More Servers Added to the IBM i License Transfer Deal
April 25, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
|
IBM is letting some more of its i5/OS and IBM i software licenses slide from old machines to newer ones to cushion the blow of upgrading to more modern Power-based machinery. If you drill down into announcement letter 211-108, which discussed a lot of the tweaks and changes Big Blue did for IBM i 6.1.1 and 7.1 in conjunction with the launch of fatter PS7XX blade servers and faster engines for the Power 750 midrange server, you will see that the Power 520 (both the 9405-520 and the 9406-520 machines) as well as the new PS703 and PS704 blade servers have been added to the list of eligible machines that can have their operating system licenses pried loose from their hardware and moved to different machines as part of a system replacement. The PS703 and PS704 blades were added to the list of machines that can catch these licenses once they are crowbarred loose from the older servers. The license transfer has been around for a number of years, and was somewhat formalized in August 2009 and then fully formalized in February of this year. Under that deal, customers who are on i5/OS V5R4 (5772-SS1), IBM i 6.1 (5761-SS1), or IBM i 7.1 (5770-SS1) and who are running those operating systems on Power5/5+, Power 6/6+, or Power 7 machines can slide those licenses from one machine to another and only have to pay a net-priced fee for the operating system license plus a $5,000 fee covering the transfer. IBM set up different groups of servers and has rules about what machine you can start from and what one you can move to, but generally speaking, you can’t jump an i5/OS or IBM i license from one Power5 or Power5+ machine to another Power5 or Power5+ machine, but you can jump from this older gear to Power6, Power6+, or Power 7 iron. You also can’t jump from any old machine to any new machine, there are brackets of eligible machines. Here is the updated matrix table of From Systems and To Systems that are included in the i5/OS and IBM i license transfer deal: I don’t say this kind of thing often, but the license transfer deal is one of the most decent things IBM has done for the AS/400 customer base since it stopped pillaging them for hardware and green-screen processing capacity a few years back. It’s a pity that it wasn’t always this way, in fact. RELATED STORIES More Software Pricing Carrots for IBM i Shops IBM Kills Off Remaining Power6 and Power6+ Systems i5/OS and IBM i Support: How Long Does It Last? The Carrot: i5/OS V5R4 Gets Execution Stay Until May The Stick: IBM Jacks Up i5/OS V5R4 Prices Big Blue Widens IBM i User Fee Discount Deal Entry IBM i Server Deals Greased With License Discounts IBM Ducks i Pricing on Most Entry Power7 Servers IBM Allows i and 5250 Licenses to Jump Hardware Reader Feedback on Allowing IBM i and 5250 Licenses to Jump Hardware IBM Slashes 5250 Enablement Prices, Other Power Systems Tweaks
|
