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Jef, you just got the point.

Model 550 4w, enterprise edition, full interactive, minimum hw/sw list price:
808.000 euro (in Italy).

Same machine SAP edition (obviously 0 interactive) list price:
135.000 euro (in Italy).

As far as I know hardware is IDENTICAL.

Green screen community is financing SAP.

No comments

That so called "interactive feature" is nothing more than a small PCB (Printed Circuit Board), size about 2 x 3 inch, with one measly chip in the middle. That chip is NO! processor as IBM tried to let the community believe to justify it's high price, it is just a device that chokes the systems CPU by consumes cycles when cpu power alloted to interactive jobs surpasses a certain threshold, and that threshold depends on the "feature" code of the device.

The price of this ridiculous piece of pcb board, considering a manufacturing cost of probably no more than $10, ranges from around $10,000 (heavy choking of cpu) to $250,000 (no choking of cpu , so all cpu available to interactive 5250 screen based jobs).

This kind of business model is simply NOT! ethical in my opinion!!! IBM should be condemned for such practices.

Its all about RPG being more efficient than those bloated new fangled languages. Everytime an iSeries box gets upgraded the green screen application runs on a smaller footprint (within the range) each time. A big iSeries customer has come down from at one time top of the range 8 processor box to a faster 2 processor box. Basically we are not following Moore's law in consuming CPU and IBM knows it.

I agree wholeheartedly and even to a further degree. We wanted to buy either a model 550 or model 570 with two processors activated and enterprise (interactive silly tax) on just one processor. That makes these two systems the exact same hardware and exact same CPW. But Nooooo....IBM says on the model 570 they want to force you to pay interactive tax on both processors, which is totally ludicrous! And at a cost of another $150,000. I currently use only about 1000 CPW interactive on my old model 650. Just one processor interactive on the 550 or 570 gives me way more than I need at 3000 CPW. Why would I want to spend $150K for a feature I will never ever use? We really want the 570 for future expandability since the 550 will only go to 4 processors. I've been going round and round with IBM for a month now and am getting nowhere. My next stop is a nicely crafted email to Mark Shearer.

Right on. I work in the truck parts industry where we don't beat around the bush, we call things what they are. If we did this to our customers they would say "Can I have some vaseline with that?"

This is the most dishonest form of marketing and the worst treatment of a loyal customer base that has ever existed.

Loyalty is a sad thing to waste!

As a IBM BP, IBM always got interactive tax from loyal customer. Customers always complain the interactive feature cost too high to get earning from business. So many customers don't want keeping invest on iSeries. And same parts with pseries, why parts installed on iSeries need to pay more times price than pseries. If IBM keeping going with this policy, it will got bad result.

If customer choose Java, iSeries is not best TOC plateform.

My suggestion to John Knox.

You can either:

buy a 550 3300 CPW interactive (12.000 CPW is a lot of non-5250 power!)

buy a used 825 as an interim solution (depends on model of 650 installed)

wait for 2006 announcements.

Keep in mind that 550 is not upgradable NOW, but could be to future models (it happened with 810).

I will NOT buy an iSeries until IBM eliminates the Interactive Tax. IBM, do you hear us?
Let me guess, there will be no change to the Interactive Tax in 2006, 2007, 2008. Then in 2009, the AS/400 will cease to exist. RIP.

@ qcblsrc

If you are buying for your self I could see the thinking that YOU will not buy one until IBM does something?

If your company needs the iSeries to run then you might want to ease up a bit and think about what yuo are saying. We iSeries folks have been fighting this one longer than we need to and with the push to have AiX and Linux on the same Power5 chip as the i5OS then you might see the interavtive feature go away in the near future.....one would hope. We just got a 570 and a 550 with no limits interative limits and did not really have to spend all that much, about half of what we did 3 years ago for lots better hardware.

I just love the idea that after 16 years of AS/400 or iSeries they are going to "Cease to exist" that just make me laugh every time.

If any of you out there are even banking on the iSeries dying off in the next, oh, 20 years you have better put that money else where cause if you do the math it ain't going to happen.

