Re: MIDRANGE-L Digest, Vol 5, Issue 68

[msmith6@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

".. Rob, I thought the mantra was "disk is cheap".  IBM disk has never 
 been as cheap as PC's but that's been the "tax" you pay for the 
connivence,
 quality, and service of being "i"ntegrated.  You have said before 
 that you  don't like off-brands for iSeries disk because they have 
more 
 issues than true IBM drives. .."

I'm with Rob.  BTW, I don't think IBM even makes their drives 
anymore.  I'm sure the DeskStar line has been sold to I think 
Hitachi,  When I upgraded my 730 to my 810 and migrated my drives,  I 
removed alot of hardware around the drives.  That was probably all 
the 'special' hardware that made them expensive.  Essentially looks 
like a PC server drive. I don't even think their Fibre Channel drives, 
standards SCSI.

I'm dealing with the same problem Rob is.  We three run Domino servers 
on our iSeries (Dvlp, Application, and Home Office email).  One 
Windows Domino server in our DMZ to route mail to and from our 
internal servers. We ended up buying an EMC SAN because IBM disk were 
too expensive (Other Open System servers use the SAN).  Now some 
compliance person says we have to keep a year of email...

That's alot of email (currently use 45 GB for apprx. 20 days 
retention).  So, hmm, where are we going to store hundreds of GB of 
email.. $2500/73GB 15K SCSI iSeries drive or $300/300GB 10K SCSI EMC 
drive (remember - long term retention).


How are you going to back up your Linux server?  
There are backup solutions for Linux.  I'm sure even IBM sells one.  
Still way under the cost of a drive.
Now, If you had a SAN (read cheap disk) couldn't you create a Linux 
partition on the iSeries and mount that external file system.


> TSM?Oops, the data is back on the iSeries!  That's OK, though  
because disk is
> cheap.  If you start adding in the costs of a tape drive and tapes 
for your
> Linux system you may be eating up some of your savings.

You could put a 3581 (LTO) drive on a Fibre Channel switch and share 
the resource, I would think.  Same tape and drive that you use for 
iSeries (assuming you've upgraded you tape technology).

I think IBM is gouging us for disk.. simple.

m.