Big Blue Boosts Trade-Ins For Power 770 Deal

May 21, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Boy, IBM sure seems hot to move its almost-top-end Power 770 servers these days. The company has two deals in the works, and it last week jacked up the trade-in credits on one deal while it at the same time backed off a little bit on the sweetener for another deal that went dormant at the end of March but which was revived two weeks ago.

IBM has been offering trade-in credits to customers who move from older Power-based servers or competitive Unix or proprietary machines made by Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Fujitsu to new Power7-based machines for so long it is hard to remember a time when it didn’t. The company is fussing with these deals all the time, so it is also hard to keep them straight. The last time this particular Power Systems Trade-In deal, which gives customers buying new Power7 iron a cash-rebate that ranges from a low of $250 on a PS700 blade server to a high of $120,000 on a loaded up Power 795, was tweaked was back in February, when it added in the new Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 Gen2 machines to the list of acquired machines. (These machines were launched in October 2011 and sport slightly faster Power7 CPUs and PCI-Express 2.0 peripheral slots.)

This time around, in announcement letter 312-063, IBM is juicing the deal for Power 770 buyers. Generally speaking, the trade-in rebates have been doubled compared to the levels they were at before this deal was tweaked on May 15. On certain smaller configurations of the Power 770s with relatively few cores activated, the rebates are almost three times as high, jumping from $750 to $2,000 on machines with from four to seven cores and from $1,250 to $3,000 on machines with eight to 15 cores. With this revision, the trade-ins for buyers of Power 770s now get from $2,000 to $40,000, depending on the configuration of the acquired machine.

This Power Systems trade-in deal sits beside a “spring cleaning” rebate that Big Blue revived in announcement letter 312-058 that is focused on the Power 770 and that gives customers rebates range from $6,500 to $35,000 and that works out to somewhere between 9.6 percent and 14.7 percent off list price for the raw processing capacity in the Power 770 for the configurations in the deal.

IBM i shops would probably love to see a deal sweetener like this for the Power 720, which is by far the most popular target acquisition for customers given their relatively small size. Particularly given the very sweet deal IBM is giving Linux shops with the PowerLinux machines and the intense pressure from Windows-X86 servers.

IBM Does March Madness Rebate On Power 770s

Nips And Tucks For IBM Power Systems Trade-In Rebate Deal

Big Blue Pulls The Plug On IBM i Discount Deal

IBM Throws The Books At Big Power7 Shops

IBM Tweaks Power Systems-IBM i Licensing Deal

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Best Practices for Doing IBM i Cloud Backup & DRaaS Right

In the technology business for 30+ years including more than a decade in cloud backup and disaster recovery, we’ve learned a few things along the way. Here are best practices to follow – and land mines to avoid.

RELIABILITY. Up to 71% of restores from tape contain failures.

BEST PRACTICE: Use disk-to-disk technology for backups.

With disk-to-disk technology, your backup data resides on disk drives, proven to be far more reliable than tapes. When your backup completes, you know the data is secure and accessible on the disk drive. With tapes you never really know if your data is usable until you try to restore it, at which point it’s too late.

BREADTH OF OFFERING. Choice in product and service offerings meet your business’ needs.

BEST PRACTICE: Don’t settle for less than what you need.

Vendor offerings vary widely. Some are designed primarily for consumers and others for enterprise data centers. Choose a solution that scales and offers the features you need to provide the level of service you expect. De-duplication and delta-block technologies will improve performance, reduce your data footprint and save you money. Find out if their de-duplication offering is at the file level or the block level. Make sure the solution can back up servers, PCs, and laptops as well your applications.

SECURITY. 60% of organizations using tapes don’t encrypt their backups.

BEST PRACTICE: End-to-end encryption with no “back door.”

Using encryption with tape makes backups run slowly and often takes too long to fit within a backup window. As a result, most people simply turn encryption off, creating a security risk. Even with the physical safety of disk-to-disk backup, encryption is essential. Look for 256-bit AES. Find a solution that encrypts your data during transmission and storage. Make certain there isn’t a “back door” that would let someone else view your data.