Oh, qcblsrc, if you are serious and are not going to buy an iSeries until then make sure you take a look at Microsoft new line of wonderful hardware....you might find it just as nerve racking.

Seeing as how there is none, and the only dependable systems out there come from IBM or SUN.....I guess you could use SUN but last I check the OS/400 Virtual System was not running yet....good luck with you problem. Hope your partner cuts you a deal on the next iSeries. The one you are not going to buy....wink wink.

David,
Your comments duly noted. Perhaps the iSeries isn't going away soon. But what IS it becoming? Just a high-priced box on which to run Linux where 32GB of memory costs $90k.
I beg to differ that that quality of the hardware is better. The hardware is exactly identical as an Open Power 720 that retails for $9k. That is the true value of the hardware.
Friends in the iSeries world tell me quality of the new boxes is horrible. The main CEC is becoming like a PC. When you power it on, you get an attention light.
As for my company, we don't NEED to buy another iSeries. We have options as everyone does and we're seriously looking at them. I could do everything I'm doing on OS/400 on about 3 Linux boxes for $20k.
Regarding your comment that you hope interactive goes away, it is obvious that you don't share the rest of the groups frustration with IBM raping their existing loyal customer base. What is an iSeries without interactive? It isn't an iSeries, that's for sure.
You might as well run Unix or Linux. You can load DB2 on a Linux box and get the same result.
The new hardware is junk. The OS is what is worth paying for. But the interactive tax just gives everyone more reasons to look elsewhere.
And some of us are, contrary to what you might think.

QCBLSRC

Exactly right, qcblsrc. Ibm is too stupid to note it, but they are indeed killing off there own loyal customer base. Why?
Because RPG-DDS-PDM-CLP is (was!) the traditional, rock solid development platform that let to the 'ecological system' of iSeries ISP's, its customers and its analyst programmeurs, all in love with their AS/400. This is where the value of OS/400 is (was!).
As for the other services coming out of the "all-in-one-hardware-box" mantra IBM is babbling about, that's one big piece of crap, and everyone knows it, except IBM. Why?
Take for example Linux. It runs on any Intel Box value $5,000. Why do we need a $500,000 iSeries box then? Take for example Netserver. It allows you to create shared drives and exploit them as network drives from any Windows client. Great! You can store all your corporate pdf's, doc's, xls, multimedia teleconference and telephone conversations - gigabyte files - on the IFS system. Excuse me?? iSeries disks cost you $1,000 per 36GB. Some months ago, I bought 4 Maxtor Sata drives of 250 GB, price $75 each! I've put them in a mirrored RAID, so that makes a total of $ 300,00 for 500 GB of protected storage!!! Maybe these disks are very slow? No, benchmark test give you 50 MEGABYTES per second sequential troughput, the iSeries 36GB scsi disk doesn't clock higher than 28 megabytes per second.

Hello IBM ??? Time to come out of your ivory tower and put your feet back on solid ground! And when you do (say in 2008), you will still be manufacturing and selling the iSeries box, but selling it at a price 10 times less than today.

"Its all about RPG being more efficient than those bloated new fangled languages"

When you run the newfangled language on hardware that delivers 10 times the bang for the buck, that tends not to be so much of a factor.

It is all about economics. IBM knows who has it's products. IBM knows what it intends to do with it's products in the future. IBM knows how expensive it is to change systems, especially when dealing with backroom, dusty, legacy aplications.

Economics has a concept known as elasticity of demand. In general, a product has elastic demand if, when the price rises, the total revenue falls by a percent greater than the price increase. Inelastic demand is the opposite. Given a price increase, total revenue falls by a lesser percentage and may rise.

IBM is applying simple economics in it's pricing. The system is on a long term decline with respect to green screen, but IBM has customers where it wants them. It is expensive, uncertain, and labor intensive to change systems. IBM can essentially charge whatever it wants and most existing customers will pay. No new customers are going green screen, I assume. Thus, any gouging will not be a factor in a new customer sale.

