Older Power Iron Starts Heading for the Dustbin

May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

With Power6+ systems in the market and Power7 machinery slated for next year, and with IBM’s supply chain expert (Bob Moffatt) in charge of its Systems and Technology Group, you can’t expect older gear to stay in the product line for very long.

And so it comes as little surprise that IBM is already starting to wind down some Power6 iron. As part of the April 28 announcements, IBM said that starting July 1 it would stop selling 4.2 GHz Power6 processor boards and processor activations for them inside the original Power 570 server announced in the summer of 2007. (That’s the 9117-MMA box, you’ll remember.) IBM also said that effective April 28, it would stop selling the iSeries Model 810, 825, 870, and 890 machines and a slew of features for these boxes (processor upgrades, disk drives, Ethernet and Token Ring adapters, and so on. (You can read all the details here.)

IBM also said in that announcement letter that processor upgrades within 9405-520, 9406-520, and 9406-570 machines (those are the first generation of Power6 boxes from 2007, before the i-p convergence last April) as well as many features unique to these machines were withdrawn from marketing on April 28. So were SCSI disk drives for these machines. Starting November 27, processor upgrades for 9406-525, 9406-550, and 9407-515 machines will be chopped from the product catalog, and a bunch of features for these machines as well as for the 9407-M15, 9408-M25, and 9409-M50 will be cut, too.

In a separate announcement, IBM said that certain disk, memory, and backplane features of Power 520 and Power 550 machines will be removed from the product line. (These, again, are boxes that were sold prior to the i-p convergence.) IBM is killing off some memory modules used with the JS22 blades, too. And in yet another announcement, a slew of System p features that span the older Power6 line will be withdrawn from marketing as of August 28. The biggies are SCSI disks and SCSI disk controllers. IBM will stop selling 146.8 GB 15K RPM SCSI disks on the Power 595 on November 27.

Basically, IBM is now ready to make the full switch to SAS disks, and is giving i shops fair warning.

Power Systems Finally Get Solid State Disks

New Power6+ Iron: The Feeds and Speeds

IBM Launches Power6+ Servers–Again

IBM Adds New SAS, SSD Disks to Servers

Sundry October Power Systems Announcements

IBM Doubles the Cores on Midrange Power Systems

Various System i and Power Systems i Nips and Tucks

Power Systems Memory Prices Slashed to Promote Virtualization

Sundry July Power Systems Announcements

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Tags: Tags: mtfh_rc, Volume 18, Number 19 -- May 18, 2009

Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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Please visit ucgtechnologies.com/IBM-POWER9-systems for more information.

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Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021

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