© Copyright 2007 iSociety Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
Jim Herring & George Gaylord
Held: July 25th, 2007
          12:00pm Central US time
 
Note: edited for spelling
12:00pm US Central Time July 25th, 2007 iSociety says: Welcome to another Fireside chat. iSociety says: Today we are chatting about the IBM announcements from yesterday - July 24th, 2007. iSociety says: Welcome to Jim Herring and George Gaylord from IBM iSociety says: Please introduce yourselves Jherring says: Hi, this is Jim Herring, Director of IBM's High End Power Systems Ggaylord says: Hi, this is George Gaylord, Enterprise Offerings Manager for System i Question from Angus: What has been the response so far to the announcements? Jherring says: Response from press and analysts has been outstanding - we had over 50 analysts on our briefing this week and they were very excited about it Jherring says: we already have three clients in AP who want the new i570 now! Ggaylord says: In fact, take a look - we made CNN Money yesterday. http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0281890.htm Question from Mpcrump: V6, Power6. Couple this with pricing this seems to be a huge occasion for the System i. How would you rank it compared to other significant announcements? Ggaylord says: Yes, MPCrump... the structure changes and price/performance are going to have a huge impact Jherring says: We rank it very high - up there with V%R1 and the 8XX systems Question from DrFranken: I understand that V6R1 will allow hosted i5/OS partitions. Will both the host and hostee be required to be V6R1? Ggaylord says: Yes, the i5/OS partition hosting and the "hostee" must be V6R1 Question from Dkimmel: The announcements seem to portend a single system that will run anything. Do you anticipate zOS running as a guest on V6Rx? Question from Jeff Carey: Will we ever see System z on POWER? Jherring says: We have no plans to do this - the system and processor architectures are significantly different. The organization announcements were really a reflection of the different clients System i is serving Question from DrFranken: With hosted i5/OS partitions will we have virtual tape support like Linux does today? If so does that include virtual tape support to virtual tape (i.e. to Image Catalogs)? Ggaylord says: Yes, the plan is to have virtual tape support for i5/OS hosted partition Question from DrFranken: This 'code regeneration' requirement for V6R1 seems to have many people concerned. If I understand correctly though all code that is compiled for V5R1 or newer will convert with no user involvement. Assuming that is true, isn't this regeneration a non-issue? Jherring says: That is correct Doc - anything created from V5R1 forward has the data i5/OS needs to recreate the program automatically Ggaylord says: FYI... the tool to estimate the time involved and the redbook are supposed to be available today http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/redp4293.html Question from Rob Berendt: The redpiece by Paul Godtland about i5/OS program conversion is available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/redp4293.pdf. Are you seeing a lot of response from vendors as they prepare to convert their applications? Ggaylord says: Fair amount of interest; no major concerns so far - should be automated, the way we're handling in the operating system... it's still early on for many of the ISV's Question from Jtaylor: Has there been any announcements regarding hardware compatibility with V6R1 and subsequent releases? Ggaylord says: Yes, John... good to hear from you. V6R1 will be supported several generations back. You should review our planning website. Here's the info: Ggaylord says: i5/OS Support of Selected iSeries Models, January 2006 Ggaylord says: IBM plans for i5/OS V5R4 to be the final release supported on iSeries models 270, 820, 830, 840, SB2, and SB3. The next release is planned to be supported on models 515, 520, 525, 550, 570, 595, 800, 810, 825, 870, and 890. Ggaylord says: The planning web site can be found at: http://www-304.ibm.com/jct01004c/systems/support/i/planning/upgrade/index.html Ggaylord says: no statement beyond V6R1 yet Question from Dkimmel: How much longer is IBM going to continue to enhance RPG? Jherring says: We are right now beginning the planning for the follow-on release to V6R1 - and will use the Common Americas Advisory Council to help guide us with requirements Question from Mpcrump: I know Power6 is a nice green type of processor. Can you talk about that? Question from DrFranken: Recently a friend of mine (Larry Bolhuis) was quoted in an industry publication that System i was a great tool to help with the 'Greening of your data center. Now I see that with the new 