Domino on the iSeries: The Empire Can Strike Back

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks ago, I wrote a competitive analysis piece showing the cost of Domino groupware software running on the iSeries compared to Windows and Unix platforms. I was not exactly pleased with the relative poor showing that the iSeries had on the NotesBench Notes/Domino benchmark tests. My displeasure is something that quite a few customers shared as well. I learned this from emails that readers sent to me after the story ran. The story certainly got IBM's attention, and to its credit, Big Blue responded to the story and told me that it was contemplating ways of addressing the issue.

Jim Herring, director of iSeries product management and business operations, spoke to me about the issues surrounding Domino on the iSeries, and I also spoke to IBMers in marketing and in the Rochester Labs about the issues. After all of those discussions, I have the sense that IBM understands the issues I outlined and why I was particularly annoyed by the poor showing of the iSeries on the NotesBench tests. And these same people pointed out many benefits that the iSeries platform has when running Domino workloads and why that makes it worth more money than a Wintel or Unix standalone server running the same Domino workloads.

"Our value proposition is that we support multiple workloads, and we think there is incredible utility in running Domino on i5/OS," explains Herring. And he makes no bones about how IBM is positioning Domino on the iSeries. "We are a value-based play, and it is up to the customer to determine the value of the offering." And while Herring is entertaining some of the options I suggested, he made one thing clear. "We don't want the solution to be so complicated that the guy has to get his contract out every time he changes a partition." Fair enough. But I think IBM can make Domino on the i5 more competitive, and do so in a relatively easy way.

Here's what I have gleaned from my conversations with IBM. From IBM's point of view, the company has been using the NotesBench tests mostly to prove the scalability of the iSeries platform and in showing the performance of Domino releases as they come out--R6 to R5, R7 to R6, and so forth. And this is a perfectly legitimate reason to run benchmarks.

There is no question that the iSeries has great scalability on Domino workloads, as IBM clearly shows in the NotesBench results. IBM is right to point out that the subsystem architecture of OS/400 and i5/OS allows it to run many more end users than Windows, Unix, or Linux platforms within a single instance of an operating system. For example, one iSeries configuration tested put 175,000 users on a single i5/OS image, while a Hewlett-Packard machine required eight operating system images to reach 120,000 users-- because Windows, Unix, and Linux do not support subsystems. The subsystems on OS/400 and i5/OS allow Domino to be more resilient--Domino servers can be cloned and independently restarted without requiring the reboot of an operating system. This has real economic value. No question about it. My point was, and still is, that IBM needs to qualify and quantify that benefit.

IBM has also tried to make the argument with me that the iSeries offers the highest Domino scalability, as demonstrated by the NotesBench tests, but this is stretching it a bit. If HP pulled out the stops and tested Domino on a 64-way Integrity Superdome box, it could undoubtedly beat the current benchmark tests IBM has fielded for the iSeries. And such a machine might be capable of supporting close to 800,000 Domino R6 Mail users. And a 64-way i5 595 would be around the same performance, and because the p5 595 has about 15 percent more power, the p5 595 would not be that far out of line with the i5 595, supporting maybe 1 million R6 users. (Unlike on the TPC-C online transaction processing test, where IBM's p5 team has been very, very aggressive about performance tuning on the p5 and by creating a system that shows great inherent performance on workloads like the TPC-C test.) Of course, this number of users is ridiculous, just like the number of TPC-C users on modern machines is silly. I don't think very many companies support 1 million Domino users, much less on a single machine.

That was the point I was trying to make a few weeks ago. IBM used to sell "Bumblebee" Dedicated Servers for Domino servers running OS/400 and Domino as competitors to the iSeries. For many years, these machines made perfect sense as a platform for running Domino. These boxes had relatively limited performance and relatively low cost, which made them appropriate as a groupware server for OS/400 shops. Now, we live in a world of virtualized servers and mixed workloads on a single server, which IBM clearly supports on the i5 machines. And in that world, the i5 550 Domino Edition, which offers a 40 percent price discount on the base i5 configuration when supporting Domino, does not reflect how people are using Domino in real iSeries shops today. IBM made this case to me over and over again, and I concur. Most customers do not need to support tens of thousands of Domino mail accounts, and if they do, they can throw a few processors onto their production machine, carve out a few logical partitions, and put Domino there--where it correctly belongs. But, unfortunately, the NotesBench test cannot quantify the pricing of a Domino partition or partitions on a server that is doing other things.

