• After Seven Quarters Of Growth, Power Systems Declines

  October 21, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The tough compares have hit home on IBM’s Power Systems business, but the good news is that this has happened after seven consecutive quarters of growth for the Power-based server business that Big Blue owns lock, stock, and barrel. Even with this decline, which was quite steep because of the triple whammy of tough compares (more on that in a moment), there is still a healthy underlying Power Systems business that is much better off than the last time it was hit by similar declines.

  Let’s take a look at the numbers for IBM’s Power Systems division and then work …

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• 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 …

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• Systems Software Stack Tweaked For Power Systems

  October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the October Power Systems announcements, IBM has made some minor tweaks to the systems software stack that runs underneath IBM i, AIX, and Linux on its Power-based systems.

  In announcement letter 219-451, IBM reveals enhancements to its PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller (which presumably has a pretty short life now that IBM owns Red Hat), and its Virtual HMC (vHMC) hardware management console for Power iron.

  The details are a bit thin, but IBM has made improvements with PowerVM V3.1.1 so Live Partition Mobility live migration of logical partitions …

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• IBM i 7.3 And 7.4 Get Their Autumn Tech Refreshes

  October 9, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is hosting its IBM Systems Technical University this week, and used the occasion to quietly launch the Technology Refreshes, or TRs as they are known, for IBM i releases 7.3 and 7.4. If you were running around the Venetian Hotel, you could probably stitch together the extent of the updates to the platform, and to be honest, we are still trying to get all of the details, which were not available as we went to press.

  We will tell you what we know now, and then circle back and drill down into the details as appropriate.

  First of …

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• Power9 Prime Previews Future Power10 Memory Boost

  September 30, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Customers who are deploying Linux on Power Systems iron from Big Blue are about to get a very substantial boost in memory bandwidth as IBM is getting ready to launch the Power9’ (that’s a prime symbol, not an apostrophe or a typo, after the 9) processor. As we previewed back in March 2018, the Power9’ chip will feature a substantially upgraded memory subsystem that has a new, faster SERDES signaling technology, normally used for various kinds of system and accelerator interconnect, that has been tweaked to support memory buffers and therefore DDR4 and future memories.

  There is no technical …

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• VAI Keeps Rolling with ERP Update, Cloud and SaaS Sales

  September 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  “Scintillating growth” may not be the best words to describe the market for IBM i-based ERP software these days. But don’t tell that to the folks at VAI, who continue to develop compelling ERP software and grow its installed base, particularly on the cloud and software as a service (SaaS).

  For decades, VAI has been one of the go-to ERP providers for midsize firms in manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services. Its IBM i-based suite of software, S2K Enterprise, is trusted by hundreds of companies around North America. While many of its competitors on the platform have folded or been snapped …

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• You’ve Still Got Friends In High Places

  September 23, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past 25 years, and across a total of 78 meetings over that time, the Large User Group, or LUG as it is known, has been helping Big Blue keep the AS/400 and IBM i platform on the right track for the very large enterprises that have the system as their platform for running the mission critical applications that are at the heart of the business. The LUG has put forward thousands of requirements to IBM – both things that the organization wants IBM to do and other things that it wants IBM to stop doing – and …

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• Third Party Maintenance An Option As Power7 Goes EOL

  September 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Time is running out for IBM i shops with hardware support contracts for Power7 and Power7+ servers, which officially reach end of life (EOL) a week from today. For organizations that aren’t ready to migrate to newer Power8 or Power9 machines, there are third-party maintenance options that will let them keep running Power7 machines without abandoning the safety net.

  The September 30 EOL for Power7 hardware support not come as a surprise, as IBM has been talking about the event for two years. Big Blue has given its Power Systems customers plenty of time to upgrade from older systems, …

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• IBM i 7.2 End Dates Revealed as Power7 Shutdown Looms

  September 18, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM surprised nobody last week when it announced that it will stop selling IBM i 7.2 next April and cease supporting the operating system a year later. The lead time should give IBM i shops plenty of runway to prepare their upgrade strategies and transition to newer versions of the operating system. A potentially more impactful deadline for those not paying close attention is the end of hardware support for Power7 boxes in less than two weeks.

  Last week’s announcement of end of sales and support for IBM i 7.2 and related software products was not unexpected. That’s because IBM …

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• New System z15 Mainframe Takes The Heat Off Power Systems

  September 16, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  I don’t know if many of you work this way, but sometimes I have to say things out loud and follow that train of thought before I decide it is a good, bad, or neutral idea – or any of the different gradations in there and beyond these from absolutely wonderful on one end to improbable or worse yet impossible on the other end. It is a kind of branch prediction, and like modern processors for the past two decades, it is subject to Meltdown speculative execution vulnerabilities.

  (That right there was a nerd joke. I think. Maybe. . …

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