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Re: [PLUG] AS400 RAID Disks
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Thanks for acolades, and I wish I had really done something spectucular to
deserve it. But the truth is, I just gutted the beast and have grafted it's
components into a PC running linux. Now that I have fully gutted this box, I
have come to the following conclusion: The AS/400 is simply this,
microcomputer hardware with mainframe software. Meaning, it's pretty much
standard hardware, but in a batch processing environment (this may be over
simplified, but I belive it's still accurate). This is cool for us gearheads
since the standard hardware is HIGH end standard - ie: the disks are 7200
RPM scsi, the RAM seems to be standard DIMM. They don't work in a regular
PC, probably because they are parity - so an older PC server would probably
accept them. The CDROM was scsi, the tape was SCSI, there is a PCI FAST
ethernet card, which I will attempt to get working tonight if I have time.
So all in all, if you know of anyone getting rid of one, I'll take it. Other
than the thing weighing 9 zillion pounds, it's got a lot of useful hardware
in it.
-chris
> It is interesting that Chris Shank has got LINUX working with these IBM
> drives (kudos to you, Chris) - and surprising that you were able to
> get the planar back plane to function. I know on the AS400 that you
> can purchase different Controller cards for the disk for "better than
> RAID protection". This is for 99.999999..% uptime. RAID on Disk or
> Redundant RAID is great, but what if the transaction you are writing
> is still in the controller card (not yet on disk) during failure or
> the card itself begins to fail? True, Full Write-Commit in your S/W
> app should be done, but the risk exposure in this layer of H/W can
> actually be addressed.
>
> There is a controller card you can purchase that comes with "redundacy"
> with the writing process executing in two, not one sub-processors.
> (according to IBM Marketing) I think these "controller cards for the
> AS400" are also handed off the RAID striping work so that OS400 and
> the main CPU does not need to worry about these H/W details.
>
> Also, I know of one OS400 fix which was explained to me as a "fix for
> drive failures during startup - After a power failure, the drives
> would fail during spinup. The drives would spin so fast that they
> injured themselves, so in the DOWNLOADED SOFTWARE FIX, we control the
> rotational speeds of the drives during shutdown and startup USING
> SOFTWARE". (I found this way cool. And if anyone can explain THIS to
> me, or if they know of any other box that has this kind of H/W
> programming, please let me know.)
>
> So Chris, if you got something more than just the hard drives working,
> I would love to tell my co-horts at the local AS/400 Discussion Forum,
> DVCUG. And we should tell them of your Redhat LIN-UX/400 box. Maybe
> even come up with a converter kit for the many old boxes businesses
> have here in Philly, which are quite a few. I may be able to get you
> even more AS400s for you to play with - although I don't know if you
> want to go down that road. ;o)
>
>
> Discussion Forum http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dvcug/
> Home Page http://www.DVCUG.org
>
> ............... John Voris ...............
> IBM Certified Specialist,
> iSeries Technical Solutions Designer
> mailto:jvoris@axs2000.net
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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> Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
> General Discussion - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug
______________________________________________________________________
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Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
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