Re: OS installed on used hardware

We've never bought on the open market; we've always used a VAR. From what
our VAR said, frequently when a box enters the used market it's because the
company replaced it. When companies replace (an i for an i, if you will)
they'll often transfer surplus OS licenses from the old to the new. IBM
charges for this but it's a heckuva lot cheaper than buying new OS
licenses. Think $5K transfer v. something north of $50K OS license for a
P30-tier machine. But you can only transfer to another system within your
enterprise.

My employer has been evaluating upgrades to our aging Power5 570 and due to
a software issue cannot move off of V5. With a Power7 out of the question,
we considered Power5+ and Power6 machines. Our VAR located a used Power6
570 that came licensed as the company it came from moved off the platform.
We're getting the entire system - CEC, RAM, some added disks, and full OS
licenses - for less than the price of new OS licenses alone.

So yeah, you might get the OS license. But unless you have some special
requirements, for the home enthusiast, I like the idea of renting a small
LPAR or portion of one from a provider. No increase in electric bill, no
worries on doing your own hardware servicing & buying hard drives and such
off fleabay, no console to maintain, no backups to perform, no worrying
about falling behind because your toy can't handle the latest OS, etc. Let
someone else worry about SLAs.

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 9:21 AM, Jim Oberholtzer <
midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jim,

Depending on the system you get, you "might" get the OS. It depends a
great deal on the system and how it was sold into the used market. The
OS however is only the beginning. You won't have any of the licensed
software that goes along with IBM i. No compilers (except CL), PDM,
etc. The list of what you would get is much shorter than the list of
things you will need. Keep that in mind.

<Vendor Response Start>

Check out iDevCloud.com <http://www.idevcloud.com>. We will provide you
with all the tooling (except RDP which you have to get directly from
IBM) and licensed program products to play with. I think we have one
full partition available but more room on the shared partition. Priced
at just above our cost as a service to the community. Full Zend
Server, Full access to ProData's DBU and a couple of other products.

</Vendor Response stop>


Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 4/10/2012 8:57 AM, Jim Donoghue wrote:

I'm considering looking for a used system to play around with at home.

Does

the OS license stay with the hardware? Is it difficult to obtain media to
reinstall? I've seen these things on ebay all the time but im hesitant to
buy one and wind up with a boat anchor.
--

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