Let's take a survey. With respect to your company's AS/400, do you plan to

A: Add substantial new green screen or other applications

B: Perform mostly maintenance

c: Get rid of it within next 18 months

D: Just bought a new one and never had one before

E. Have to keep it, but am moving applications off of it as it becomes practical

F: Company just got rid of it

G: Love It and plan to never leave it

H: Don't know, Just downsized.

Multiple selection are OK.

Sure Bob, it's all about economics, supply and demand. But the demand for interactive isn't usually a whole-hearted one, and that spells trouble.
From personal expericience, I've found 2 frequent purchase scenarios. Either the IT manager is frustrated because he doesn't want to buy a 5250 interactive machine but he has to because of all the legacy RPG code still lying around, or we have an IT manager who is still in love with 5250 screens (the dusty warehouse environment can't stand delicate laptops or pc's kind of explanation), but then we have upper management frustrated because they feel ashamed showing this obsolete green screen technology to visitors or prospect clients, and not in the least the feeling they lag the competition with respect to IT.

In short, if you buy something with bad blood, knowing you overpay for 5250 interactive with an *extortion* like tax amount, your're bound to escape from this faith one time or another to never ever come back again to iSeries.

I propose you an other interpretation of what's happening.

When a businnes shop is looking for a new application software and receives offers of different solutions there is normally one winner and many losers.

There are many factors influencing the decision:

may be the losing sw vendors approach was not the right one (it's not an easy job)

may be the losing products quality was not good enough (or perceived as)

may be the fight was apparent, the winner having already been choosen

may be the decision maker was too stupid to take the right decision (it happens!)

In any case the reason for rejecting a green screen solution will ALWAYS be declared this way:

"You had a great product and made a fantastic presentation; too bad it had old-fashioned architechture!"

And that motivation will be ALWAYS taken for truth.

Claudio, yes, perception is key, and the perception of being "old technology" is indeed deadly.
But another recently coming up point I like to stress is IBM's outrageous pricing policy that aggravates matters for the 5250 market, the so called loyal customers, a lot. The same machine costing half for SAP (0 interactive) in comparison with a 5250 machine (normal interactive), is eye popping to many.

But even if we acknowledge the stability and reliliability of the 5250 paradigm, everyone probably agrees it gets deeper and deeper stuck in the past. Take for example the upload of a savf (savefile) on as/400 from a windows or unix o/s. I get tired of calling each time the dos command line, typing ftp and then typing a put command. Later, I have to unpack the thing on the AS/400. Yes, in 1995 this was brand new, and lots of people were excited ibm gave as/400 tcp/ip capability, but in 2005, I want to drag the file from an explorer style window to its destination, and when I click is there, see it's contents (just like you would have with a zip file).

In conclusion, the lack of a thight integration of the 5250 green screen environment with a windows or gui style of information presentation and operation, is becomming increasingly unacceptable to users, to IT and it's purchasing people.

Hello!
Just one question, please.

We are going to buy new Iseries 520 Express Edition (Growth with RAID)
Model-0901; feature code - 7394; processor feature 8951. Interactive feature is 60.
Does it mean that only 60 workstations of 5250 will be able
to work on this system?

Thanks

Shurat

I suggest you to talk with an iSeries expert before ordering the machine.

Maybe the guy who is trying to sell it is not the right one.

Good luck!

I still believe the hardware software architecture of the iSeries is still the best on the market. The iSeries is not a computer or a just another server; it is a complete solution! The iSeries' worst enemy are IBM bozos marketing the product itself ! The iSeries is like a football team with a great offensive line, great receivers, great running backs and a quarterback that keeps throwing the ball to the other team!!! Hey IBM! Don't throw another interception to Bill Gate because he can take back all the way !!!

