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The Battle Of The Single-Core IBM i Machines

July 20, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last week, IBM announced a revamped lineup of entry Power9 systems, including a new single-core variant of the Power S922 server aimed at IBM i shops that will replace the long-running Power S812 and the Power S914 for IBM i customers with modest compute performance and storage requirements. The announcement of the single-core Power S922 comes just as the stay of execution for the Power S812 will be running out on August 31.

In the issue last week, we told you that we didn’t have a lot of the details on the pricing of the new single-core Power …
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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 …
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IBM Wheels And Deals With Solution Edition Booster Pack

June 8, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks ago, we told you about the double memory and double I/O request for price quote (RPQ) special deals that IBM quietly rolled out in April without putting out any announcement letters and that are still in effect until June 30. So consider this a reminder that these deals are still out there and now is a good time to invest in new Power9 iron if you want to pay less for it than you otherwise might.

But that is not all you can get. As it turns out, Big Blue is revamping its IBM i Solution Edition …
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Sharing Tape Libraries Across Partitions Without VIOS

May 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops have a love-hate relationship when it comes to the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS. With the latest IBM i Technology Refresh, IBM is giving the anti-VIOS group a feature they have been requesting: the capability to easily share a tape library among multiple logical partitions, or LPARs without involving VIOS, SANs, or multiple adapters.

IBM is calling the new feature “IBM i Virtualization for Tape Libraries,” and it’s based on RFE (request for enhancement) number 127631. While the words “tape libraries” and “virtualization” are in there, this is not a virtual tape library (VTL) solution. That already …
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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 …
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FlashSystem In, Storwize Out After IBM Storage Shakeup

February 17, 2020 Alex Woodie

IBM rejiggered its storage array lineup last week when it consolidated the old Storwize arrays into the FlashSystem line and introduced several new FlashSystem offerings. Big Blue now uses NVM-Express drives almost exclusively across the FlashSystem family, which will support deployments in hybrid cloud configurations, while also offering new options for performance-enhancing storage class memory.

Like other storage vendors have done, IBM has elected to reduce the number of product lines in an attempt to not only simplify naming conventions, but to reduce technical complexity for customers. For IBM, that means eliminating the Storwize brand by merging it into the …
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IBM Tweaks Prices Up And Down On Memory And Storage

February 17, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Blue usually tells customers about price changes on Power Systems hardware and related software, but we have not seen any such price changes in a long time. As it turns out, IBM is telling business partners through their normal announcement channels about any tweaks to price changes, but these are not showing up in the customer feeds that we have subscribed to for three decades.

This could be deliberate, or accidental. We have no idea, and honestly, it would take too long to ask. But now we know, and an intrepid reseller made us aware of a recent price …
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The Skinny On NVM-Express Flash And IBM i

November 4, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A couple of weeks ago, buried in the October Power Systems announcements, we told you about the new NVM-Express flash cards that Big Blue brought to the Power iron and that are specifically enabled in the IBM i 7.4 release with Technology Refresh 1, or TR1. We didn’t have a lot of detail back then about the new drives other than some capacities and pricing, but we know more now and we are going to tell you what we know.

We will circle back with Big Blue and have a discussion about what the addition of NVM-Express flash means – …
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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 …
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