The Four Hundred

It's the fourth quarter, and every sales person who goes into an iSeries or AS/400 account wants to have a new story to tell prospective buyers. IBM is in a fourth-quarter push with the iSeries, and has announced some tweaks to the OS/400 platform to give reps and business partners a reason to come a-calling, aside from the new hardware and the price cuts that were announced last week, which we report on elsewhere in this issue.

One of the more interesting tweaks is that IBM has increased the number of Linux partitions that can be put on iSeries servers using S-Star processors and Power4 processors. IBM's fractional partitioning, which debuted with OS/400 V5R1 last year, allowed up to four partitions per processor on machines with S-Star processors (prior generations of iSeries and AS/400 servers could only have one Linux partition per processor, and only some machines supported the fractional partitions). As we reported earlier this year, IBM is working to increase the number of logical partitions supported on iSeries machines to 255 (presumably for future 32-way and 64-way machines). We had been told by sources that this support might come with V5R2, but it was shelved for a later release. However, IBM seems to be letting some of this new partitioning code, expected in a future OS/400 release, out a little early. V5R1 partitions were based on quarters of processors, and V5R2 partitions are based on tenths of processors. However, IBM has not changed the maximum number of OS/400 partitions in V5R2 (although, in theory, it probably could). The increased number of partitions is applicable to Linux partitions, because Linux is a leaner operating system than OS/400.

Customers who have OS/400 V5R2 as their primary partition on a uniprocessor iSeries machine running an S-Star processor can now have up to nine Linux partitions on that machine, up from three with OS/400 V5R1. Dual-processor S-Star machines had a maximum of seven Linux partitions with V5R1, but that has been increased to 19 partitions with V5R2. Four-way S-Star servers can have a maximum of 16 OS/400 partitions--same as before with V5R1--but can now support up to 31 Linux partitions. Machines with eight or more S-Star or Power4 processors can support only 32 partitions, and one of them has to be OS/400 V5R1 or V5R2 and the remaining 31 can be either OS/400 or Linux or a mix of these operating systems. This is unchanged.

Here's a list of the specific machines that can support the increased numbers of Linux partitions:

Last week, IBM also announced a new version of its Connect for iSeries middleware, which is a stripped down version of its WebSphere MQ (formerly MQSeries) message queuing middleware that is designed to allow AS/400 and iSeries shops to participate in B2B exchanges. IBM made a very big deal about this at the end of 2000, when Connect for iSeries was announced, but the bloom is off the rose on B2B and dot-com projects. Nonetheless, big OS/400 shops, like other big companies, do sometimes participate in such B2B exchanges, and the idea is not flawed even if the hype for it was is overblown. Connect for iSeries Version 2, which will be available October 18, is based on more recent IBM WebSphere Application Server and MQSeries software, and supports a number of variants of the XML protocol that have been created for particular industries, including those for the travel reservations, medical information, and insurance-claim processing, as well as Ariba's cXML variant. Connect for iSeries Version 2 also has an improved catalog. The program will run on a Model 170-2385 or larger, a Model 270-2250 or larger, a Model 720-2061 or larger, and a Model 820-2395 or larger. The machines have to be equipped with OS/400 V5R1 or V5R2 and WebSphere Version 4. The program costs from $1,000 on a server in the P05 software tier to $30,000 for a server in the P60 tier. Connect for iSeries Version 1.1 has been withdrawn from marketing now that this new version is available.

Also on the WebSphere MQ front, IBM says that it will begin shipping WebSphere MQ Version 5.3 on December 6. The software now supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) data encryption, the de factor standard for data encryption on the Internet. IBM says that it also has improved the performance of MQ with this release, particularly for transactions using the Java Message Service protocol. Improvements were made to make MQ more scalable in clustered server configurations, too.

When we took an in-depth look at OS/400 V5R2 back in August , our IBM sources told us that the company planned to deliver WebSphere Application Server Express Version 5, a low-cost entry into the WebSphere product line, some time in the fourth quarter. IBM has now put out a product preview on WebSphere Express 5 and says that it will make it available sometime in the first quarter. Our guess is that WebSphere Express won't be free, like the WebSphere Application Server Standard Edition 3.5 software was, but it will probably cost significantly less than the $8,000 per processor that IBM charges for the current low-end WebSphere 4.0 product. And WebSphere Express will have approximately the same functionality as WebSphere Standard Edition 3.5 and the Jakarta Tomcat application server for iSeries (OS/400 Tomcat), meaning that it can deliver JavaServer Pages and Java servlets but not Enterprise JavaBeans. Incidentally, WebSphere Express will be available only on OS/400, Windows, and Linux servers, not on Unix or mainframe servers.

IBM also announced last week that it has improved the OS/400 PASE AIX runtime environment, which is nestled inside OS/400. With V5R2, PASE can now directly support VisualAge C++ Professional for AIX Version 6 and IBM C for AIX Version 6 compilers, which are popular on real AIX-based RS/6000 and pSeries servers. Now companies do not need an AIX server or workstation in which to compile their PASE applications; they can do it on the iSeries. IBM has also enabled PASE so that AIX applications running in PASE can launch the Java Virtual Machine embedded in OS/400, and that JVM now knows how to talk back to AIX applications running inside PASE. The upshot is that it is easier to port AIX applications that use a mix of C/C++ and Java code to PASE, and therefore to iSeries iron.

IBM has also reannounced that Tivoli Storage Manager Version 5.1.5 for the iSeries has been ported to the iSeries using PASE on OS/400 V5R1 and V5R2. This release became available on October 11.

IBM also announced that a bunch of OS/400 system programs will be withdrawn from marketing on January 8. DCE Base Services for AS/400 (5769-DC1) and DCE DES Library Routines for AS/400 (5769-DC3) are history. IBM also announced that it is no longer selling its Domino middleware under the tiered OS/400 pricing model that it has used in the past. Previously, Lotus Enterprise Integrator (5769-LNP) and Domino for iSeries (5769-LNT) were available through the OS/400 software distribution channel. But now customers must buy these through the same Passport channel, under processor-based pricing schemes, as other Domino customers.

IBM also reminded iSeries and AS/400 customers that if they do not order Software Subscription when acquiring a Version 4 or Version 5 OS/400 release, they must pay an after license fee if they order Software Subscription 30 days after they buy that OS/400 license or upgrade. Similarly, customers who do not renew Software Subscription before the renewal date will also have to pay this after license fee. This is no small matter. The after license fee for Software Subscription runs from $1,154 on a P05-class machine to $88,940 on a P60-class server.

Finally, IBM wants to remind everyone that the CISC-to-RISC upgrade kit has been withdrawn from marketing, too. The CISC-to-RISC upgrade kit, also known as the Enhanced Upgrade Assistant, was supported up through OS/400 V4R5, which was withdrawn from marketing on July 2 and will see its services discontinued on December 31.