The Four Hundred

During a recent iSeries Nation chat on the OS/400 V5R2 announcements, Bob Cancilla, who runs the IGNITe/400 Web site, asked Kim Stevenson, vice president of iSeries marketing, if IBM would ever offer a "personal" iSeries machine, perhaps running on Intel or RISC hardware, to developers and educators. Stevenson said that IBM did have a low-priced Model 270 server available for developers, and that it had no plans to port OS/400 to Intel processors or pSeries servers. This seemed to settle the matter. But it really doesn't.

The simple fact remains that IBM needs to make and sell a small, powerful, and inexpensive entry iSeries server. While this machine would be great for the developers and educators who are clamoring for it--not to mention the iSeries programmers, who would want one for their home offices, like all the editors at Guild Companies do--the real goal of a such a puppy iSeries server has nothing to do with developers or educators. A small, cuddly, and cheap iSeries machine that cost no more than a few thousand dollars is vital, so the iSeries can expand into the small and midsize enterprises that are increasingly adopting Windows and Linux for enterprise applications and that have never even heard of OS/400, much less the iSeries.

I've heard of the iSeries, of course, but to be honest, a Model 270 is too rich for my blood. This is why, behind me, right next to the file cabinet in my home office, which is nothing more than an enclave in my co-op apartment in Manhattan, sits a Dell PC500 entry server with a 1GHz Celeron processor, 512 MB of main memory, and 160 GB of disk capacity. I bought this machine for $1,223, including shipping. Because I am ornery and know a thing or two about Unix and Linux, I opted to use the open-source FreeBSD operating system, which is a true implementation of Unix, unlike Linux, and which is arguably more stable and secure than Linux, as the operating system of choice for this machine. I could have used Windows 2000, but I don't trust it, and besides, you can't beat the price of FreeBSD and all the middleware and application software that came bundled with it. An in-depth manual, a four-disc set of compiled and source operating system code, a separate collection of FreeBSD tools, and a subscription updating service (like IBM's Software Subscription for OS/400) cost a mere $135, with the update costing $25 a year thereafter. A second-hand 80 GB DLT drive, which I got from a neighbor by trading him a new DVD-R drive, cost me another $310. I already had a router, so I didn't need to buy one to connect all of my PCs and the server together and to the Internet. The grand total cost of my server--which runs the Samba print and file serving program to support my internal PCs and external Guild Companies employees scattered around the country, the Apache Web server for Web development, and the MySQL database and Java for our applications--came to $1,668.

This machine is a toy compared with an iSeries machine, I know. But this, I also know: It works. I haven't rebooted it, except when I thought the server had crashed, but I subsequently discovered that it was the X-terminal program, which predictably does not play nicely with Windows 2000, that had crashed. There's a reason why Yahoo! and a whole slew of Internet companies run on FreeBSD servers: They are cheap and they are reliable, like an iSeries--except for the cheap part, of course.

If I had my preference, that Dell box sitting behind me would have been an iSeries Model 230, if such a thing existed. I am not an iSeries developer, in the strictest sense of the words, as IBM means them, so I am not eligible for a special, low-cost demo machine. Besides, I don't want any favors from IBM. I just want a machine that does what I need--lets Guild Companies' employees do print and file sharing and Web development--at an attractive price. I think $2,000, including support for all of OS/400's features, but including the requisite governors to keep me from trying to use the machine in production to support my Web site, would be OK. Even $2,500, including a tape backup, would be alright for my purposes. That is a hefty premium, to my way of thinking.

And before we get into the secondhand iSeries and AS/400 market, let me be clear: I don't want to buy a used machine. I want a new box with reasonably modern hardware that can support the latest operating system, and do so with a certain amount of snap. A 50 MHz Cobra4 processor used in the AS/400 Model 150 puppy AS/400 that dates from late 1997, or the 100 MHz or 125 MHz Apache processors used in the initial Model 170 "Invader" servers that date from early 1998, is just not going to cut it, no matter how inexpensive. And, besides, V5R3 will not be supported on these machines. Anything that is not an iSeries Model 270 or 8XX box is not an investment in the future. It is an investment in the past.

If we ignored the fact that I get nervous about any processor that does not have L2 cache at this point in the history of the computer business, mainly because modern programming languages and middleware are dependent on it for decent performance, I might have been able to use a Model 270-2248, which is the least expensive Model 270 IBM offers. This machine uses a 400 MHz Pulsar PowerPC processor that has no L2 cache. This server supports from 256 MB to 4 GB of main memory (twice the maximum memory of our Dell server) and up to 420 GB of disk (more than the 360 GB that the Dell box supports, but the Dell machine supports 120 GB ATA drives, compared with the skinny 8.58 GB and 17.54 GB drives used in the Pulsar Model 270). As best I can figure, the Model 270-2248 has about the same oomph as the Dell 500SC. The base Model 270-2248 box costs $6,800. This includes an unlimited license to OS/400 and DB2/400 and the 5250 green-screen power that runs at 17 percent of the processor capacity of the box. (That's 25 CPWs out of a total of 150 CPWs of power.) The feature 3024 256 MB memory card for this machine costs $1,536. Each 17.54 GB disk (feature 4318) costs $1,400. I realize that the iSeries is designed for serious OLTP throughput, so those SCSI disks are worth a premium, compared with the ATA disks I am using in the Dell box. I need to add eight 17.54 disk drives to the base Model 270-2248 to get 140 GB of total storage, which is what I need to archive stuff for the time being. The feature 4838 10/100 Mbit Ethernet adapter card, which provides equivalent function to the Ethernet adapter built into my server motherboard, costs $900. A feature 6384 quarter-inch tape drive that is roughly equivalent to that dusty old DLT drive sells new for $4,000. I can't tell from IBM's sales manual if this is even sold or supported anymore, however.

Forgetting about the tape drive--which is, nonetheless, vital--the Model 270-2248 server I outlined above costs $20,436. If I got an incredible deal from an IBM reseller for this machine, I might be able to pick it up for around $18,000, and if I bought it secondhand--provided I could find one--I might be able to steal it for $16,000.

This is not the price of an entry server that will appeal to startup and small companies like Guild Companies. Such companies are the future of the iSeries market every bit as much as the companies that have moved through all the System/3X and AS/400 generations are the future of the platform. Or at least that is what I believe to be true. The reality is that IBM has not done enough to create a low-cost iSeries box. Neither have the Unix server vendors, incidentally, until recently. So it is no mystery that so many server shipments are based on 32-bit Intel chips, with such awful--and I mean full of awe--economic disparities. Now might be a good time to reexamine how a the 64-bit PowerPC processors used in existing iSeries machines or even in Apple Macs could be fitted with OS/400 to create a truly entry iSeries server with PC server economics. If Apple can make an iMac, then IBM can make a puppy iSeries. All it has to do is see that this is a good idea to attract new customers, to pump up sales volumes, and to attract software developers to the OS/400 platform. It's time.