Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Data Center Count Shrinks As The Big Get Bigger
October 15, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreSo how many data centers, server rooms, and data closets do you think there are in the United States? You guess maybe 20,000? Maybe 100,000? Try 2.94 million, at least according to the box counters at IDC.
This is a much larger number than you might expect, and considering there are tens of millions of small businesses in the U.S., maybe you were guessing the number should be larger. But I was surprised that the number was more than a couple hundred thousand myself, assuming that most businesses did as I did for many years, which is tuck a
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Big Blue Pits PureData Appliance Against Ellison’s Exadata
October 15, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIBM is settling into a spring-fall cadence for system announcements, with some wiggling here and there as machines come out early or a little late. We got the first Power7+ machines on October 3, and the new “Project Sparta” PureData appliances for “big data” and “cloud” came out last week on October 9. I get the big data part of the PureData announcements, but after analyzing the announcements and getting briefed by Big Blue, I still don’t get the cloud part. And I don’t get why the names on all of this stuff need to be so complicated.
The Project
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IBM Adds A Bunch Of I/O Devices To Power Systems
October 15, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWhile the Power7+ chip, the new Power 770+ and Power 780+ systems, and IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 5 were the dominant parts of the October 3 announcements, IBM made a bunch of changes to its lineup of I/O devices–both storage and networking–that have an effect on the entire Power Systems range and that keep the product line moving forward along with the relentless tide of ever-increasing capacity that sweeps us along in the IT racket.
The I/O enhancements from IBM for the Power Systems machines were all rolled up in announcement letter 112-180. Perhaps the most exciting of
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IBM Carves Out Upgrade Paths To New Power7+ Systems
October 15, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt was not a foregone conclusion that there would be upgrades available from Power6 and Power6+ systems to Power7+ machines, although many of us were guessing that there would be upgrades between the Power7 iron to Power7+ machinery. As it turns out, IBM is being pretty generous with its upgrade policy, or at least as generous as it can be within the confines of the very strict accounting rules that govern upgrades and the preservation of serial numbers on IT gear.
You may not be aware of it, but there are in fact accounting rules that stipulate how much of
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IBM Preps Big Data, Cloud “Project Sparta” Announcements For October 9
October 8, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreApril was a busy month for IBM with a slew of Power Systems and IBM i announcements, and October is shaping up to be a busy time, too.
IBM has sent out the invitations to an online event that it is hosting on October 9 at 2 p.m. Eastern that will talk about “the new PureSystems Family Member,” to quote Big Blue, that will “accelerate big data and cloud with Expert Integrated Systems.”
A story last week in the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things D column said that IBM was fixing to launch some new iron that was developed
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IBM Tweaks Power Systems, Flex Systems Prices
October 8, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs part of last week’s Power Systems announcements, IBM tweaked a bunch of different prices in the Power Systems and Flex Systems lineup.
In announcement letter 312-113, Big Blue cut prices on disk drives in its PowerLinux 7R1 Linux-only machines, which already have artificially low prices compared to plain vanilla Power Systems 730 machines that can run AIX or IBM i in addition to Linux. I described the price differential that the PowerLinux machines enjoy here back in May, and the gap just got larger.
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IBM i 7.1 TR5 Updates Come Out, Like Clockwork
October 8, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreLast week at the iBelieve NY event hosted by looksoftware, Allison Butterill, the IBM i product offering manager, was hinting about as strongly as she could without getting into the Big Blue doghouse that Technology Refresh updates for the IBM i operating system were going to be on a regular pattern, like the ticking and tocking of a clock, on a April-October bi-annual cadence.
So it was not much of a surprise to all of us that IBM i 7.1 got Technology Refresh 5, or TR5 for short, right on time as part of the October 3 announcements last
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Power7+ Launches In Multi-Chassis Power 770+ And 780+ Systems
October 8, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreAs an avid reader of The Four Hundred, you were thinking that IBM was going to start rolling out the Power7+ processors at the high-end of the Power Systems server line, where volumes are lowest and where the company can extract the most money possible out of each chip that comes off the line. And as usual, you were right. And if you are by any chance in the middle of a Power 770 or Power 780 deal, you need to stop and take a hard look at the new Power 770+ and Power 780+ machines that were announced
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Admin Alert: Seven Things You Should Be Monitoring On Your System
October 3, 2012 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreLast year, I wrote a two-part article outlining a basic plan for monitoring and answering IBM i error messages. But while it’s important to detect and answer error messages that require a response right now, it’s equally important to detect developing situations that will cause system problems if left alone. This week, I’ll discuss seven other things besides error messages that you should be monitoring for on your IBM i systems.
The Basics
For this article, let’s assume you are already using a system monitoring product to send out pager, email, or text alerts whenever an error message shows
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Alternatives To SQL Literals
October 3, 2012 Ted Holt
… Read moreLiterals have caused me grief on more than one occasion. Trying to figure out what a certain number or character literal means in a program has wasted too much of my time, and my time is more valuable to me than money. I have written about this topic before, but I have not talked about literals in SQL.
The example I’ve chosen may not be the best one, since the ratio of pounds to kilograms never changes. I chose it because it’s one most people should be able to relate to. The article I just referred to covers the