As400 \ iSeries \ Power Systems \ IBM i

Feelgood

Just out of curiosity, are there any AS400 \ iSeries \ IBM i \ Power Systems people in the house?. I don't see much discussion knocking around about Power systems on boards at all?

BaconZombie

I know ALOT of companies that if you look behind there Shiney Rack Cluster of SQL boxes you will find that an ancient AS/400 \ iSeries is doing all the donkey Data processing work.

I know it to a point but would love to improve my skills on it, some nice jobs in Banks and Luxury Cruise Liners for Admins with AS/400 & NT4 knowledge :pac:

Feelgood wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, are there any AS400 \ iSeries \ IBM i \ Power Systems people in the house?. I don't see much discussion knocking around about Power systems on boards at all?

Tomtata

Admin one for 4 years now - Would much prefer if it were possible to virtualise the os.
Fairly light load 99% of the time.

Not very intuitive, everything abbreviated to the tenth degree.

Not a great fan TBH, give me Linux on x86 any day.

Feelgood

BaconZombie wrote: »

I know ALOT of companies that if you look behind there Shiney Rack Cluster of SQL boxes you will find that an ancient AS/400 \ iSeries is doing all the donkey Data processing work.

I know it to a point but would love to improve my skills on it, some nice jobs in Banks and Luxury Cruise Liners for Admins with AS/400 & NT4 knowledge :pac:

There are 136 iseries servers on the Vegas strip over the space of 1 mile, running all the casinos. Its mad because everyone thinks they are ancient technology but the new Power7 processors are actually much faster than Intel's Nehalem!.

Very easy to learn and probably one of the most robust enterprise servers
in the world, second only to IBM zSeries. Yet for some reason when I tell people that I work on iseries, I either get a dumb look or a WTF is that

If any like minded individuals would like to learn bits and pieces I'd be happy to pass on some knowledge. The crap thing about it is that you really have to have an iseries to learn it.

Tomtata wrote: »

Admin one for 4 years now - Would much prefer if it were possible to virtualise the os.
Fairly light load 99% of the time.

Not very intuitive, everything abbreviated to the tenth degree.
Not a great fan TBH, give me Linux on x86 any day.

The OS can be completely virtualised mate, in fact OS400 was being virtualised in the mid 90s long before anyone even heard about VMware
and the likes. You have to keep in mind that the OS works on Power processor architecture so its not possible to to run it on x86. You should check it out, its called logical partitioning. LPAR = Virtual machine

CptSternn

Next ye will be asking who here still can program in RPG.

I'm not raising my hand for that loaded question again.

Feelgood

CptSternn wrote: »

Next ye will be asking who here still can program in RPG.

I'm not raising my hand for that loaded question again.

Ah come on mate, lets write some fun RPG progs!

Tomtata

Feelgood wrote: »

There are 136 iseries servers on the Vegas strip over the space of 1 mile, running all the casinos. Its mad because everyone thinks they are ancient technology but the new Power7 processors are actually much faster than Intel's Nehalem!.

Very easy to learn and probably one of the most robust enterprise servers
in the world, second only to IBM zSeries. Yet for some reason when I tell people that I work on iseries, I either get a dumb look or a WTF is that

if any like minded individuals would like to learn bits and pieces I'd be happy to pass on some knowledge. The crap thing about it is that you really have to have an iseries to learn it.

The OS can be completely virtualised mate, in fact OS400 was being virtualised in the mid 90s long before anyone even heard about VMware
and the likes. You have to keep in mind that the OS works on Power processor architecture so its not possible to to run it on x86. You should check it out, its called logical partitioning. LPAR = Virtual machine

I was referring to virtualising OS400 on x86 hardware. I understand you can run virtual machines on OS400 but who in their right mind you do it today especially with the alternatives.
The fact that it runs on proprietary hardware @ 10x the cost of comparable X86 hardware is a very sore point.

136 iSeries servers in Vagas running all the casinos?
The bespoke software running on the iSeries is what’s running the casinos – Most likely there for the last 30+ years - so ingrained it would be cost prohibitive to change.

All that said I agree an As400 \ iSeries \ Power Systems \ IBM I discussion / knowledge forum would be great.

Feelgood

Tomtata wrote: »

I was referring to virtualising OS400 on x86 hardware. I understand you can run virtual machines on OS400 but who in their right mind you do it today especially with the alternatives.

I see where you are coming from, I would be completely of the other stance though as in why not virtualise x86 operating systems on Power architecture?. You would be surprised the amount of people that virtualise OS400 these days, theres a well known leasing company in Dublin that have 64 logical OS400 partitions running on a single power server. The idea is they have a partition for each of the countries that they do business and run OS400 in the native language of that country.

Linux, aix and OS400 can all be virtualised on Power servers. Most SAP installations these days use aix+oracle or OS400 at the back end.

The fact that it runs on proprietary hardware @ 10x the cost of comparable X86 hardware is a very sore point.

Totally agreed, the cost is very much of a sore point though what you are paying for is a very robust enterprise solution and thats what you get.
However I could never understand why IBM never tried to break into the SME market with iseries.

136 iSeries servers in Vagas running all the casinos?
The bespoke software running on the iSeries is what’s running the casinos – Most likely there for the last 30+ years - so ingrained it would be cost prohibitive to change.

I think the likes of casinos and fortune 500s go for iseries again because of the robustness, uptime and level of security they can provide. No one has of yet has been able to write a virus for OS400.

All that said I agree an As400 \ iSeries \ Power Systems \ IBM I discussion / knowledge forum would be great.

Agreed, would be a nice addition to boards!, though maybe it still falls under the server and systems bracket

Tomtata

"Robustness, uptime and level of security"

I have a real issue with these labels against the iSeries - They may have been true many years ago but todays x86 hardware is just as if not more reliable that the iSeries.

You could build a very large cluster that would destroy the iSeries in robustness, uptime and performance at a fraction of the cost. Take PayPal as an example.

I have to laugh about "robustness" - True Story: I was ftp'ing a PTF iso to an iSeries a few months ago. Left my desk to attend to something. 45 mins later I got a call on the mobile "The system is about to crash, Storage is MAXING OUT"

I rushed in to see what the problem was - a quick dig around and a call to IBM who couldn't help - I found the FTP process had failed mid transmission and because of some bug the ISO file began to self-perpetuate to 196GB and growing.

I killed the transfer and deleted the file.

I was only sending a file via FTP and it nearly crash the iSeries - I lost alot of respect for it that day.

funk-you

Feelgood wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, are there any AS400 \ iSeries \ IBM i \ Power Systems people in the house?. I don't see much discussion knocking around about Power systems on boards at all?

Yup, started off with IBM as a i/p/x/z series engineer. Good knowledge to have. It comes in handy in every job i've ever gone into.

-Funk

Sparks

funk-you wrote: »

Yup, started off with IBM as a i/p/x/z series engineer. Good knowledge to have. It comes in handy in every job i've ever gone into.
-Funk

Heh. I seem to be going the other way - I'm just getting to grips with x/p servers in IBM after years of working with x86 linux boxen

evostik

I'm not a techie, but need some type of flexible data access software for our AS400. Have tried google but isn't of much use. Anybody got any suggestions?

Thanks

euser1984

Are these machines still supported by IBM? FRU's still available easily?