Re: AIX - i5/OS feature comparison was the notorious Steve's soapbox

[Evan Harris <spanner@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Steve

Mostly we've been down this track before - it just seems that you 
either forget or ignore all the additional features that i5/OS brings 
to the table that get pointed out to you by folks on this list. As 
pointed out many times in this list, the operating systems you keep 
mentioning and using for comparative purposes are not equal, and are, 
in fact, nowhere near equal. Just for starters, neither of them have 
an integrated database.

As another example, neither AIX or Linux have job queues or 
subsystems. Managing job schedules is a challenge due to the lack of 
simple and effective queueing. You can code around this to provide 
the same ease of use and manageability that the simple job queue 
gives you but you have to do it yourself or install some third party 
stuff. Often you will see CPU wasted simply because jobs are 
scheduled with start and end times that are "certain" not to overlap 
(and then chaos when those jobs DO run concurrently). Most unix 
administrators envy the simple ability to stack jobs up in a jobqueue.

The lack of the sophisticated work management capability available in 
i5/os often means (for instance in an SAP installation) that the 
system p ends up being much larger to cope with the fact that it has 
to host multiple hardware partitions just to achieve the same level 
of task separation and CPU and memory isolation that the simple old 
subsystem can give you. What additional complexity do you think this 
adds to management and configuration of the system ? What is it worth 
to you ? I think it adds tremendous value.

In the case of another aspect we take for granted on the i, the 
additional management overhead required for extents and tables spaces 
in the database is considerable, as well as other associated tasks. 
That's why other systems have Database Administrators, as well as 
System Administrators. Had you read one of the earlier references 
provided you would have seen a fairly decent slide outlining this. 
Here it is again so you can go and actually read some of the evidence 
already provided to you instead of asking the same questions over and 
over again as if no-one has answered them:

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/scholars/products/iseries/images/module8.ppt

The particularly relevant slide is slide 60 as per the earlier email.

I am certainly not going to argue about the price disparity - I agree 
with you that it is a problem, and would like to see the system i 
price become more competitive - but I am pretty tired of reading your 
complaints asking where the value is and ignoring all previous 
evidence or argument that contradicts your uninformed opinion.

You really need to either listen to what people tell you and accept 
it, or go find out for yourself by actually administering a iseries 
box; it seems clear to me that you have little to no administrative 
or operational knowledge on any real platform whatsoever. You might 
want to also try working with someone (most probably a whole team) 
that manages some unix boxes running any enterprise database flavour 
you care to name. Then you might begin to understand something of the 
value proposition that i5/OS adds to the mix and perhaps even be able 
to intelligently and credibly debate the merits or otherwise of i5/OS.

You might also want to try and differentiate between your opinions of 
IBM and the worth of the operating system.

regards
Evan Harris


At 02:10 a.m. 8/09/2006, you wrote:

> On 9/7/06, Walden H. Leverich <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > I think people should actually stop buying it
> > >until IBM sells it for the same price as the p5.
> >
> > Steve, the power of the i5 isn't in the hardware, it's in the OS, you
> > know that! I'll make you a deal, IBM can sell the i5 and p5 at the same
> > price, sans-OS. You can then add a couple thousand for AIX or a few 10
> > to 100-thousand for OS/400, that's about a fair price differential based
> > on what the OSs can do. Would that make you happier? <G>
> >
>
> Are we really saying the i5/OS is better than AIX - Linux? My
> conclusion up front, so people dont get totally rabid, is on the whole
> they are equal. As in IBM should sell i5/OS the way it sells AIX - as
> a low charge item that is a vehicle for selling p5 hardware and user
> based DB2 licenses.
>
> DB2 on AIX can handle XML. i5/OS cant.
>
> IT Jungle estimates that i5/OS gets 40% fewer transactions per minute
> out of the same unit of hardware.
>
> We all should be coding in portable SQL procedures. That accepted,
> what the heck is the difference between AIX and i5/OS? Your AIX DB2
> procedure code will run a lot faster so your programmer can spend more
> time coding for the user vs deciding whether to use an MCT, an EVI or
> a CTE.
>
> Sure we have green screen and DDS but IBM itself is shutting that
> stuff down. What is so good about i5/OS that you would recommend a
> company pay $40,000 per core to use it?
>
> -Steve
> --
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