PCI-Express Archives

IBM Revamps Entry Power Servers With Expanded I/O, Utility Pricing

July 14, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Believe it or not, but it has been two and a half years since the first Power9 server shipped and it has been more than two years since the entry Power Systems machines – that would be the Power S914, the Power S922, and the Power S924 machines, code-named “ZZ” after the country-rock-blues band from Houston – were first announced. And today, these machines are getting an I/O makeover.

And specially for IBM i shops, IBM is rolling out a single-core version of the Power S922 that will offer better bang for the buck as well as lower acquisition cost …
Read more
Big Blue Makes Moves To Mainstream Db2 Mirror

May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

When IBM brought out its active-active Db2 for i database clustering extensions, called Db2 Mirror appropriately enough, almost exactly a year ago to improve the resiliency of databases and therefore the applications that run atop them on the IBM i platform, we had a few asks. As part of the April Technology Refresh announcements for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, some of those asks are answered and it looks like another one might be in the works.

The two most important things that we asked for are related, and it is all about making Db2 Mirror available and affordable for …
Read more
Sundry Systems Software And CoD Power Systems Announcements

May 4, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

There is a steady drumbeat of new stuff that always comes out of IBM for the Power Systems hardware platform, and sometimes it is Big Blue banging on the big kettle drum and sometimes it is using the brushes on the little snare drum.

Now that IBM owns Red Hat, we can expect for IBM to be making a certain amount of noise every time a piece of Red Hat technology becomes available on Power and demonstrates that both Red Hat and IBM – which have two distinct cultures as well as announcement streams – are committed to the idea …
Read more
An 11-Core Power9 Makes The Rounds, And Other Hardware Enhancements

October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Those of us who go way back in the IBM midrange are used to rhythm in hardware announcements. In the early days, there were several announcements per year as new processors were rolled out across the product line and new peripherals for various kinds of storage and networking were rolled out. The pace was brisk back in the day, with nearly annual processor upgrades and associated updates to systems.

These days, systems are really updated every three years or so, but still, there is the vestigial spring/fall announcement cadence when Big Blue now does Technology Refreshes for the IBM i …
Read more
Tweaking Systems And Withdrawal Symptoms

March 4, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A system product line does not always come out finished and complete, all at once, and its retirement from the sales catalog and the field is not always a simple and smooth thing, either. After a certain amount of criticism from its largest customers, Big Blue last year decided that it would get a little bit more orderly about the latter, as machines are withdrawn from marketing and eventually support. As for the former, well, there are always some nips and tucks that are done here and there as parts of the system are tweaked to meet specific customer demands. …
Read more
Power9 Servers Get Legacy Adapter Support

April 2, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It takes an ecosystem to put a system into the field, and not everything that needs to be an option on a system is available on the Day One launch. To that end, IBM this week announced some legacy PCI-Express peripherals for linking into Fibre Channel SAN and traditional SAS storage on the new Power9 “ZZ” entry systems that were announced back in February and that started shipping a few weeks ago.

In announcement letter 118-043, we see the first item is a pair of Fibre Channel adapters that uses the older PCI-Express 2.0 protocol to deliver 8 Gb/sec …
Read more

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search

IBM Revamps Entry Power Servers With Expanded I/O, Utility Pricing

Big Blue Makes Moves To Mainstream Db2 Mirror

Sundry Systems Software And CoD Power Systems Announcements

An 11-Core Power9 Makes The Rounds, And Other Hardware Enhancements

Tweaking Systems And Withdrawal Symptoms

Power9 Servers Get Legacy Adapter Support

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search