Yes, the software architecture is great, but that doesn't mean the architecture of the competition isn't. They made progress, Iseries did not. Look at Windows 2003 Datacenter, Sql server, Active directory, it ain't such a laughing joke today as it was in the NT 4.0 days. Look at Linux, the latest (free) desktop version of Suse (Novell), Red Hat, Mandrake, their Gui is overwhelming and in some cases better than Windows. Look at Oracle 10g with their grid computing. All these systems have improved in terms of stability tremendously and their development languages have made the transition to Visual and OO in the late nineties. RPG IV on the other hand is still stuck in the past. Then there is the fact more applications run on Oracle or SQL server databases than on os/400 db2, and given this supremacy, it is the competition who dictates what development and exploitation standards are to be followed, not IBM.
And yes, it is a common secret there is something weird with the OS/400 architecture in terms of the processing power. Did anybody try to measure the memory speed? Not difficult. In a software house supporting applications for Sun, Dell, HP and IBM machines, we wrote a 10 line rpg program on a 820 machine to move a 128KB string to another and reverse, repeat it until 10 seconds have gone by and you can calculate the speed in MB/seconds. Do the same test on a oldtimer laptop with a PentiumII using fi. visual basic, and you get the same results. Replace the move instruction with an add, multiply, divide instruction and you'll find out the results for os/400 are really appaling! The PowerPC of the as/400 isn't simply powerfull enough, all it can manage is add up the debit or credit columns on an account statement. In fact, should one be able (not that anybody would be interested in) to port OS/400 to the IA32-bit architecture of an Intel PentiumII, OS/400 would run faster on an oldtimer laptop servicing a 5250 workload of 50 green screen users than on a $50K entry level model 820 box.

Sorry u.geerts, I can’t resist.

If somebody, developing an argumentation, needs to excuse himself with something like “not that anybody could be interested in�, I assume it as an unintentional admission of “intellectual onanism�

Nothing personal

No need to start with sorry, but if a man is in a situation were he can't resist something, he's usually not in the mood for intellectual reasoning, as any women knows. If someone bashes the iSeries, all it takes for the other poster is to come up with proper counter arguments. At least it'll bring back some live in this dead blog, don't you think?

Do not think this blog is so dead, read comments from you very often.
Expected your reaction, that is why hesitated before posting.
Appreciated subtle allusion to praecox ejaculation (no problem, I did throw stones first).
Did not enter technical matters because of my poor English and your evident superiority (am a consultant, not a specialist).
Must admit iSeries made my living for the last 27 years and hope will make for a long time (am in good health and enjoy my job).
But, most of all, have customers delighted with and loyal to their beloved platform

Ugeerts, 128,000 byte string transfer proves exactly what? Again you're comparing apples to oranges. It's like saying because the tugboat can run circles around the ocean liner that it's better. When windows can handle everything an iSeries can including transaction loads, it's cost and OS will match and that includes the cost of the iron. Besides why do you always rant about Windows anyway, most of the named software you throw around is generally run on Unix iron for large enterprise needs. Can you name a major website such as Amazon or eBay that uses Windows? Or do you not notice what machine eBay says it's powered by? Anyway, IBM has both Unix and Linux capable machines, it's not a one horse annie like MS and Windows. BTW using RPG is an individual choice and just like Basic/VB is Windows legacy so RPG is iSeries legacy, so what.

Apples to oranges? Depends. Coming back to that benchmark test between the PII laptop (512MB, 400Mhz) and an entry level model 820, it showed the speed in MB/s that the processor can move its memory, was comparable to the PII. Worse for os/400 was the raw computation speed in fixed point arithmetic (number of additions, divides per sec etc). It was considerable higher on the PII. I hope for the sake of ibm this is not due to the design of the powerpc processor (64 bit vs. 32bit intel, bus speed 100mhz vs 400Mhz PII), but due to the design of os/400.

If we look at the modern algoritms used for compression and de-compression of files, images, audio, video, we see the number of arithmetic instructions required is enormeous, and os/400 would score very poorly.

In order for os/400 to enter the modern world beyond 5250 green screen, we see it had to step up its speed from 300 CPW to 3000 CPW to obtain barely acceptable performance, just ask anybody who uses java or websphere.
After all, 5250 screen needs little cpu; a move of 2000 bytes is sufficient to put a 24x80 screen and a few 100 calculations between puts would probably suffice, therefore my hypothetical remark; if os/400 would run on IA32 architecture, any oldtimer PII laptop could handle the 5250 workload of 50 users. But again, since that's never going to happen, this assumption remains purely hypothetical.

