System iNetwork

November 23, 2009

Interest in Blades, POWER7, PowerVM Picking Up

I reached out to Stan Staszak, director of infrastructure services for Sirius, which is a large IBM Premier Business Partner who does a lot of IBM i-related sales, for a quick catch-up Q&A. Staszak says Sirius is "seeing a fair amount of system upgrade activity lately, especially due to the fact that we are closing in on the end of the year."

So what about interest in any particular models of Power Systems for iBM i these days?

"Many of our customers are taking a serious look at the Power Blade solutions. It might not be a good fit for everyone, but it can be really attractive from a pricing standpoint," Staszak notes. "I think more companies are starting to adopt some form of blade-based server solutions in their data centers, so customers may be somewhat more receptive to blades now--as opposed to traditional rack or tower based servers."

Any speed bumps for IBM i customers looking at a blade path?

"The obvious challenge to a IBM i on Blade solution is the learning curve. Customers have to become familiar with VIOS and external storage servers--unless they utilize the internal disk on the BladeCenter S chassis," he explains.

So are customers already looking forward to POWER7--or not so much yet?

"Yes, I think customers are really looking forward to the POWER7 and V7R1 announcements next year--I've seen a lot of interest in recent months," Staszak says.

How about storage? Any interesting trends or technology of interest these days?

"I think the recent DS5xxx native attach announcement was interesting. Only time will tell how receptive customers will be to that model (on the IBM i platform). I also like and appreciate the fact that IBM is continuing to invest in internal SAS disk and controllers. IBM i customers don't like to feel that they are forced to adopt some new technology," Staszak explains. "We have seen some IBM i accounts implement external storage, and I'm sure that others will go that route in the future, but it's nice to have a valid internal disk alternative for customers who prefer internal disk."

How about PowerVM . . . any IBM i-focused action?

"Absolutely, the majority of our customers have already employed a virtualized strategy in the form of LPAR's, which necessitates a PowerVM license. Also, PowerVM is required if they choose to implement VIOS in their environment," Staszak says. "I haven't seen any IBM i customers trying Active Memory Sharing yet, but this technology would also require PowerVM," he adds.

Posted by cmaxcer at November 23, 2009 11:32 AM