But Wait, There's More

Here's One You Don't See Every Day: Sparc Server Clocks Running Backward
by Justin Ward

Great, I thought. I've found the cause of the problem. But even a wrong clock should strike 10:00 a.m. once a day. Why hadn't we received the report? The scheduled run time is only about six and a half minutes away, I figured, so I held off on fixing the clock to see what happened when it sends.

I waited a few minutes, and ran date again: 9:53:53, it said. I waited a bit, then ran it again: 9:53:51. Hmm . . . "date; sleep 5; date" returns "Sun Nov 14 09:53:53 EST 2004 Sun Nov 14 09:53:52 EST 2004." Time wasn't just frozen, it was running backward.

It turns out, the Solaris NTP daemon, xntpd, had been setting the clock back two seconds, every two seconds, for the prior nine days. The only reason anybody noticed was that our daily reports didn't show up, and the only indicator was the cron log. The xntpd thought it was doing the right thing, even though the NTP server was feeding it the correct time. Running ntpdate, which ignores the current system time and just resets the clock, got everything back on track.

Justin Ward is a Linux consultant and the IT manager for Guild Companies' Linux and Windows cluster. He is also a Unix and Linux system administrator at Thomson Financial and a senior technical editor at IT Jungle.

IBM Gives pSeries Power4 Users Trade-Ins to Move to Power5s

With volume shipments of its new eServer p5 590 and 595 machines just starting, and the fourth quarter about halfway done, IBM is looking to boost its Unix sales and is offering trade-in credits on older pSeries gear.

Such trade-in credits are a standard tactic from IBM in pushing the pSeries and the iSeries. Trade-ins are preferable to plain old discounts because they allow IBM to book revenue today and then send the credit back at some future date. IBM gets to grease the skids now, but doesn't have to pay for the grease until some future date--in this case, when it cuts the trade-in credit.

These trade-ins are also popular with IBM because it takes machines that might otherwise end up in a secondhand server market and put them under its control. IBM can sell the assets that come back as part of a trade through its Global Services unit, or it can sit on them. IBM also gives rebates (though not in this particular deal), which offset the cost of a server and come back not as cash, but as a form of funny money that can be used to buy other IBM goods and services.

Under this Power4-to-Power5 promotion announced this week, customers looking to get rid of their "Regatta" pSeries 670 or 690 servers and move to p5 590 or 595 servers can get a trade-in credit ranging from $60,000 to $320,000. The pSeries 670 topped out at 16 of IBM's Power4 processor cores, while the pSeries 690 has 32 of them. The machines that customers upgrade to under this promotion support a maximum of 32 (p5 590) or 64 (p5 595) processor cores. The p5 trade-in promotion runs until December 23, and IBM doesn't cut the trade-in check until the replaced machine is back in its hands.

There is a big wrinkle in this deal, however. Customers have to buy a p5 590 or 595 machine that has as many processors activated as they had inside the pSeries 670 or 690 box, whether or not those pSeries engines were activated. So if you had a pSeries 670 with eight engines turned on and eight engines mothballed, you have to buy a p5 590 with 16 engines turned on. IBM then turns around and cushions the economic blow of forcing that doubling of processors, but in an odd way.

IBM provides customers with additional processor activations for free on top of the trade-in credit (in this example, eight free activations). The customer ends up with 24 processors, where they started out with 8 engines. That is a lot more processing power for what could be a lot less money, considering that it costs $32,000 to activate a Power5 processor core on these high-end p5 machines. Still, asking a company to absorb three to four times the computing capacity, even with a big discount, is asking a lot.

IBM is also restricting this promotion to customers, and any company that intends to resell or lease the p5 590 or 595 cannot acquire these machines through this deal. Customers have until January 24 to accept delivery of the new p5 box.

A SAP-on-Itanium a Day Keeps HP's Critics At Bay?

Hewlett-Packard, which is the main user of the Itanium processor in the server market, is in a position of having to constantly justify the technical and demographic merits of the Itaniums.

This week, HP was rallying the SAP flag to the Itanium cause, saying that in the past 180 days, HP and software giant SAP AG had together shipped over 180 customers running the mySAP application suite on the Itanium platform. HP says that when it comes to supporting SAP, which runs on Windows, Unix, and Linux, the advantage of being able to run all of these platforms alone or in concert on the Itanium-based Integrity server line is appealing to SAP shops.

