB RAM
and 3TB DASD (RAIDed capacity). Our other i5 is a POWER5 and will
probably go 5+ or 6 sometime this year.