RE: External disk for iSeries

[Jeff Bull <Jeff.Bull@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You can buy huge amounts of disk capacity these days for peanuts (well
currently in the UK about ?1 per GB), the cost of buying IBM disks is approx
40x that.
With ever increasing demands for more iSeries storage, the costs could be
drastically reduced if I could say, use non-IBM SCSI or I-SCSI disks.  Now
whether these 'cheap' disks would be better as internal or external is a
debatable point.

What would they bring to the party?

a)      Resilience: The ability to mirror the iSeries IBM-internal disks to
non-IBM disks perhaps - but much more cheaply
b)      Capacity: I could create a user-ASP of non-IBM disks to provide
storage for non-critical applications, NWS storage spaces, save files, test
data ... cheaply; freeing my expensive IBM storage for my production data
c)      Fast disk to disk backups (well, faster and cheaper than tape
libraries perhaps)

Am I dreaming?  With budgets under so much strain, someone somewhere has got
to fill this demand, or create it.

Kind regards,

Jeffrey E. Bull
OS400 Software Support Consultant

IBM Certified Systems Expert, iSeries Technical Solutions
IBM Certified Systems Specialist, AS/400 System Administration

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-----Original Message-----
From: rob@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:rob@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 07 June 2004 16:18
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: External disk for iSeries


YEARS ago we used third party disk.  We had problems every time we 
upgraded OS, etc.  We finally got rid of them.  When they tried to get 
back in here they made real a$$holes out of themselves by threatening to 
go to the CEO and tell them we were wasting money, etc.

I like to see a little competition to keep IBM honest.  But I think the 
competition is coming a little in the fact that, with the dawn of unix 
ap's on the i5, that particular crowd won't goosestep to the line that 
this particular disk needs to cost scads more.

And I wonder if the possibility of using 'cheaper' disk is a valid reason 
to delve into IASP's.  Last I knew there is third party internal disk so 
what extra does third party external disk bring to the party?

Rob Berendt
-- 
Group Dekko Services, LLC
Dept 01.073
PO Box 2000
Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

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