ACCESSIBILITY. Companies waste thousands of hours waiting on tapes.

BEST PRACTICE: Ensure that you can get your data back with minimal delay.

You should have direct access to your backups, with no time spent on physical transport (no trucks, no warehouses). Restores should take minutes, not hours or days. Set yourself up to work with your data, not wait for it. Make sure your solution provider can meet your Return-to-Operations (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) which determine how quickly you can recover your data and maintain business continuity. Inquire about onsite and offsite replication that provide both improved performance and a solid disaster recovery strategy.

CYBER SECURITY. More than 80 percent of U.S. companies have been successfully hacked, according to a Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.

BEST PRACTICE: Regular cyber security training and phishing tests for all employees using company email are essential to your organization.

Your end-users are the weak link in your network security. Today, your employees are frequently exposed to advanced phishing attacks. Trend Micro reported that 91% of successful data breaches started with a spear-phishing attack. Be sure your vendor of choice includes cyber security training as part of their backup and DR package.

SCALABILITY. Some backup systems can’t scale readily.

BEST PRACTICE: Invest in a data protection architecture that can grow with your business.

You should be able to back up your data no matter how large it grows. Starting small? Look for an option that handles your backups automatically. Then, as you grow, gives you tools to manage complex environments. Look for “changes-only” and compression technologies to speed backups and save space. And insist on bandwidth throttling to balance traffic and ensure network availability for your other business applications. Make sure that their solution offerings rely on common technology to scale easily as your business––and data––grow.

COST-EFFECTIVENESS

BEST PRACTICE: Calculate the true total cost of tape-based back up.

A 2019 Server OS Reliability Survey found that one hour of downtime costs at least $100K for 98% of companies to over $5 million for 34% of surveyed companies. When you do the math, the dollars make sense: Go with disk-to-disk. Unlike tape, there are close to zero handling costs—no rush deliveries, loading, accessing, locating, or repeated steps. And there’s one benefit you can’t factor directly: Reputation. Reliability and security can make an incalculable difference with just one avoided breach or failure.

COMPLIANCE. Most companies have problems satisfying privacy, security, and data retention regulations.

BEST PRACTICE: Choose a data protection partner who has deep know-how about compliance, and the technology to ensure it.

Disaster Recovery. Most companies lack a comprehensive, tested plan for disasters.

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor that delivers a complete DR solution.

You can’t say your data protection is complete until you have a disaster recovery plan that is itself complete and tested. Your backup vendor should have both the product mix and professional services team to help you prepare for a worst-case scenario. Make sure they can help configure your backups so you rebound quickly. Best bet: A vendor who can train you to deal with disasters confidently, based on your company’s actual configuration.

EASE OF USE. Some companies don’t —or can’t—manage their backups from one place.

BEST PRACTICE: Get control and reporting you can use anywhere, with ease. Managing your backup environment should be simple, and the software you use should eliminate any guesswork that could lead to lost data. You should know at all times if your data is protected across your entire network—including remote offices—by simply looking at a dashboard. The software should be simple to configure using wizards, yet powerful enough to meet your specific needs with customizable views, job propagation, and roles-based security.

OPERATING SYSTEM AND PLATFORM SUPPORT. Most backup vendors support a limited range of OS, server types, and applications.

BEST PRACTICE: Look for broad and deep technology that supports your complete environment. Your backup solution should accommodate your environment, not vice versa.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT. Backup vendors’ product support varies widely.

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor whose support is passionate, maybe even slightly obsessed. Customer support should be one of your vendor’s main selling points. You shouldn’t have to wonder if they’ll be there to help when you need them most. Do they offer phone support or email only, and who exactly are you talking to when you call that 800 number? Find a vendor that will treat your data as if it were their own.

REPUTATION. Does your backup vendor have a quality reputation and the financial resources to stay in business for the long haul?

BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor with strong financial backing and customer references. There are a lot of vendors that have come and gone. When you consider a service provider, look for one that has strong financial backing, a solid business plan and the ability to be in business as long as your data needs to be stored. Ask for customer references and case studies as their customers are the best validation you can get.

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