Sundry IBM i And Power Stack Announcements For Your Consideration

October 27, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is always a little mop up after major IBM i and Power Systems announcements, and there is usually a trickle of announcements that are not tied to the bi-annual launches of Technology Refreshes, which we generally expect in April and October. This latest cycle is no exception, and we have the mop and bucket out to finish out the current cycle.

In announcement letter AD25-0006, IBM says that it will allow customers to mix and match shared utility capacity for latency compute and main memory activated using Power Enterprise Pools 2.0 om-site capacity on demand with pay per use capacity for compute and main memory used on the Power Virtual Server instances on the IBM Cloud. Enterprise Pools capacity is billed by the minute, and PowerVS capacity is billed by the hour. IBM is not necessarily going to reconcile these prices for capacity to be the same, but it is now offering a hybrid billing option that allows for Enterprise Pool capacity to be converted to monthly billing and added to PowerVS capacity for a single bill. Moreover, for customers who have PowerVS Cloud Enterprise Savings Plans, which provides discounts for PowerVS capacity based on reserved usage meeting agreed to minimums, can have their Enterprise Pools capacity applied to those PowerVS Cloud Enterprise Savings Plans. This all seems very reasonable, and applies to IBM i, AIX, and Linux instances equally and is available on Power10 and Power11 hardware on both sides of the bill. This hybrid consolidated billing will be available starting on November 14.

As far of the IBM i and AIX technology refreshes, the PowerSC security and compliance tool for Power Systems was updated on October 8 in announcement letter AD25-1587. Specifically, there is a new PowerSC 2.3.0.2 fix pack that allows for PowerSC to be integrated with IBM’s Power Cyber Vault, a security tool that provides rapid threat detection and immutable snapshots for recovering in the event of a hack. Here are the main aspects of the fix pack to PowerSC, according to IBM:

“PowerSC integrates with Safeguarded Copy to provide visibility and assurance that storage volumes on PowerSC-managed endpoints are protected by a Cyber Vault Safeguarded Copy policy. The PowerSC UI displays a ransomware protection via Safeguarded Copy status dashboard indication and allows drill-down to view details of Safeguarded Copy status information. The integration is performed via Storage Copy Services Manager (CSM) APIs.”
“Extends the capability introduced in PowerSC Version 2.3 to configure IBM Storage Insights for ransomware alerts, by performing correlation of the IBM Storage FCM4 ransomware detection alerts with IBM PowerSC security events such as EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), anti-malware and File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) to increase the accuracy of ransomware detection. The integration is performed via the IBM Storage Insights Pro service.”

The PowerSC 2.3.0.2 fix pack will be available on December 5.

Back on October 7, IBM also said in announcement letter AD25-1583 that it would provide upgrades from Power10-based Power E1050 midrange servers (which have up to four sockets) to Power11-based Power E1150 midrange servers (which also max out at four sockets) that provide in-place, on-site upgrades that preserve the serial number of the underlying system after the upgrade is done. This is important because if the serial number is not preserved, the accounting bodies of the world consider it a machine replacement, and that means the initial Power10 system investment would have to be immediately written down and written off after the Power11 was brought in with a new serial number. The upgrades can be done by taking the Power10 machine down and literally upgrading it or by installing a Power11 machine next to the Power10, moving the data and apps, and moving the serial number and not having any downtime. This is just a statement of direction, and IBM has not said when this will be available.

Finally, in announcement letter AD25-1272, Big Blue says that IBM i subscriptions in the P20 tier – what it calls IBM i P20 Standard Edition – is now available through its e-config system configuration tool. Subscription pricing for the P20 tier was announced on July 8, but was only available through a special Programming Request for Price Quotation (PRPQ) process. Subscription pricing for the P20 tier is available for Power10 and Power11 machines and for IBM i 7.4, IBM i 7.5, and IBM i 7.6 releases of the operating system. This was available on October 17.

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