John Voris on Thu, 3 Jan 2002 18:00:33 +0100 |
Here is an article I saw in December than kind of interested me. It is just more proof that IBM is indeed supporting and pushing LINUX to its current customer base..... * IBM Offers Trial iSeries Linux Partitions to Developers by Timothy Prickett Morgan Last May, IBM announced a special trial program for Linux developers to play around with its zSeries mainframes running Linux partitions. At the time, I said that this was a great idea, and that it would be an even better idea if IBM made similar trial Linux capacity available to the OS/400 and Linux developer communities so they could play with Linux on the iSeries and AS/400 server line and see that it does indeed work. IBM seems to have taken that advice, and earlier this week it announced the Linux for iSeries Test Drive program. Under the iSeries Linux trial program, any member of IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers organization can sign up for a guest account on an IBM iSeries server running Linux partitions to test code. (JV - It costs nothing to sign up.) Trial users can choose between SuSE Linux 7.1 or TurboLinux 6.5 Linux partitions, which are equipped with 170 MB of disk capacity. The partition remains active for 14 days. All access is remote, and the user ID and password are supplied to trail users through email from IBM. The remote link to the iSeries Linux partition includes an ssh connection and secure file copy, but does not have root or superuser access. No additional middleware linking to OS/400 is available, which limits the usefulness of the trial somewhat. For people who want to play with Linux on the iSeries for a little bit longer, IBM is offering a fee-based shared Linux partition with 500 MB of disk space, which is available for 30 days for $200. For those who want a dedicated Linux partition and 1 GB of disk, IBM is also making this option available for 30 days at a cost of $400. In January, Red Hat Linux will be supported on the test drive as well. IBM says that access to the partitions is available on a first come, first served basis and says further that there are only a limited number of slots open. It is unclear if IBM is using a mix of Model 270 and Model 8XX iSeries servers to support the Linux partitions, and IBM is not saying exactly how much processing power is available in each Linux partition. The economics of the iSeries make it seem very, very likely that IBM is using uniprocessor Model 270s with four virtual partitions. It costs about $3,600 per partition to acquire a base uniprocessor Model 270-2432. A 32-way Model 840-2461, which can support 31 Linux partitions running V5R1, costs nearly $1.5 million, which would make each Linux partition cost just under $48,000 a piece. This is the best argument for not using the Model 840 for the Linux for iSeries Test Drive and for using Model 270s. (However, if IBM has some Model 8XX servers sitting around unsold, these might be the servers behind the test drive.) Back in May, when IBM announced the similar zSeries (Mainframe) test drive program, IBM chose a 10-way "Freeway" zSeries server as the platform, rather than a smaller mainframe, because the zSeries server supports thousands of virtual Linux servers on a single machine. (The Freeway server scales to 16 processors.) So even at a cost of $3.4 million for the base 10-way zSeries server, the hardware driving each virtual Linux partition only cost a few grand. The economics are similar to the iSeries Model 270 line in that regard. However, IBM offered 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day trials to customers, and did so for free for even these longer trials. The zSeries Linux trial program seems aimed at helping companies test their applications on the zSeries platform, while the iSeries Linux trial program seems intended to prove to potential iSeries customers that the Linux operating system itself works on the iSeries platform. John Voris mailto:jvoris@axs2000.net http://www.axs2000.net/jvoris -- IBM Certified Specialist, iSeries -- ----- Technical Solutions Designer ---- ----- John Voris Consulting, Inc ------ ----- AS/400 & Java Consulting ------ ----- 610 873-0780 ------ ______________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group - http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug
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