A Year From Now, Most Power9 Systems Bite The Rust

January 27, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

For whatever reason, there are lots of IBM announcements that are not released through IBM’s normal announcement channels. While participating in the 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey webinar, I came to find out that an announcement for the sunsetting of technical support for selected Power9 systems was actually released last year. We had been expecting it around now, and it doesn’t take effect until a year from now, so whew! No harm, no foul.

As it turns out, this announcement was made back on September 12, 2024, through a PDF posting on Big Blue’s Systems support portal. You have to know it is there to find it, and it sure is not obvious if you go to the main IBM site and drill down to Hardware and Software Support Services and drill down into IBM Hardware and IBM Software Maintenance Services where you might find this. This main support page just leads to a bunch of marketing PDFs for various support, which is fine. But this is like driving in Manhattan. As long as you already know how to get there, you can get around just fine. No one reached out to us to tell us, no one reached out to tell the business partners we know, and we wonder if anyone has reached out to tell you. One business partner we talked to found out from one of his customers.

With that off our chest, IBM said in that September 12 announcement that standard service on selected models of the Power9 systems will be withdrawn on January 31, 2026. At that time, a year from now, those Power9 machines will have been on the market for more than eight years. That is a pretty long lifecycle even for an AS/400 or IBM i on Power machine.

So what does this mean? Well, IBM tells us right here: “After End of Standard Service, IBM no longer provides preventive service, new updates or fixes, or development of new machine code updates, patches, or fixes (including security fixes).”

Here are the machines that are affected by this announcement:

For those of you who need it, IBM will be providing Extended Maintenance through “Hardware Support Extension,” which you can read about here. We will save you the trouble of reading through that full document and extract the relevant section for you:

1.3.1 Hardware Service Extension

After IBM has announced End of Service for specified Machines, IBM may offer limited support, including remote assistance, from IBM’s support center or via electronic access, and on-site assistance as determined by IBM, in response to Client requests for hardware support on the specified Machines that have reached End of Service (Hardware Service Extension).

IBM will:

provide remote technical support for problem determination (PD) and problem source identification (PSI);

provide on-site technical resources, if necessary, for hardware defect resolution (for example, but not limited to, the exchange of field replaceable units (FRUs), provided that the parts are generally commercially available); and

determine if an applicable resolution exists, which may include existing patches or workarounds for Client installation.

On-site repair is subject to the availability of repair parts and skilled resources and does not include repairs that require Software, Engineering, or Development Support. Response time and availability of parts may vary by location.

For the avoidance of doubt, IBM’s responsibilities under Hardware Service Extension do not include any: (1) preventive service; (2) support for newly reported defects or previously reported or known defects for which no updates, patches, or fixes were created; (3) engineering change management; or (4) development of any new machine code updates, patches , or fixes (including those designed to address security). IBM publishes its responses to security vulnerabilities at its IBM Product Security Incident Response (PSIRT) blog found here: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/

The covered Eligible Machines, Coverage Period (the HW Support Extension Effective Date to the HW Support Extension End Date), locations, options selected, and charges, all as applicable, are specified in the applicable TD. Newly added Machines and subsequent periods of coverage are documented in new TDs.

Notwithstanding the terms of Section 6, IBM may withdraw Hardware Service Extension for any Machine on 30 days’ written notice. Client will receive a credit for any remaining prepaid period associated with this IBM withdrawal. This Service does not automatically renew.

We do not know what the incremental cost is for Hardware Service Extension over the regular hardware support, but we presume it is pricey, if Software Maintenance support deltas are any guide.

You will not that the Power E950 midrange system and the Power E980 high-end system were not on this list of machines that have hardware support being withdrawn. We will keep an eye out for when these get mothballed. The Power E980 was generally available in September 2018 and was last sold new in October 2022 according to its product support page. The Power E950 was first delivered in August 2018 and last sold new in October 2023 according to its product support page. Neither machine has had an End of Development (EOD) or End of Support (EOS) date set as yet.

Editor’s Note: A day after our story ran, IBM put out announcement letter AD25-0134, which detailed the end of standard service for the entry-level machines outlined above. Still not work on when the Power E950 and Power E980 bite the rust.

One thought on “A Year From Now, Most Power9 Systems Bite The Rust”

Bart G says:

January 28, 2025 at 3:41 am

I afraid that recent IBM announcements are chaotic. It does not help a community to support platform properly.
The document was shared within community within last months, but most of the people did not take it serious because the official, well known site still does talk about end of support for POWER9 models. https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7093106
Not sure why IBM is creating so much confusion.

This Issue Sponsored By

Table of Contents

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search