To be more direct then, you are comparing a machine designed to handle workloads as a multi-user system to a stand alone box designed to handle one user, one application at a time, with or without threads. A more appropriate comparison is to Linux possibly on a Sparc server. The test you did is flawed. A PC is designed to run as a single user system with all processing power directed to one application, generally speaking. To do the test of which you speak, I would suggest starting 50-100 jobs on both machines, then perform tests involving all manner of I/O(real world) and accessing other servers, not limited to moving memory around. In other words, to compare apples to apples, have your test run 50+ jobs, access a database server(SQL server)(must be running on same box), performing all manner of SQL inserts,updates, deletes and have each job run in the background your so-called memory test. Do the same on the iSeries but use native I/O. And to throw in some spice, you can access IFS and PC files as stream I/O, read them in and then back out to disk again. Now compare. This is not a trivial test and will come a lot closer to the fair comparison we know you’re after

Again, in the real world what are the corporate production quality applications serving 100s of users(minimally) using, it's big iron, it is not Windows. BTW Websphere has always been a memory hog and back in 1999 we decided to use BEA Weblogic instead just because of that. That's the JVM and Java in general and has nothing to do with Iseries. In fact, again, you will find few if any major application servers running on Windows just because of that same issue, it takes a lot of processing power. You can run Websphere on an iSeries just has to be a properly sized machine. All Java development shops build and test on PC's(some windows, some Linux, some Unix) and deploy on Unix/Linux, it’s no big secret. The iSeries has a much better chance of becoming a server of choice for large scale application server deployments than Windows ever will.

There is one small issue regarding this type of comparison that I alluded to in my test, which is the number of servers used. A typical Java based deployment usually has at least 2 servers, one for the database and one for the application server, others can have more. Therefore, any Windows deployment would do the same at a minimum or risk serious performance bottlenecks and lock-ups. When deploying the iSeries, it’s one large box, web, application and database server all rolled into one. That is what you’re up against. An iSeries shop could conceivably run, a Java based internet site, corporate intranet and any number of client connections(5250 or PC’s) all on one machine, Windows can not even handle JBuilder without running like a dog with 2GB of memory!

However, can you name a MAJOR website such as Amazon(Unix/Linux) or eBay(Powered by Sun) that uses Windows?

Angelin, your arguments against Windows are very convincing, but lead to an other question.
Is iSeries suitable for web applications? And if not, is it because of intrinsic architectural limits or lack of appropriate tools?
I would like to know your opinion.
Second question: do you have an idea (I really do not know) on how many servers are used in MAJOR websites such as Amazon or eBay?
You look quite informed about it.

Angel described the comparison to be made very well. Along those lines, I want to commend iseriesnetwork for the series (iseries?) of articles they have been publishing for a few months now on two topics I have complained about often, not hearing about new customers and not hearing about the AS/400 being put to use for IBM's marketing mantra of server consolidation.

iseriesnetwork has posted some excellent articles on both and I hope they are seen widely. I often see stories in the trade rags about phenomenal business accomplishments which names AS/400 software without naming the system it runs on, the AS/400 (or iseries or i5 or any other rename). One article even referred to Oracle software and then deeper down mentioned it was JD Edwards, and the context was that it was World, but in business oriented articles it is unfortunately too technical to go on to say that the iseries OS/400 system is where those phenomenal accomplishments are accomplished.

The shame is that OS/400 doesn't get the publicity that it deserves when that happens while the others are so constantly mentioned they are household names (well, at least in households reading those kinds of articles).

