Re: New Power 7 - Building a Case -- MIDRANGE-L

Certainly every situation will be different. Hardware, OS, and application
dependencies, potential licensing costs, etc. all have to be evaluated.

It all makes putting together the business case more interesting.

I'm going down this road now. Starting on the justification to add a 720 to
our mix to be a new DR platform for our prod system. The old DR platform -
Power5 from 2004 - simply doesn't have enough juice to run prod and upgrades
are likely not cost-effective compared to a 720 with it's cheaper OS
licensing. OS will stay 6.1 for the moment.

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:44 AM, <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Repurposing existing hardware as DR hardware is often not possible. For
example, if you get a new power 7 with 7.1 on it and your existing
hardware doesn't support 7.1 you will have issues.

Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

From: John Jones <chianime@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 09/01/2011 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: New Power 7 - Building a Case
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Well, I would include in your justification that disk space is starting to
run low. You're at 85% and, I assume, slowly growing.

As to the high CPU utilization, I would openly acknowledge that running an
i
at or near 100% all the time is fine from a hardware/architecture
perspective. However, what you need to also mention is whether or not
there
is a backlog or latency building up because the system might not be fast
enough to keep up with the workload. Are jobs waiting in queue longer
than
they ought to? Is user productivity being impacted? If you can
demonstrate
that an upgrade will improve user response/productivity in a meaningful
way,
then you've provided a business case that management will be better able
to
understand and accept. Even if the boost is only during a 2 hour/day peak
window.

CPWs/core doesn't seem to be improving that much with recent upgrades; the
more bang-per-buck seems to be in more cores in a given footprint. So be
cautious in statements about performance gains if your jobs aren't
multi-thread capable. I phrase it as "while a single job won't
necessarily
be faster we'll be able to run more jobs concurrently" and supplement that
with "which means that a single job is more more likely to get a CPU's
undivided attention which will lead to modest gains in individual
single-threaded job performance" though I phrase it in business-speak
instead of tech talk.

You might also find out what the server replacement cycle is for x86
systems
(Windows/Linux/VMware) at your company and compare your 5 year old i to
that.

Another thought would be, if you don't have one already, to add to your
business case that the existing i could be repurposed as a BC/DR system.

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Brian Piotrowski <
bpiotrowski@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Re: system performance. Must be nice...here's a snapshot of my system

as

it stands right now:

% CPU used . . . . . . . : 98.3 Auxiliary storage:
% DB capability . . . . : 69.6 System ASP . . . . . . :
881.4 G
Elapsed time . . . . . . : 03:24:24 % system ASP used . . :
85.7558
Jobs in system . . . . . : 6331 Total . . . . . . . . :
881.4 G
% perm addresses . . . . : .056 Current unprotect used :
19246 M
% temp addresses . . . . : 4.475 Maximum unprotect . . :
20333 M

/b;

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 10:40 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: New Power 7 - Building a Case

Maintenance
Power
Ancient IBM paper on the economic value of rapid response time.
Current technology. Compare to how many of them would run an IBM AT

with

a text based word processor. They both produce documents. Current
hardware allows current software. This allows you to keep pace with

fixes

and patches to improve security and reliability.

Some managers groove on 90+% utilization. If they had factories with
lower than that they would close plants, merge them together, plan
multiple shifts and have x people do their work by going module to

module

as others go to the restroom - practically what we do here. However our
busiest lpar: % CPU used . . . . . . . : 8.1. That's eight

point

one.

Rob Berendt
--
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

From: Luis Rodriguez <luisro58@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 08/31/2011 09:42 AM
Subject: Re: New Power 7 - Building a Case
Sent by: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Brian,

Ask your BP about the maintenance HDW fees for a Power 7 box against

your

current system. IIRC, they tend to be lower for equivalent systems.

Also, maybe IBM's site has some papers and so.

Regards,

Luis Rodriguez
IBM Certified Systems Expert — eServer i5 iSeries
--

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Brian Piotrowski <
bpiotrowski@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi All,

We're in the process of getting quotes, etc. for a new Power-7 box (to
replace our 520 - Power 4/5? - we purchased new in 2006). I'm trying

to

build a case for our senior management group as to why we need it.

Our current system (which is about 1200CPW pooled) is always running

in

the

99% cpu utilization - I can't recall really seeing it in anything

lower

than

high 80s. We're also doing major improvements to our codebase so

having

the

extra horsepower to run it will be a benefit.

Does anyone have any resources that can help me in my cause? I don't

think

management will buy the argument of the CPU utilization on it's own.

I did receive an article earlier this week on the benefits of

upgrading.

Maybe I'll raid that article as well to see what useful information I

can

harvest.

BTW - I did Google various phrases, but nothing really came up to give

me a

sound argument.

Thankee-sai!

/b;

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Brian Piotrowski
Assistant Mgr. - I.T.
Simcoe Parts Service, Inc.
Ph: 705-435-7814 x343
Fx: 705-435-5029
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
http://www.simcoeparts.com

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