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Your #IBMi update for March 2023, delivered by Andy Nicholson: A snapshot of news and views on what’s been happening in the IBM i community in the past four weeks as reported by Proximity.
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This month was all about the value derived from IBM i and its superior cost of ownership – to the extent that it could possibly be CHEAPER to purchase a new Power 10 (if you’re on a Power 8 or lower)
In mid-February, Steve Will, IBM i Chief Architect and CTO, wrote in his blog about the ‘staying power’ of IBM i. He explained that the platform is still greatly valued by IBM and their customers, reiterating that their customer have better business results because of IBM i and as a result, so does IBM too.
He went on to discuss the roadmap and highlighted the support of IBM i beyond its general availability, demonstrating their commitment to the platform with support continuing beyond 2035.
On valentines day, Ken King, General Manager of IBM Power Systems further cemented IBM’s position by saying, “In 2023, we are committed to continue to strategically invest in three operating environments on Power. AIX, IBM i and Linux.”
He went on to site the four key tenets for IBM Power of:
- Superior Total Cost of Ownership.
- Fueled by Power 10, improve the performance of customers systems.
- Increase automation capabilities and as a result, business productivity.
- And, with energy prices continually rising, enhance energy efficiency too.
The topics of ROI, performance and energy efficiencies were raised during the keynote presentation at this years i-UG conference in Rochdale UK at the end of February when Steve Bradshaw, the i-UG technical director, presented his findings that you can save money through hardware upgrades.
To complete this, Steve took three similarly specced machines in terms of memory, processor level and relative cost at time of purchase on Power 8, Power 9 and Power 10. The key differential being that the Power 10 enjoyed NVMe while the Power 8 and 9 had conventional HDD’s of the same capacity.
He put each server through three tests. Test one being restore 21 from tape, test two being save 21 to tape and test three being the A.R.E. damage object checker.
Test 1 was designed to test a write intensive workload and saw Power 10 beat the Power 8 by nearly half an hour – not half shabby.
Test 2 was designed to test a mixed read/write workload and again, Power 10 saved a full 44 minutes – a 94% improvement over the Power 8.
Test 3 was designed to test a typical intensive workload, and it’s with this test that the results were stark.
As, while the Power 8 clocked in at just over half an hour to complete the task, Power 10 did the same in just over a minute. So, some big performance gains across the board.
Later in the presentation, Steve explained how upgrading to a Power 10 could actually be CHEAPER than renewing maintenance on a Power 8 based on actual quotes he’d received, with the cost of purchasing new (with three years maintenance included) being cheaper than purchasing the maintenance alone on a Power 8.
Further cost savings were revealed when consideration of power and cooling energy requirements on the Power 8 being at approximately .5 k/w per day.
Power 10 figures were nearly halved…
Something in which Eddie Chaffin of ABP Foods discussed when he came on the stage in a subsequent presentation.
He explained that they were seeing savings of approximately £4k per year on energy alone using Power 10 compared to their old Power 8.
These were compelling figures for businesses running on Power 8 to investigate upgrading to the latest and greatest and should you be interested in learning more, then you have the opportunity to view the full presentation during the i-UG conference in London on the 9th March – the presentation will be published on their website at a later date.
Posted by Rob on 1st March 2023.