• i5/OS V5R3 Support Ends in April 2009

  February 4, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The other shoe has dropped, like most of us expected it would, for OS/400 V5R3. With the announcement last week of i5/OS V6R1, which begins shipping on March 21, IBM getting customers on the older V5R3 release of the operating system ready for the day when support will no longer be available for that platform. That day, we learned last week, is April 30, 2009. Just about a year ago, IBM announced that it would stop selling OS/400 V5R3 and related systems programs as of January 8, 2008. And with i5/OS V6R1 looming large since July of last year, it

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• Reader Feedback: Run Collection Services Before You Upgrade

  February 4, 2008 Hey, TPM

  Good article and guidance regarding moving to V6R1. [Editor’s Note: The reader is referring to Bracing for i5/OS V6R1 and the Winding Down of V5, from the January 14 issue of The Four Hundred.] If you get the opportunity, remind folks to run the system’s Collection Services before moving to capture a set of baseline performance data. Once they move the data, if not needed, it can be erased. If they move and have some performance issues, they have a base to compare to. Otherwise, it’s really a challenge for the performance analyst to make good decisions as

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• IBM Brings SAN Performance to Parity with Internal Arrays

  February 4, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The AS/400, iSeries, and System i platform has been on the vanguard of technologies lots of times in its long history. They were rack-mounted long before that was cool, they always used the most advanced CMOS processor designs, they employed asymmetric multiprocessing, small form factor disks, the densest main memory, and so on. One area where the i5/OS and OS/400 platform has not been at the front end of technology is in storage area networks, or SANs. With the announcements from IBM last week, that is about to change. The concept of storage area networks is a bit “back to

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• Let’s Take a Closer Look at JS22 Blade Servers Running i5OS V6R1

  February 4, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  No new server hardware relating to the i5/OS platform was announced in conjunction with the launch of i5/OS V6R1 last week, but IBM did, as expected, say that V6R1 would be the official release supported on the JS22 two-socket, Power6-based blade server that IBM announced last November. The JS22s come in a standard BladeCenter form factor and can be plugged into either the new BladeCenter H chassis, which runs on 220/240-volt power and comes in a 9U rack-mounted form factor with room for 14 vertical blades. The BladeCenter S chassis, which is aimed at small and medium businesses and office

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• Alternate Operating System Support Improved with i5/OS V6R1

  February 4, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  To a certain way of thinking about it, the System i server is not an operating system running on a piece of hardware. It is a hybrid machine that runs a collection of operating systems (i5/OS, AIX, and Linux) running on Power processors. The box can also support other operating systems (Windows and Linux) on inboard or outboard System x servers that are all linked into the same storage infrastructure either under the skins of the server or attached to it through iSCSI adapters or Fibre Channel links to storage area networks. As part of the rollout of i5/OS V6R1

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• i5/OS V6R1 and Its Java Enhancements

  February 4, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last year, when IBM did a preview of V6R1, one of the things it talked about as a feature for the new operating system was much-improved Java performance using a new 64-bit Java Virtual Machine. This new JVM is distinct from the so-called classic 64-bit JVM, which IBM’s Rochester labs created many years ago for the platform. It is also distinct from the 32-bit JVM that IBM gave out as an alternative to customers who wanted peppier Java execution back in 2006 with i5/OS V5R4. As I suspected when IBM previewed this new 64-bit JVM last summer with the technology

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• IBM to Buy AMD? Seems Unlikely, But an Interesting Idea

  January 28, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  A few weeks ago, when I was complaining that Big Blue needed to rationalize its product names, I quipped that IBM could start making its own Opteron processors just so it could call its X64-based servers the System/x6 line and then make it match the System/p6 Power servers and System/z6 mainframes. I was joking, but a report in the Financial Times last week suggested that IBM and Advanced Micro Devices might be thinking of merging their processor businesses. These kinds of rumors come around the IT industry as much out of speculation and idleness on the part of the

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• i5/OS V6R1: It Must Be Getting Close, Since People Are Talking

  January 28, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM‘s next generation of operating system for the System i platform, i5/OS V6R1, must be getting closer to its launch date. You can usually tell when an IBM operating system is getting close to launch because all at once, some people are aware of and talking about features in the future operating system that were not part of the official statements of direction and product previews we get from Big Blue. Two weeks ago, the chatter started about a whole laundry list of features for i5/OS V6R1, and the noise is getting louder. The full details are obviously not

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• Microsoft Rains on IBM’s Lotusphere Parade

  January 28, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The war for unified communications (UC) supremacy continued to unfold last week, as IBM made the pitch at its annual Lotusphere conference that companies are better off choosing its new Linux-based Notes and Domino platform for their e-mail, messaging, voice over IP (VoIP), and collaboration needs. Not content to let Big Blue hog the spotlight, Microsoft unveiled a new release of its Transporter Suite for migrating Notes and Domino customers over to its UC software. IBM is challenging Microsoft offerings for small and mid size businesses (SMBs) with Lotus Foundations, a new line of Linux-based server offerings designed to go

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• As I See It: Avatar Nation

  January 28, 2008 Victor Rozek

  Let’s say that you want to attend COMMON. But this year, COMMON is being held in Nashville, or Dallas, or Boston, or Seattle, or Chicago, or San Diego, or anywhere except where you are. First, you’d have to budget for the trip a year ahead, or there would be no money for travel. Next, you’d have to grovel for permission from management. Then you’d have to book a flight, make your hotel reservations, and rent a car. On your travel day, you would probably get up at some ungodly hour to get to the airport early, leave your car in

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