• IBM Gives Temporary Reprieve For Power8 Core And Memory Activations

  November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is pretty generous when it comes to having features for past generations of machines available for purchase, even when they are two generations back from whatever it is currently selling. But sooner or later, IBM wants to sell the new machines and it stops selling the old stuff. Even if it is only processor and memory activations on machines that are already in the field, which is the easiest sale in the world because IBM doesn’t really have to do much.

  This may be the most profitable kind of sale that Big Blue does, but sooner or later, …

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• On the Spectrum of Application Modernization

  October 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  What is application modernization? If you ask 10 people in the IT world, you’re likely to get 10 different answers. For organizations looking to keep their IBM i assets relevant in an increasingly digital world, being aware of the spectrum of options available will help them make the best choice for their particular situation.

  Every organization is unique when it comes to its IT journey. Some may have large in-house development teams and would never think of running packaged business applications, while others have no developers and lean on their vendors and partners to keep things running. Some organizations may …

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• Various Power Systems Software Tweaks Besides The TR Updates

  October 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is fall IBM i software stack refresh week. As we report about elsewhere in this issue, IBM i 7.5 Technology Refresh 1 and IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 7 came out today, and as is Big Blue’s custom in recent years, other parts of the IBM i software stack also got some nips and tucks and tweaks, too.

  In announcement letter 222-279, we find the usual agglomeration of updates to the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller, the virtual Hardware Management Console, and the Cloud Management Console.

  With PowerVM, IBM wanted to …

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• IBM i 7.3 Loses Standard Support On September 30, 2023

  October 3, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue just got the IBM i 7.5 operating system and system software stack out the door for Power9 and Power10 machines back in May, and from that moment the clock was ticking on regular support for the IBM i release that came out in April 2016 and that represents the second most popular release on primary machines based on data from the most recent IBM i Marketplace Survey.

  Most operating system makers – there are not that many of them left in the datacenter these days – offer standard support for their releases and versions for seven years …

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• Without Further Ado: Power10 Entry Server Pricing

  September 26, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have been through the new Power10 entry servers from just about every angle imaginable, which has been our great pleasure. And now, we come to the moment we have all been waiting for: What is the bang for the buck of a Power10 machine? As is usually the case when you ask any question, the answer is: It depends.

  To try to figure this out, we put together pricing information for all of the different variations of processors for the Power8, Power9, and now Power10 entry servers with one of two processors. And when we say all of …

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• A Smorgasbord Of Power Systems Stuff

  September 19, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is usually pretty quiet on the IT front in the wake of the American Labor Day holiday, especially with a lot of European countries also having bank holidays around that time and many schools just starting back up again. Here in 2022, it is no different, although IBM did uncharacteristically launch the full subscription entry Power S1014 server aimed at IBM i customers on September 6.

  In any event, in the weeks surrounding the holiday, Big Blue did a bunch of stuff relating to the Power Systems platform and we want to tell you about it so you stay …

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• IBM’s Competitive Analysis For The Power10 Midrange Machine

  August 29, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For as long as there has been a Power architecture, way back in 1995 with the advent of the custom “Cobra Muskie” PowerPC AS chips, the rule of thumb for performance is that the Power core did twice the work of an Intel core designed for server workloads. This was true in 1993, when Intel jumped in the server racket with gusto, and it is true 31 years later as the entry and midrange Power10 machines in the same performance class as the top-end X86 iron from Intel and AMD are starting to ramp.

  This performance gap on cores is …

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• Big Blue Taps FalconStor To Move Data To PowerVS Cloud And Protect It

  August 22, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When IBM i shops want to move some or all of their applications to the cloud, they have a lot of options. But there is still only one cloud that is designed and run by the same company that actually makes the Power Systems server and the IBM i operating system and database platform. And that, of course, is the Power Systems Virtual Server, colloquially known as PowerVS these days.

  Over the longest of hauls, we expect that a fair number of IBM i shops will use the cloud in some capacity, and some will move their infrastructure entirely to …

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• Power10 Entry Machines: The Power S1022s

  July 25, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This is second part of our in-depth coverage of the entry and midrange Power10 machines that Big Blue launched on July 12, and today we are going to take a look at the Power 1022s, a new class of machine in the Power Systems lineup that shoots the gap between the lowest-end Power S1014, which we reviewed last week, and the Power S1022 and Power L1022 that offer more expandability and more features.

  We will cover these machines next week, followed by the Power S1024 and Power L1024 the week after that, and finish off with the Power E1050 – …

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• Guru: IBM i Experience Sharing, Case 5 – Using IBM i PDI Charts To Answer Performance Questions

  July 18, 2022 Satid Singkorapoom

  During my long career as an IBM i performance specialist, it was natural for people to ask me performance-related questions of various kinds. But in many cases, it seemed to me that the customer could not understand my answers, and I could not provide supporting evidence due to the lack of a performance reporting tool that could produce easy-to-understand explanatory information. The situation changed for the better with the availability of IBM i Performance Data Investigator (PDI) tool as of release 6.1. I would say that the PDI tool provides charts of information that resemble those used by business people …

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