My previous story suggested IBM show the economic consequences of putting Domino on AIX and Linux partitions on the iSeries, then putting it on i5/OS partitions, on a production machine with a set number of users. I have gone so far to suggest that IBM should create a special Domino partition pricing for the iSeries, and Herring said to me last week that IBM had not considered that and now he would give it very serious consideration.

This would be technically difficult, but not impossible. Neither Domino R6 nor Domino R7 require DB2/400 as a data store, and they simply store Notes databases and other Domino files in flatfile NSF format in the Integrated File System. Next year, IBM will roll out native DB2/400 data store for Notes and Domino workloads, which will allow customers to keep all of their data inside DB2/400 and allow both structured and unstructured data to be searched and accessed using the same tools. In effect, it allows integration of RPG and Domino workloads. This is a good thing for a lot of OS/400 shops. But it is not necessary. The way the integrated i5/OS operating system is architected, if you turn on i5/OS, you cannot turn off DB2/400. So if you create, for instance, a single-processor Domino partition for i5/OS, you have also--whether you like it or not--created an i5/OS partition that can support DB2/400 and any RPG or COBOL applications on the machine.

IBM could offer a very low-priced AIX or Linux partition for Domino--it already does this, if you think about it, because you can activate a processor and not put i5/OS on it. It costs a few grand to put AIX or Linux on an i5 processor after you activate the hardware, and such a processor dedicated for Domino would probably not be more expensive than a standalone Linux or Unix server--even after you associated a percentage of the base server costs--frame, processor, memory, disks, power supplies, network, cables, and so forth--to the Domino partition running on Linux or AIX. The problem with this is, i5/OS is a better platform on which to run Domino.

IBM could take a two-prong attack, peddling Linux or AIX to cost-sensitive customers, and then offer an i5/OS Domino partition that is gauged not by whether or not DB2/400 is turned on, but rather by the number of Notes clients and users who are accessing the system. "I think it would be very interesting to price Domino by the partition," said Herring as he mulled over the idea. But he went on to explain that this would have to be a "terms and conditions" play.

This is what Herring means by that. IBM would offer user-related pricing on that low-cost Domino partition. This is how the i5 550 Domino Edition works. You have to prove you have Domino and a specific number of various Domino clients. There are a number of options on that machine: You can buy two Domino server licenses and 800 Notes client licenses; two Domino server licenses, 500 Notes client licenses, and 400 licenses of Notes, Sametime, QuickPlace, Domino.doc, WebSphere Portal, or Workplace Services Express; one processor license for Workplace Collaboration Services; two processor licenses for Workplace Services Express, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Instant Messaging, or Web Conferencing Extranet; 500 Workplace Services Express clients; or replacing an existing Bumblebee server.

Yes, that is complex. But by gauging the end user clients on a Domino partition, IBM could more accurately reflect how iSeries shops are actually trying to use Domino and help make a better case for consolidating Domino on Windows or Unix onto the i5/OS platform. IBM could probably price this aggressively enough to start chasing Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise groupware clients at OS/400 shops.

As a final thought, I think IBM has to have two tiers for this proposed iSeries Dedicated Processor for Domino or iSeries Dedicated Partition for Domino. (You can't say iSeries Dedicated Engine for Domino because the acronym would be "iDED.") IBM should offer one low price for customers who want the subsystem support of i5/OS on this so-called DPD--customers who have no desire to store DB2 data in DB2/400. Then, IBM should have a higher price--but not as high as a regular RPG-DB2/400 engine--for the DPD that uses DB2/400 as the data store. This is perfectly reasonable.

If you want IBM to offer something like the DPD, you have to let Big Blue know. Send me emails or send your IBM sales rep emails. Get the message out, and if you have any better ideas, let me know. I would love to hear what you think.

RELATED STORIES

Domino on the iSeries Versus the Competition

iSeries for Domino Servers: A Look Under the Hood