The Four Hundred

IBM always likes to have new hardware to show off at the COMMON midrange trade show, which is probably why it last week announced enhancements to the inboard and outboard Intel-based coprocessor servers that can be linked into iSeries and AS/400 servers. The enhancements include a new Integrated xSeries Server card and an increased number of Integrated xSeries Adapter cards supported on many iSeries machines. IBM also debuted a new I/O card for Linux partitions.

The new IxS and IxA hardware, originally expected to be announced in November, will not be available until November 15. The faster IxS server card will allow IBM to support bigger Windows 2000 jobs in hybrid OS/400-Windows setups, and it positions IBM to support Windows .NET Server 2003 when it becomes available. IBM is keeping the prior generation IxS cards in the field (after a substantial price cut), so customers who have or are moving to OS/400 V5R1, or sticking with Windows NT 4.0, will have options as well.

The new IxS card requires OS/400 V5R2, which means IBM is using these faster cards to encourage customers to move up to V5R2. This is a tactic the company has used time and again, which probably means that it works. The IxS card, which plugs into PCI bus slots, is feature 2792 on iSeries Model 270 servers and is feature 2892 in iSeries Model 820, 830, 840, 890, SB2, and SB3 servers. Both IxS cards are based on a single "Prestonia" Pentium 4 Xeon processor with 512 KB of L2 cache integrated on the processor, which has a 60 percent higher clock speed than the current IxS card, which uses a 1 GHz Pentium III processor but probably provides only 30 to 40 percent more real throughput running Windows applications. The 1.6 GHz IxS card has to be equipped with a minimum of 1 GB of main memory, and can use 512 MB or 1 GB memory modules (in pairs, as is the case in most servers) for a maximum of 4 GB of main memory. This IxS card, unlike those in all prior machines, has an integrated 10/100 Mbit Ethernet adapter, but it can be equipped with auxiliary Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet cards if customers need more bandwidth. Both the feature 2792 and the 2892 cards sell for $1,900, which is a lot less expensive than the $2,800 IBM was charging for the 1 GHz IxS cards before last week, when it slashed prices on that card, too.

The 1 GHz Pentium III IxS card cost $2,800 when OS/400 V5R1 was announced last year. An Ethernet card for that IxS cost $900, a 512 MB memory card cost $1,610, and a keyboard, a mouse, and cables cost $200. IBM has cut the price of the IxS to $1,300, it cut the price of the Ethernet card to $600, and cut the price of a 512 MB memory card to $720. (Keyboard, mouse, and cable prices remain the same.) These price changes have dropped a configured 1 GHz Pentium III IxS card from $5,510 to $2,820, a 49 percent price drop. This is not something you see from IBM every day, but as the Green Streak promotion has shown, some IBMers think (correctly, I believe) that IBM has got to make substantial cuts in the cost of iSeries hardware. This time last year, a 1 GHz Pentium III IxS card with 1 GB of main memory cost $7,200, but the new 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 Xeon IxS card costs only $3,550. The upshot is that the new 1.6 GHz IxS card offers nearly three times the bang for the buck as the 1 GHz IxS card that was the hot item last year. This is exactly the kind of aggressive move that IBM needs to make to keep the iSeries market vibrant and relevant. Incidentally, the PCI-based Gigabit Ethernet cards for the new IxS card cost either $1,500 or $1,820; a Token-Ring card can also be plugged into these IxS cards.

The IxS cards are not powerful enough for all OS/400-Windows hybrid applications, which is why IBM created the IxA cards, to connect various external IBM xSeries servers to iSeries machines. IxA-attached xSeries machines are functionally equivalent to the IxS in-board server coprocessors, at least as far as OS/400 and Windows are concerned.

IBM has decided to expand the number of IxA cards that are supported on iSeries machines for customers running OS/400 V5R1 and V5R2. The Model 270 still supports only two IxA cards, and the Model 890 still supports only 32 IxA cards. The number of IxA cards on the Model 820 has been doubled to eight, the number on the Model 830 has been doubled to 16, and the number on the Model 840 has been doubled to 32.

Open bay models of the xSeries 235 (one or two processors), xSeries 255 (one to four processors), xSeries 360 (two to four processors), and xSeries 440 (two to eight processors) can be attached to the iSeries through the IxA cards. Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server are supported on IxA configurations, and support for Windows .NET Server 2003, the so-called "Whistler" kicker to Windows 2000, will be supported some time in the first quarter of 2003, when Microsoft is expected to get that new operating system in the field.

IBM also made two announcements last week concerning the storage capabilities in iSeries Linux partitions. The company has added new dynamic virtual storage capability and has also rolled out a new PCI card for connecting iSeries Linux environments to storage devices that use the Fibre Channel protocol.

The new dynamic virtual storage capability allows users to add new "disk storage spaces" (akin to an auxiliary storage pool in OS/400) to Linux partitions on-the-fly, without requiring an IPL. Each server can house up to 20 of these virtual disk storage spaces for Linux, and each virtual disk storage space can be between 1 MB and 64 GB in size. IBM says this new capability, announced October 8, allows Linux to leverage the advanced iSeries storage architecture. This capability requires OS/400 V5R2 to reside in the primary partition.

The new Fibre Channel host bus adapter is being manufactured by Emulex, an Irvine, California, company that provides Fibre Channel host bus adapters to the biggest players in the storage area network business. This PCI card is being sold by IBM as the 2766 Fibre Channel adapter, feature code FC0612. While readers might recognize that this 2766 Fibre Channel adapter is the same one that IBM sells for connecting OS/400 to Fibre Channel disk drives, the firmware delivered on the card when you order feature code FC0612 is specifically coded to provide the "handshake" support for processing reads and writes from iSeries Linux applications. The availability of this card also marks the introduction of direct I/O in iSeries Linux partitions, which IBM had said it would deliver. Before OS/400 V5R2, I/O for iSeries Linux applications was managed by the OS/400 bus, using microcode that IBM refers to as Virtual I/O.

The 2766 Fibre Channel adapter is based on the Emulex LightPulse LP9002L, a 2 Gbps host bus adapter that supports data speeds of up to 400 Mbps over a variety of storage area network topologies. IBM says that this new feature allows iSeries Linux partitions to connect to its Enterprise Storage Server, code-named "Shark," but makes no mention of other storage area network environments available on the market. The feature 2765 adapter costs $3,800, and the feature 2766 adapter costs $6,000.

There was an interesting thing that IBM did not announce for the iSeries line last week. The pSeries and RS/6000 line just got two new 10K RPM disk drives that come in 36.4 GB and 146.8 GB capacities. It is unclear if the drives are being made by IBM itself (which is selling its disk drive business to Hitachi), its sometime disk supplier Seagate Technology, or another SCSI disk supplier. The 36.4 GB disk has a 16-bit Ultra SCSI interface, an average seek time of 6.02 milliseconds, an average latency of 2.99 milliseconds, and a maximum data transfer rate of 44.3 MB/sec. It costs $1,900. The 146.8 GB disk has a 16-bit Ultra3 SCSI interface, an average seek time of 4.94 milliseconds, an average latency of 2.99 milliseconds, and a maximum data transfer rate of 67 MB/sec. It costs $4,082 or $4,900, depending on the disk drive assembly wrapped around the disk. Oddly enough, the fatter disk is faster, and it might be a great drive for certain iSeries applications (such as nearline storage). Whether this big disk drive will come to the iSeries is unclear.