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IBM's new server targets the 'i' in SMB

IBM has released what it claims is an all-singing, all-dancing box designed for the industry's craze-du-jour, the SMB market. The company's angle is simplicity for the System i Express, the latest addition to the SMB System i server line. With infomercial flair at a press and analyst event in San Francisco today, IBM's System …

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Mike Henderson

Windows Server capable?

"Both boxes are Linux, Windows Server, AIX and i5/OS capable."

Windows Server on a Power 5+ system?

Really?

Ashlee Vance
(Written by Reg staff)

Windows Clarification

It may be a tad loose, but IBM does claim Windows support via a BladeCenter or System x box and iSCSI.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/bladecenter/windows/

I've edited the story to clarify that. Thanks for the comment.

AV

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

With added hardware

The main bus from the System i can be extended to a PCI card in an IBM system x. The disk is provided by the system i and there are some hooks from i5/OS into Windows to ease management, power on/off, etc.

Simon Casey

Old news

An iSeries Windows capable? What's new about that at all? Come on you could attach an x-Series years ago when the i5 originally came out and use the disk assigned to the i-Series, be it internal or san-attached. What's at all new about that? The only way IBM could really push the i5 line is to drop the ridiculous licensing costs of i5/OS and actively promote the OS more.

God knows why you'd want to also run an x-series off an i5 with only 2-8 drives - due to the nature of i5/OS single level storage I would dread to see the i/o performance on anything bigger than 73Gb drives. Yes it's capable but you'd really have to ask yourself... is it worth it?

Duncan Robertson

Ever heard of LPAR's?

AS/400 or iSeries has had the capability of running almost any OS on a Logical Partition (LPAR) for years! The main controlling LPAR is run under OS/400 - giving all the benefits and security of the true 64-bit and truly wonderful OS.

Our shop has an i520 with OS/400, AiX, Linux and a Windows server running on it. The LPAR's dynamically adjust according to the load on the machine and, if properly managed, hardly require any administration.

Having been involved with the AS/400 for a number of years, I am amazed that it is taking this long for the rest of the world to catch up. I know that the iSeries is IBM's fastest selling machine and that they have been pushing development for it for a while, however, once you have a taste of what a real high performance machine can do, you'll never turn back. The only reason that I can see to non-adoption of the iSeries is the price and the need to have some niche personnel in your IT Dept. However, it is well worth it in the long run...

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