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iSeries for Domino Servers: A Look Under the Hood by Timothy Prickett Morgan When IBM revamped the iSeries line two months ago, I said that the new iSeries for Domino servers, launched in conjunction with the revamped machines, deserved their own special attention. IBM has improved the iSeries-Domino bundle compared to the "Bumblebee" Dedicated Servers for Domino that it has been selling since late 1999, and I want to take a look under the hood of the new iSeries-Domino boxes to help you suss out how they might fit in your shop. 
The iSeries for Domino machines need a nickname, so I am going to keep calling them Bumblebee servers, as we have been doing for years. The Bumblebee moniker was an inside joke at IBM because the black AS/400 Domino machines had a yellow stripe on the front--black and yellow being the colors that Lotus uses for its logo. Saying "Dedicated Server for Domino" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and although we could call the new variants on this idea the iSD or SFD or iSFD servers, do we really need another acronym in the computing world? I don't think so. In this story, I'll just call them Bumblebees, and when I say "new," I mean the revamped iSeries Bumblebee models, and when I say "old," I mean any prior generation of the Bumblebees. There are five new configurations of the iSeries Bumblebee servers. I've built a detailed salient-characteristics table describing the old and new Bumblebees. With the old Bumblebees, IBM took a regular AS/400 or iSeries server, geared down the performance of the DB2/400 database, and crippled the 5250 green-screen protocol or removed it entirely so the Bumblebees could not be used to run RPG or COBOL applications. These machines could, however, support WebSphere and Java, although when running Domino workloads, it was arguable as to whether they had enough oomph to do all three workloads at once. IBM then discounted the Bumblebee machine a bit to make it an attractive platform for running Domino e-mail, Web, and application servers. The Bumblebee machine was only sold as a bare-bones machine, and customers had to reckon their own configuration for the box that would be appropriate for supporting Domino workloads. The machines also had upgrade restrictions, meaning that if you needed something bigger than an old Bumblebee model to run your Domino workloads, you could not upgrade that machine to a bigger, real AS/400 or iSeries machine. No Bumblebee machine bundle included the actual Lotus middleware or required client software to use it, which is ironic given the fact that the whole point of the AS/400 and iSeries is technical and economic integration. (IBM has channel issues internally, which is presumably why Lotus software is not just woven into all of its operating systems from the get-go. I could never figure out why Lotus isn't a feature, preinstalled, on all IBM servers and clients.) The five new Bumblebee machines are similarly sold as a discounted hardware solution that does not include the Domino server and Notes client software. The new machines, as you will see in that salient characteristics table, also include base memory and disk configurations that are reasonably appropriate for supporting the number of Domino Notes mail and calendaring users (MCUs) that the performance specs of the boxes suggest they support. IBM did not give out performance specs on how many Notes mail users each machine could support, but I made some estimates based on past benchmark data; these estimates are marked in red in the table. These new Bumblebee machines are configured with OS/400 V5R2 and Domino 6, and they can also run Lotus SameTime instant messaging and QuickPlace meeting and collaboration software. IBM also requires that companies that buy these new Bumblebee machines acquire, or have already acquired, a specific number of Notes or iNotes clients. This is a new restriction, and while some companies will complain about the number of Notes or iNotes clients they have to buy, it was almost worse. IBM is requiring that customers who buy one of the two uniprocessor Model 810 Bumblebee machines get 100 clients, with the requirement being 400 client licenses for the two-way Model 810 Bumblebee, and 700 client licenses for the four-way and six-way Model 825 Bumblebees. This represents somewhere between 2 and 6 percent of the maximum potential Notes users that each machine can support based on IBM's own benchmark data. However, in the pre-announcement material I saw, IBM had originally intended to require 1,000 client licenses on the four-way Model 825 Bumblebee and 2,000 licenses on the six-way Model 825 Bumblebee. The new Bumblebee machines have discounts that range from 9 to 21 percent for the configured machines that IBM is requiring customers to buy. The entry Bumblebee Model 810 machine, for instance, costs $12,000 for a base OS/400 Standard Edition configuration, and the Bumblebee version with OS/400 Standard Edition costs only $9,000. With all the memory, disks, and required peripherals added in, the Model 810 Bumblebee lists for $30,365, which is 9 percent lower than the cost of the regular iSeries Model 810, which is effectively the same machine. The next biggest Model 810 Bumblebee sells for $55,717, which is equivalent to a 12 percent discount at list prices compared to the regular iSeries machine. The two-way Model 810 Bumblebee sells for $100,601, representing an 8 percent discount off the regular iSeries machine. The base four-way Model 825 Bumblebee server sells for $18,000 instead of $70,000 for a regular iSeries, and that means the fully configured system that IBM has required sells for $194,957, representing a 21 percent discount compared to a regular Model 825. And, finally, IBM just gives away the whole base three-way Model 825, and that is effectively what results in the 17 percent discount that this machine gives to customers, who will have to pay $353,551 for the six-way variant of the new Bumblebee machines. Remember one thing when considering these prices. The discounted Bumblebee prices are still list prices, and you should negotiate down further from there. And if you are porting from Microsoft Exchange or Novell GroupWise, you should be able to get substantial discounts from IBM on the iSeries hardware and the Lotus software. Press for equivalent or steeper discounts on Domino and Notes clients, which will make up a very large part of the overall Domino solution. Some other interesting things about the new Bumblebees. The documentation I have seen says that the new Bumblebees can run Java and WebSphere when Domino is not active. Don't get confused by what this means. It means that even when Domino is not active on the machine, WebSphere and Java workloads can access the full potential CPWs of power in the box. IBM obviously would not create a machine in which Domino workloads and WebSphere and Java workloads could not work side by side, especially considering that Domino, WebSphere, Java, and DB2 are being woven into a single platform across IBM's eServer lines, with dependencies on one another. (Domino can use WebSphere as an application server now, and soon DB2 will be the data storage method for Domino applications.) The new Bumblebees do not have any governors on DB2/400 database performance, unlike the old machines, and they also have direct upgrade paths to larger Model 870 and Model 890 servers.
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