What neither HP nor SAP have said is how many high-end SAP customers have opted for other platforms, so this statistic just hangs out there in space. What we do know is that in HP's latest quarter, the company said that Integrity servers accounted for about 16 percent of the $1.03 billion in sales at its Business Critical Servers unit, up from a 5 percent share of sales this time last year. HP's Enterprise Server and Storage division had $4.1 billion in sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2004, so Itanium servers sales of about $161 million amounted to about 4 percent of that division's sales. While this growth is good, it is not a very big number, and while software ecosystems take time to build, Itanium is not doing as well in the market as many had hoped, despite its technical merits.

Board Member Exits SCO Group

Unix software vendor The SCO Group, which is embroiled in lawsuits with IBM, Red Hat, and Novell concerning the intellectual property of the Unix operating system, announced that Thomas Raimondi, a member of its board of directors since September 1999, has stepped down from that position.

Raimondi, who is chairman, CEO, and president of storage system integrator MTI Technology, says that he is stepping down from the SCO board because he needs to focus on MTI, which has been struggling in recent years, along with many players in the storage market, and has seen annual sales shrink from $227 million (in fiscal 2000) to $83.2 million (in fiscal 2004).

The company has booked annual losses since 2001, but since March 2003 it has been focusing on selling and supporting EMC arrays and has gradually pushed itself back into the black.

Incidentally, Ralph Yarro, chairman of The SCO Group, is a board member at MTI. Yarro says that SCO will continue with an eight-member board and has begun a search for a ninth member, who will be appointed at the company's annual shareholder meeting in 2005.

Cray Books $8 Million X1E and XD1 Supercomputer Deal

Supercomputer maker Cray has received an $8 million order from outside the United States for two supercomputers. While Cray would not specify who the deal is with, the company did say that it includes one of its new Cray X1E vector supercomputers, which were running about six months behind schedule thanks to delays from the IBM Microelectronics foundry that is making the X1E multichip modules for Cray and which are expected to start shipping in a few weeks.

The deal also includes one of the company's new Linux-Opteron Cray XD1 parallel supercomputers, which just started shipping a month ago. Cray added the XD1s to its X1 vector and "Red Storm" Cray XT3 product line when it acquired Canadian supercomputer upstart OctigaBay earlier this year for $115 million.

Peter Ungaro, Cray's chief of marketing, says that the two machines are scheduled for installation at the customer site during the first half of 2005, and adds that this is the second X1E order that Cray has received from outside the U.S. Whoever the customer is, they intend to cluster the two radically different supercomputers together, and the XD1 system is the largest OctigaBay box that Cray has sold to date.

Earlier this month, Cray said that parts shortages for the X1E MCMs as well as the router chips used in the XT3/Red Storm machines (also fabbed by IBM) would knock about $35m to $45m out of its 2004 sales, dropping it down to between $155 million and $165 million. The company is optimistic going forward, and with all three product lines--X1E, XD1, and XT3--available in volume, it still believes that it can more or less double sales to around $300 million in 2005.

IDC Says Services Spending to Grow Steadily

If you think that the IT services business has been dampened by continued sluggishness in the economies of the world, you'll be glad to learn that recent data from IDC may indicate otherwise. IDC expects companies and governments the world over to spend $553 billion on services that are external to their own organizations, according to a recent report. The researcher also expects that the IT services market will do reasonably well, compared with the overall IT market, in the next four years, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.9 percent. IDC says that utility computing and subscription-based pricing models, offshoring, and business process outsourcing are helping to redefine the IT services business, and says that it expects consolidation in the services business (particularly in Europe) and that global players will, despite any political pressures, continue to build up their offshoring capabilities.

META Group: IT Salaries Will Be Up 10% to 15% Through 2007

Being a human resources manager or an IT manager is rarely an easy job. In bad economic times, you have to lay off people and deal with tight budgets, and in the good times you have to cope with fast-rising salaries and employee turnover. The analysts at IT consultancy META Group say that they expect IT salaries to increase by 10 to 15 percent in the next three years, and will represent approximately 55 percent of the typical IT budget by 2007.

META says the economy is going to pick up in the next year, and that IT shops will be hard-pressed to keep their best talent from seeking "greener pastures" where they can get better pay and new challenges. META suggests that now is the time to add performance-based compensation packages, as well as implement employee morale, recruitment, and retention programs (including key things like flex time and telecommuting options). Application developers, security specialists, and network administrators are the hardest IT employees to hold on to, according to META.