Re: IXS Server Cards

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/11/2010 12:14 PM, Lukas Beeler wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 13:24,<rob@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>    
> > When we had the IXS cards we had 90 disk arms.  How many disk arms does
> > your traditional PC server have?
> >      
> In a modern environment, 2 or Zero. The rest is on the SAN. SANs are
> common place nowadays, even in small shops.
>
>    
Which of course makes his point. Spread your workloads across many arms. 
IBM i and it's predecessor operating systems have had SAN like 
capabilities for a very very long time. Many shops with IBM i have zero 
SAN knowledge but they know how to manage IBM i very well. In those 
situations use the i for the SAN. It doesn't fit all users of course but 
for many it works very well.  If you don't SAN your disks one way or the 
other, PC Server disk usage is typically above 90% full or below 10% 
full, adding disks is a pain and almost no one knows how busy the disks 
are, only how full they are.  In addition for the small shops a SAVE 21 
that gets 'the whole 9 yards' including all the PC servers is a 
wonderful thing to help you sleep at night. Backing up a SAN is mostly 
backing up every individual server or making sure you have two SANs and 
replicating them off-site. Wonderful if you've got a large enough 
company and knowledge to manage it but not something to step into lightly.

  - DrFranken