Category: System i

We at Computer Merchants, especially in the System i team, would like to sincerely thank each and every one of our customers who purchased a new System i 5xx from us. At the recent IBM Business Partner Awards, IBM awarded two very prestigious plaques to Computer Merchants. The first one being “Distributor Business Partner of [...]

It was nice to catch up with so many familiar faces at Interaction 2006. This was the third year in a row Computer Merchants hosted a stand, displaying *noMAX, High Availability Software for the System i. The team from Computer Merchants put in a huge effort over the 3 days of the conference – thanks [...]

Brendan comes initially form IT and wholesale distribution of IT products. More recently, Brendan was involved in direct sales and moved on to the sales management of a naitonal office machine supply and service company. He has joined our System i team and looks forward to meeting and helping people from the System i community. [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “IBM Specials” for more information on the following items. IBM Complete Systems IBM 9406/820, 35/2000 cpw OS5.3 16GB Memory, 1.4TB disk, 5074 tower, redundant power, Ethernet/Raid/Twinax $29,600 IBM 750/750 [...]

Just like you, we rely on our IT systems to support our business objectives Without these systems we may as well turn off the lights and go home, as it is almost impossible for us to operate without them. In the mid 1990′s we decided that we needed to implement a Disaster Recovery plan. We [...]

IBM enjoys rebranding products to keep them relevant and current to the user population. For anyone who is yet to ‘catch up’ the following is a quick summary of some products that share ‘dual personalities’. System 390 = zSeries = System z (Mainframe) AS/400 = iSeries = System i (Midrange OS/400) RS/6000 = pSeries = [...]

With increasingly shared hardware between iSeries and pSeries machines many of you are asking questions about how to compare performance. IBM System p Traditionally, IBM Unix used the ROLTP to compare performance. Due to huge performance increases in recent years, the ROLTP has been replaced with rPerf’s, where 1 rPerf = ~ 25 ROLTP Remember though, [...]

What Is Orphan Data? (and why you need to know about it) Orphan data is the data that is created after your last back-up. If you experience an outage on your IBM iSeries system, then this data will be lost because it has not been backed up to tape. The questions you should now ask yourself [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “IBM Specials” for more information on the following items. IBM Systems IBM 9406-800-2463-7400 OS V5R2 CPW 24/300 CPW Tier: P05 2GB Memory 140GB Disk 30/60QIC Tape Raid, DVD-ROM, [...]

Still in System 36 Mode? Do you still run in System 36 mode and plan to upgrade to a newer machine “sometime”? If so, here is a very important piece of information you need to be aware of… S/36 and S/38 Migration (OS/400 Option 4) and S/36 Migration Assistant (OS/400 Option 11) have both been [...]

When you purchase a second-hand IBM iSeries server from Computer Merchants, you can be confident that you receive it ready to turn on and start loading your data right away. The key steps we take when preparing an iSeries machine for you First of all the disks are initialized. Licensed Internal Codes (LIC’s) are loaded. OS/400 [...]

We are often asked the question: “How long will my Hardware and Software be supported with IBM?” As we have recently seen, the models 170, 250, 7xx and earlier members of the iSeries or AS/400 family have been taken off support for V5R4. That is, V5R3 is the last version of operating system that is [...]

That’s a question we often get asked here at Computer Merchants. The answer of course depends on: where you are, what you’re after and what we have in stock at the time. There have been many times when we’ve helped a customer get out of a sticky situation. Here’s a recent example involving an Auckland [...]

Many of you are now familiar with the first clause of our standard Plain English Sale Conditions To ENSURE YOU ARE HAPPY with the end result. Judging by the feedback we are receiving from customers who have purchased the new i5 Series machines, this certainly is being met. Here are a few brief customer comments on [...]

IBM iSeries Technical Update was held in Brisbane in mid November The two day technical training was packed with useful information and attending was certainly time well spent. With the ever increasing ability of the iSeries to support a large variety of operating systems (like Windows, Linux or AIX) running in partitions on the same [...]

IBM recently announced that the eServer i5 now supports the placement of the load source disk in an external storage array Prior to this, the i5 would support external disk, however the requirements were that at least one disk remained under the i5 covers to act as the load source (see IBM Redbooks – iSeries [...]

IBM have not yet officially announced the exact release date of their next Operating System to replace V5R3. Rumour has it that this new version, tipped to be called i5/OS V5R4 will be released in the first quarter of 2006. Some of the new features that are believed to be included are: RAID 6 – [...]

What’s Hot Right Now? When we talk to our customers we often get asked “What’s hot at the moment?” Or “What have you got in stock?” At the moment the iSeries models 800, 810 and 825 represent very good value in the market. In the brokerage cycle they are in the pricing “sweet spot”. It [...]

What Are Hardware Management Consoles? A hardware management console (HMC) is an Intel based PC appliance that is used to configure and manage partitions on IBM Power 5 systems (i520 etc). The main applications of a HMC include server and partition management and licensed internal code maintenance. When Are They Required? You will need a [...]

IBM has always set the standard for high quality software Support Line Services Just a reminder, we can now tailor your support line services to suit your critical business needs. With a choice of business hours or 24 x 7 coverage, Support Line can be accessed via local telephone or electronic services. IBM has an [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “Web Specials” for more information on the following items. IBM Systems 9406 8002463-7400 25/300 cpw OS5.2 512MB memory, 5 x 17GB disks, Raid, Ethernet, 30GB ¼” Tape + [...]

As many of you are aware, all iSeries machines built and sold by Computer Merchants have default passwords pre-loaded with accompanying documentation outlining the rack configuration, software installed, information about license keys etc. Many of our clients change these passwords upon delivery of their new equipment and we do encourage you to change these. In [...]

A Performance Chart is a tool for comparing different servers It allows you to know the improvement you can expect from an upgrade of your machine. Each machine is rated on performance criteria such as: floating point calculations, web server performance, client/server interaction, or raw computing power. Results are then displayed in an easy to interpret [...]