Timothy Prickett Morgan
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X64 and Blade Servers Lead the Server Recovery
March 1, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreA recovery of sorts is underway in the server market, according to the latest statistics from Gartner that dices and slices the server metrics for the final quarter of 2009. While by no means a full-blown recovery–something no one expects–in server spending, the market seemed to be a little bit stronger than expected, signifying that companies are willing to dedicate some funds to new iron to support new and existing workloads.
“The recovery that began in the third quarter of 2009 based on x86 servers extended into the fourth quarter,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, the research vice president at Gartner who
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Hunting Down Storage Hogs
February 24, 2010 Hey, Joe
… Read moreMy System i 550 disk space keeps filling up, and now it’s approaching 87 percent utilization. I’m worried it will be a major problem once storage tops 90 percent used. I’ve checked everything I can think of. Do you have any ideas for what could be eating up my disk space?
–Tim
This is a common issue that most shops face at one time or another. Here are some common places to search for memory hogs on your system.
1. Excessive spooled files–Some shops are spooled file pack rats, refusing to delete large numbers of spooled files, sometimes for
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Naming Idiosyncrasies with the DB2 Storage Engine for MySQL
February 24, 2010 Susan Gantner
… Read moreIn a recent tip, I wrote about why I think MySQL is a great benefit to our platform. With its DB2 for i storage engine, MySQL allows yet one more way to access DB2 data. In this article, I’ll go into a few naming gotchas that can arise when using MySQL. But first I’ll describe some scenarios in which developers in today’s RPG shops may find themselves taking advantage of MySQL.
The first scenario is one I touched on in my last tip: the availability of a huge array of open source (i.e., free or nearly free) applications written
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Tivoli Provisioning Manager Deal Chops Prices in Half
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are looking to automate your provisioning operating systems on your servers, IBM has a deal for you. Well, yet another deal, I should say.
Just ahead of the Power7 systems launch a few weeks back, in announcement letter 310-113, IBM announced that it was slashing the price in half of its Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.1 software for slapping operating systems onto bare-metal servers and logical partitions. The deal is available in the United States and Canada and only through IBM’s Passport Advantage online store, and expires on March 31.
The deal applies to the Tivoli
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Big Blue Whips Out Xeon Blade Tuned for Virtualization
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreJust about every i/OS shop in the world has some sort of Windows-based system installed, and by the very nature of the OS/400 platform, these companies are undaunted by virtual or logical machine partitioning and understand immediately the value of driving up utilization on expensive iron to make the budget numbers come out.
That’s why a new Xeon-based blade server from IBM BladeCenter boxes might be intriguing to i/OS shops. The HS22V, you see, is tuned specifically to support virtualization hypervisors that in turn run virtual Linux or Windows instances.
The single-wide, full-height HS22V blade has 18 DDR3
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IBM and Partners to Push Chip Tech Down, and Costs, Too
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreBy virtue of its dominance over the global microprocessor market for PCs and servers, Intel is just about the only CPU maker that can afford to do chip design, process design, and wafer baking in its fabs all by its lonesome. Everyone else has to partner, including IBM.
IBM had a slew of partners to push its chip technology to 90 nanometer processors, then down to 65 nanometers, and further tightened to the 45 nanometer tech that is used to make the current eight-core Power7 processors, including customers Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, which use variants of
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The System iWant, 2010 Edition: Clustered Boxes
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith only a few machines launched in the actual Power7-based Power Systems lineup and additional machines not expected for a while, I have plenty of time to continue the conversation with you about my theoretical and completely hypothetical System iWant, 2010 Edition boxes. I have been through small machines, midrange machines, big iron, and blades and cookie sheet servers. I have wrestled with Windows and its place in i/OS shops and a few other issues worth thinking about as the Power7 machines were on the horizon. That leaves us with clustered machines.
There are a number of different
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i/OS Gets Short Sheeted with Power7 Thread Counts
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is no surprise at all when hardware features outrun software’s ability to keep up with those features. This is the computer business, and it has always been this way. If we waited for software to be perfectly aligned with hardware before the hardware was delivered, the pace of change in the IT business would be cut in half. Some might argue that this would be a marked improvement over the current way of doing things, but they would not be employees of IT vendors, who have been engaged in a feature and scalability arms race long since
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The Power7 Systems Sales Pitch
February 22, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe Power7 machines are out, and some of them started shipping last Friday. Others will start shipping in a matter of weeks. Now, the sales pitching and smooth talking by IBM and your local business partner will begin. So what, exactly, will that sales pitch be? That all depends on what gear you have installed, how old it is, who made it, and what applications it runs. One thing is for sure: IBM is trying to get out in front of a whole lot of upcoming server iron to show some good numbers.
Business partners make their own
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Admin Alert: Six Things Power i Administrators Need to Know
February 17, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreTo become an effective i/OS system administrator, you need to access a lot of information. This week, I’ll look at some of the more valuable pieces of information I frequently use to service my Power i systems and how I retrieve and maintain that information. Perhaps you can use this list as a starting point for collating your own critical i/OS knowledge base.
Serial Number, Processor Group, and Machine Type
It seems like outside vendors always ask for the serial number of the machine I’m working on. The system Processor Group (otherwise known as P Group, which is used for