570 with POWER6 IBM is making a real play for reducing power usage. Did you swipe his idea or is IBM really going to play on this? Jherring says: Absolutely - we have been listening to clients concerns about the power and cooling requirements of their "server farms" and the POWER6 processor is a key part of our response - up to two times the performance of POWER5 in the same power envelope Ggaylord says: Yes, POWER6 processors are designed for more power efficiency, even to the point of arranging the transistors optimally for power consumption Ggaylord says: In particular, if you compare to POWER4 , for example... a 4-way POWER6 i570 can provide equivalent CPW to a 16-way POWER4 870 with 1/4 of the power consumption - 350% more efficient Jherring says: We didn’t steal your idea Doc - but it is indeed a good one. Add to the Power6 our ability to mange and optimize multiple workloads - we can definitely save companies bucks on cooling Question from DrFranken: The question is: How many apps can you get to dance on a POWER6 CPU! (The answer is: ALL of them!) It's GREAT to see system i continue to lead in technology. Question from Mpcrump: Power6 rocks! Can you talk about the performance gains for compute intensive work like Domino or WAS? Ggaylord says: Sure, Mike... the cache and performance improvements in POWER6 are solid...particularly for applications like Java Ggaylord says: In fact, Mpcrump, the Java performance is about 40% better than even POWER5+ Ggaylord says: Up to 2x POWER5 1.65 GHz... on average for compute intensive workloads. Question from Rob Berendt: Hello. I am looking for details on "DB2 Web Query". Stuff like cost, features, shipped to existing Query/400 customers, etc. Jherring says: There is a lot of information on DB2 Web Query at http://www.ibm.com/systems/i/software/db2/webquery including a FAQ document Ggaylord says: that describes our plans for transitioning Query/400 licensees Question from Rob Berendt: Where can we find the full list of enhancements for V6? Jherring says: There will be more specifics in the RFA and customer letters that are delivered next Tuesday - more details will be made available over the next several months in this forum and others later this year - the complete details will be available in 2008 Question from Nandelin: Was i5/OS on a Power blade announced? Jherring says: No - but as my boss says "watch this space" Question from DrFranken: When bigger drives are announced we often see smaller ones withdrawn. With the 282GB unit announcement does this mean the 70 GB drives are going away soon? Ggaylord says: the 70 GB drives are not planned to be withdrawn in the short term... but your point is well made - you should be getting more comfortable with larger capacity drives, particularly given the performance of today's write caches Question from DrFranken: What is a SAS and why would I want my i to have SASy drives? Ggaylord says: SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI - it's faster than the parallel attachment of SCSI disks we have today Jherring says: Serial Attached SCSI have reliability features that existing SCSI drives do not - they eliminate one of the single points of failure in a RAID set Question from DrFranken: Jim's point on power consumption is a good one! One System i can run the applications that would require piles of Wintel stuff. This should be a bigger play for System i. Then consider less admin etc etc and System i should win every deal! Question from Mpcrump: Regarding consumption and cooling. Are there ways to compare and contrast the System i to say......Dell server farms or (heaven forbid) Bladecenter farms? Ggaylord says: Agree, DrFranken. - many of the workloads that run on Wintel can run on Linux or i5/OS Ggaylord says: web serving for example Ggaylord says: PHP Ggaylord says: Domino Ggaylord says: In fact, new IDC report makes that very point on power and virtualization value ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_wh/n/ISL03007USEN/ISL03007USEN.PDF Ggaylord says: take a look Question from MarkSWaterbury: will we ever see Power6 on the smaller models? 