Windows on an iSeries?

["Michael Naughton" <michael_naughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm looking or people who know more than I do, so of course I came right over here :-). My company is looking to consolidate its windows servers, and I ran across this article:

http://www.infordata.net/inforweb.static/documents/newsletter/ISSE1007.pdf

that makes it sound as if we could do it all on our iSeries (we've got a model 9406-520). From the article, it looked as if we could

* set up several windows servers using the Integrated xSeries Server cards

* dynamically allocate disk space among the iSeries and the various windows servers

* use our existing tape backup system to back up the windows data at the same time we're backing up our iSeries data

Then we talked to our BP, who said it's not that simple. According to them,

** the integrated server cards aren't recommended because they're hard to upgrade, and we'd be better off with the Integrated xSeries Adapters (and some boxes to put them in)

** the disk would need to be split between the windows servers and the iSeries, and we couldn't just dynamically shift it around

** we'd need a separate LPAR to handle the windows stuff

** we'd be better off with a separate backup system for the window stuff

All of which makes it look a LOT less worth it, but I'm not convinced -- hence my question. Does anyone have experience with either of these environments? Is it as great as the article makes it sound, or is our BP closer to the mark? If we're looking to
centralize storage, management, and backup, is this a good option, or we better off just going with a windows SAN (the other option)?

Thanks very much for your help,


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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