Re: iSeries Disk Pricing

[Larry Bolhuis <lbolhuis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy,

   IMHO You are spot on. Of all my customers I can't even think of 2 that
use 17G drives for the exact reason you specify - Arm Count.  We deal almost
exclusively in the 270-820 space and those machines just don't normally
house databases large enough to be able to utilize 17G drives.  I was very
sorry to see that IBM ignored the 8G units in this pricing action. If you
consider that the 8G drives ALSO require twice the cage space, twice the
controllers, and double the maintenance dollars for the same capacity they
are a much MORE than double the cost of 17G units.  This all makes it more
difficult to compete against the average Wintel and Lintel solutions because
there disks are SOO much cheaper.

   My fear at the end of the year when 8G units go away is that we'll sell a
customer a system with enough arms that the capacity yield will have them
set for years! This may even hamper the ability to sell upgrades.

   My .02

     - Larry

Andy Nolen-Parkhouse wrote:

> Friends,
>
> While it is good news that IBM is significantly reducing the price of
> their disk drives, for many workloads there may well be no change.  This
> announcement prices the 17 GB drives at exactly the old price of the 8
> GB drives ($1,400).  For those who require raw capacity, this represents
> a significant savings.
>
> For those of us who have routinely sized DB2-based transaction systems,
> frequently we end up configuring excess storage capacity in order to
> obtain an appropriate number of disk arms to ensure adequate
> performance.  This general rule applied for me in most systems using 8
> GB drives.  I needed the arms more than the capacity.  Because the 17 GB
> drives seem to have roughly the same rotational speed and seek times as
> the 8 GB drives, it stands to reason that a number of systems will
> require exactly the same number of drives at exactly the same price.
> There will be a significant increase in the amount of excess storage
> using the 17 GB drives, but the end result could well be no cost
> reduction.
>
> I'd welcome comment on this, but I think my reasoning is sound.  Some
> systems would be better served by reducing the cost of 8 GB drives
> rather than discontinuing them.
>
> I would prefer to be wrong because I'm trying to focus on the good news
> of the announcement, and there is a lot.

--
Larry Bolhuis           | IBM Certified Solutions Expert
Vice President          |     iSeries Technology V5 R1
Arbor Solutions, Inc.   |     e-business for AS/400 V4 R2
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