IBM Adds Power7+ Iron To Virtual Loaner Program

May 13, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are a business partner who can’t get access to a new Power7+ machine but you want to compile and test your code on some shiny new iron, then IBM has a slice of iron it wants you to take for free.

On April 24, the developerWorks web site aimed at application developers announced that the Virtual Loaner Program, a long-running service that Big Blue set up when it decided to go cloudy for developers instead of giving them cut-priced Power Systems on which to code their apps, had been updated with Power7+ machines. IBM does not say what machines it is putting behind the Virtual Loaner Program, but there is probably some way you can find out if it is important in terms of tuning or capacity.

Interestingly, the new Power7+ iron can have a virtual machine slice configured with AIX 7.1 at the Technology Release 2 SP2 level as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and SUSE Linux 11 SP2. But as far as I can ascertain from the online docs, IBM i 7.1 is not supported in the service on the Power7+ machinery.

I know, crazy, right? A mere oversight, we hope, and one that will be rectified immediately.

IBM i 7.1 and earlier releases are supported on Power5, Power6, Power6+, and Power7 iron that is still part of the Virtual Loaner Program as far as I know.

To participate in the program and get access to a slice of a Power7+ or earlier machine, you need to be a member of IBM’s PartnerWorld business partner organization. You get to play with the slice for two weeks, and that can vary based on demand from business partners. The capacity is free, and that is great, but I think we need to lean on Big Blue a little and get some IBM i 7.1 slices out there.