System i Model 570 Power 6 Edition

IBM introduced the new System i Model 570 POWER 6 Edition to the Australian market in mid September

The 570 model will be the first in the System i family of servers to make use of new processing technology, using up to 16 POWER6 processors (running at 4.7GHZ) in each machine.

The advantage of the new processors is the increased CPW rating, 31% greater than the POWER5+ version and 72% greater than the POWER5 version.

The indication of pricing for the POWER6 model is that it will be very competitive. While the current range of high end 570’s are in the P40 software tier, the new POWER6 versions will all be in the P30 tier. This will mean lower on going costs for both software maintenance and the upfront software product costs.

In the past IBM has classed their System i machines in either Standard or Enterprise Editions, standard being a ‘Batch CPW’ only machine and the enterprise edition giving 100% ‘5250′ (interactive) CPW usage. These editions have now disappeared and replaced with a single “i5/OS Edition” which will include an i5/OS license for a single processor and licenses to IBM Director and iSeries Access.

If customers need to run interactive (green-screen) workloads, an optional Enterprise Enablement feature will be available. Other software that used to be part of the Enterprise Edition is now available in 2 different optional “Value Packs” the aim being that the customer has a broader choice for software products giving increased flexibility and cost savings.

Some of the prerequisites for the new Power 6 570 are:

• i5/OS V5R4
• System Unit only supports the IOP-less technology.
• System Unit will only support the new Serial Access SCSI (SAS) disk drives.

Customers with a requirement to run V5R3 and below will require a Power 5+ machine as they will not be able to run this OS on the new Power 6. Secondly if there are any feature cards required in the system that need the use of an IOP, an additional system expansion will be required, the same applying for a requirement for non SAS disk drives to be in the system unit.

IBM plans to announce their next version of i5/OS in 2008. The new edition will incorporate a wide range of enhancements including

• New security
• Business resiliency
• Virtualisation capabilities

Tape encryption will be used in the new release giving users the ability to protect data by encrypting backups to a tape drive as well as intrusion protection features to help protect against external threats. V6R1 will also have enhanced storage virtualisation to enable access to a wider range of network storage devices.