Anyway, my thanks to the iseriesnetwork reporters and editors for a great job of keeping our OS/400 system up out of the depths of obscurity.

rd

Hi Claudio, okay IMHO I would conjecture a guess that the iSeries will meet or exceed any other machine running the respective app server. So yes, given the ability of the iSeries to port Unix applications pretty much out of the box and support of all things networking it will easily run web apps. OTOH, that is with some caution because there are no other major web apps running on the iSeries, nor Oracle or MySql so yes IBM has to answer this one. Of course playing devils advocate, it may not be an issue because Linux runs on the iSeries. Which begs another question, if long time iSeries OS/400 advocates start to move towards unix/linux, what box will they choose? I think it's a good bet that the number of Linux partitions on the iSeries will start to increase geometrically. It's pretty clear that IBM is gaining share because of this, not to reiterate the fact that moving more towards network centric machine support does tend to give one pause as to how long OS/400 remains OS/400. But still I'd rather run a Linux and OS/400 partition on an iSeries than any other. But the tough question is, what form does OS/400 take in the coming years and why? In a native I/O RPG world of course OS/400 is perfect, in a C/C++, java, web, xml, networked world what does it or is it becoming, but again for now, marry the best of both and run a Linux partition too.

Not everything is Java and there is always a Swing(pun intended) the other way, against all things Java. So if Linux partition is there and all Linux apps are there, the pressure for OS/400 to meet some other standard dissipates. I mean if everyone really believed all the Windows proganda/propagandees then why is Linux so damn popular?!! Another way to look at the hardware perspective is a company like Google has slapped together 1000's of intel machines to run their applications. As the name suggests, it might not have been such a bright idea after all.

http://news.techwhack.com/2659/131202-google-claims-servers-power-bill-might-exceed-their-initial-cost/

What architecture would you rather support?? that's scary... A few iSeries boxes, a few Sun boxes seems the way to go.

In all fairness, the iSeries, "e" server, whatever, would not have been considered in the past(by google), but now, if it's running Linux, the choice isn't so automatic(Sun vs Intel*10000), now it's Sun Vs Intel*10000 vs iSeries. So the reality is that the iSeries was always a viable business machine, but now the moves IBM is making have assured it's future for many years to come. :) BTW, in case the question hasn't been answered yet, Google runs linux on intel iron, ebay powered by Sun, amazon unix/linux. Okay Windows, fetch, no, no Windows come back, get out of the street! Windows! Windows!!! Aiyeee! Poor Windows didn't know what hit him, did anyone see that truck, all I remember is a big black blur and then Windows was just smashed, poor baby... I just wish he had used his GPF'd before getting hit, "Global Positioning For Dogs", at least that's one time it would have been handy.

>>>>>When windows can handle everything an iSeries can including transaction loads,<<<<<

Well, for one, I know that moving a Domino Server off an iSeries onto a Windows or Linux box that costs 1/20th the price results in a 4x increase in performance - been there, done that. Maybe if we budget $150,000 for an iSeries upgrade vs $3,000 for a Wintel box the iSeries might keep up. The couple model 270's I also have on site have a TCP/IP transmission rate of my old P200 based NT4 server.

Been reading these posts, and basically laughing my rear end off. I mostly manage Citrix Servers for a living, and have yet to see any AS400 or iSeries handle a fraction the mess of applications and thread load that I encounter on Windows based Citrix servers running on generic hardware that typically costs 1/10 the price. BTW, my Windows based Citrix boxes have the same uptime as my iSeries, and run an application base orders of magnitude more diverse and complex than anything I've ever seen running on the IBM platform. That is of course unless you're a turkey and running Windows Servers inside of Vmware shells on your iSeries and taking a massive performance hit. The comment above about a $20,000 generic LInux box being just as effective as *any* iSeries was dead on the mark. That's the way my compnay is going and saving several million in TCO the first year alone.

Other differences: AS400 / iSeries environments are typically anechoic room development boxes with onsite developers with 20+ years of RPG experience. Gee, must be nice.

I'll cut to the short on this and let you guys glorify at how wonderfull the iSeries is while you gloat at how much more efficient terminal emulation is over GUI (not). The fact is the majority of iSeries/As400 environments are in manufacturing, and yet manufacturing is the one industry being displaced to China at the quickest pace, mostly because of high labor costs on the domestic side. I guess the iSeries/As400 isn't cheaper to run after all.

No need to gloat, I work/develop on multiple platforms including iSeries, it's just a discussion. Most of the Windows farms that I have ever seen run apps for a handful of users at most, and generally are used as mail servers, low end database servers with a whopping 100MB of data and half of that is Oracle. Been there done that myself, and recently was on a contract that had 50 windows servers as well as a PC for everyone. A grand total of 300 users needed a team of 25+ support engineers not counting application development. The agency was/is bleeding cash to maintain their "farm".