515, 520, 525, 550? Jherring says: We are planning on rolling out additional POWER6 systems in the next 18 months, including the smaller models Question from MarkSWaterbury: does v6 in any way address the need for a native GUI? Ggaylord says: With V6R1 product preview, System Director will provide a web user interface for managing i5/OS Question from DrFranken: Will IBM Systems Director completely replace Navigator? I mean the WHOLE THING? Will it do so in the initial release or will that be down the road a ways? Will Navigator still function against V6R1 systems or will I need to have both to support my customers? Jherring says: We will definitely support iNav in V6R1 - there will be a few functions that will be IBM Systems Director only and vice versa - but we are working to integrated most of the iNav functions over time. Ggaylord says: and with Systems Director, you'll be better able to have a consistent interface across multiple, heterogenous systems Question from DrFranken: Will 282GB drives be supported in other than EXP-24 drawers? Jherring says: Yes they will - details in next week's RFAs Jherring says: DrFranken - my apologies on the 282 GB drive question - it is only supported in the EXP24 drawers for now Question from DrFranken: Will VMware EXP support include existing IXS and IXA attached servers? Ggaylord says: & BladeCenter only with i5/OS V5R4 Ggaylord says: VMware is iSCSI attached System x and BladeCenter only Question from DrFranken: What is a 12X I/O Drawer and how does it attach to my i? Ggaylord says: Next generation of I/O drawer attachment Ggaylord says: More bandwidth than HSL Ggaylord says: attaches to the ports on the POWER6 node... Question from Angus: Can you explain the Standard vs. Enterprise pricing? Ggaylord says: Enterprise Edition provides 5250 capability by processor Ggaylord says: as well as value-add software Ggaylord says: The new i5/OS Edition with POWER6 now provides 5250 optionally, FYI Ggaylord says: Std. Edition does not have option for 5250 - with POWER5 Question from Mpcrump: HSL had some fairly low limits on total number of towers supported. Does 12x help eliminate this constraint? Ggaylord says: No, but 12x does offer more bandwidth - and with higher capacity drives you will need less towers Ggaylord says: and our Smart IOA's will help eliminate need for # cards - IOP's Question from Denvillesteve: does v6r1 support long object names? Jherring says: No it does not - this would be an excellent requirement to feed the Common Advisory Council Question from Angus: Why do I want MySQL - I already have DB2...? Ggaylord says: MySQL is the leading open source database Ggaylord says: there are a lot of open source applications written to PHP and MySQL Ggaylord says: with MySQL support these applications can run on i5/OS Ggaylord says: for example, SugarCRM announced yesterday support for i5/OS for there leading CRM solution Question from MarkSWaterbury: does V6 address the 16MB segment size limitation for MI space objects? (since everything is now teraspace enabled by default?) Jherring says: WE haven’t actually released V6R1 yet - just the product preview. More details will be made available later. Question from Mpcrump: I've read the IDC white paper. I'd really like information that allows us to get ugly with WINTEL farms over power and cooling. Can you help? Ggaylord says: Mike, did you read the LATEST IDC ? the one from YESTERDAY?Ggaylord says: appreciate your comments... we'll see what we can conjure up :-) Question from Mpcrump: If we have an open source application that we'd like to see enabled for i5/OS who do we contact? Jherring says: You might be surprised - they probably already work - in our experience many PHP applications work directly and MySQL will make it even easier Question from Angus: Moving forward, where can we find more information about these announcements and the future of i5/OS? Ggaylord says: continue to monitor iSociety Jherring says: COMMON itself is a great place, as is iSociety. Ggaylord says: continue to monitor the System i website.... it's a primary vehicle for us to disseminate information Jherring says: There is an upcoming webcast sponsored by System i Network featuring Ian Jarman and yours truly - please plan on participating iSociety says: The URL for that webcast is: http://www.systeminetwork.com/content/f3/index.cfm?fuseaction=webcast.enrollEnhancedWebcast&webcastID=505&issueID=6321&articleID=55076 iSociety says: Thanks for attending today's Fireside chat... iSociety says: Thanks to Jim and George for being part of our Fireside chat. Jherring says: Thanks! Ggaylord says: Thanks for all of your business and supporthttp://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0281890.htmhttp://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/redp4293.htmlhttp://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/redp4293.pdfhttp://www-304.ibm.com/jct01004c/systems/support/i/planning/upgrade/index.htmlhttp://www.ibm.com/systems/i/software/db2/webqueryftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_wh/n/ISL03007USEN/ISL03007USEN.PDFhttp://www.systeminetwork.com/content/f3/index.cfm?fuseaction=webcast.enrollEnhancedWebcast&webcastID=505&issueID=6321&articleID=55076shapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1shapeimage_3_link_2shapeimage_3_link_3shapeimage_3_link_4shapeimage_3_link_5shapeimage_3_link_6