That said, talk is cheap, I'll bet you don't have one server running multiple apps of anything. More like mail server, web server, application server, database server, okay add one more for XML processing now, oops need one for test, one for development and on and on. All that hardware and support adds up to one properly sized machine. Sun and IBM aren't stupid, but somehow you guys think that you can come here and tell a story about how you run on intel whether Unix/Linux/Windows and somehow magically it just beats the crap out of all big iron. Not to mention, somehow we never get around to talking about how each $3000 PC is really running the bulk of the app anyway, that just never gets factored in. A J2EE application developed in a typical memory hogging mode, running intel Windows, will crawl, the Oracle database will start choking after open cursors constrain memory and the whole thing comes tumbling down. That's why these apps are deployed "NOT on intel iron or windows". Linux really wasn't the crux of the discussion it was windows, so your comment about my Windows based Citrix boxes... just cements the point. It's "boxes" vs box, it's adminstrators vs administrator, etc. Show me a properly sized box for the load and then we can compare, but the rest is just "oh gee it's got 20 users accessing mail now and it just flies".

My corporation(15,000+), in 20 years engineering and 7 years of Java development it is rare to see deploying on Windows voluntarily. In all of the agencies I have worked with, all Oracle servers run on Sun as do the web app servers, except the last one and there windows mail system crashed all the time, as well as assorted database servers. But, okay let's play this game, which servers are running what applications, what OS'es. Does your new Domino server do anything else but Domino? Does your mail server? Does your web server? Do you run Windows and Linux on the same box? How many concurrent users per server? What's the transaction load?
How much downtime per year, how many weekends does IT send out the message "Please review the following list of servers that will be down this weekend for emergency maintenance". Or please leave your PC on tonight so we can perform emergency patch fixes, or sorry internet access has been temporarily shutdown. And don't say it doesn't happen. Also please explain how one generic Linux server save's millions in TCO. Although maybe a better question is why don't we ask why all the major web sites I mentioned previously aren't running windows. However, if it's iSeries versus other hardware stacks then we are getting into TCO, but of course then all costs have to be considered. Funny how google is now facing a TCO in power consumption greater than the cost of hardware, it's called penny wise and pound foolish.

And I'm dying to know what does --- orders of magnitude more diverse and complex... mean exactly? I mean does your server make toast too, with butter and cinnamon?

Okay you can stop laughing now and start talking - your turn.

Grab what you can before this sinks like a rock.

rd

Ok, since this site is running on autopilot I'll go retrace my steps in the wayback machine and bring this thread up for air.

I noticed that with this blog style discussion that the entire thread prints on one web page, so the blog designers (iSpeak apparently) probably decided that threads should only last so long before they become too big to render on a web page.

In English, that means I guess we're supposed to start a new thread frequently even though you lose the context of the ongoing discussion. What I would do as the admin of my site in a situation like this is to split the thread and start a new one with for example the last few posts that was focused on a particular discussion. But the admin would have to be following it to have a clue when to cut and start a new blog page.

In lieu of that, now that it is back up probably best thing to do is copy the post you're responding to and start a new thread. That's probably all that can be done with this blog stuff.

I posted this on the previous thread but it applies to this thread so re-posting.

rd

Okay Ralph, thanks. Yeah, multi-paging might help, you think? Maybe they could contract you to re-do the blog engine! I could always do it using J2EE, but then they run Windows, so that's a problem already! :)

A multi-page format would then be a forum which they have here somewhere, I registered on it awhile back.

rd

I think the blog is anyone, and forum access is restricted to subscribers.

You do have to be a subscriber to use the forums, but a free ("Associate") subscription should work, if that interests you.

Just click the "Forums" link at the top of the left-hand column, anywhere on the iSeries Network. The forums are a better place for ongoing discussions, IMHO.

Also, the iSeries Network uses MoveableType as the blog software, it's commercial software that wasn't written by the staff.

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