Re: No Power7 to Power8 MES upgrade option, entitlements, cores, etc.

[Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>]

There's a apparently statement of direction (SOD) for MES upgrades for 770
/ 780(?)

Also while an individual job, even a mutli-threaded one, would stay on a
single processor..

Multiple jobs should be spread out among CPUs...if you're not seeing that,
something is wrong.

Charles


On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Steinmetz, Paul <PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> 1) Is IBM doing away with MES upgrades?
> No MES upgrade path from Power7 to Power8
> Over the years, IBM always gave you an upgrade option, up to a point.
> If you upgraded within that timeframe, you saved $$$$, if not,  the new
> machine would be quite a bit more, you lost all value from old machine.
> This is what kept you current.
> We had our same serial# for over 10 years from our original 510 (mid 90's)
> Also, on MES, all entitlements would transfer.
> On a new machine, the base entitlement had to stay with the old machine,
> so you had to repurchase an additional entitlement to remain at the same
> level.
>
> 9406 AS/400 RISC Series Processor was our original 510. (mid 90's)
> 9406 System Unit MES # 19262 from 510 to 640 upgrade. (2nd quarter 98)
> 9406 System Unit MES # N26616 from 640 to 830 upgrade. (2nd quarter 2001)
> 9606 System Unit MES # 129707-6 from  830 to 550 upgrade (3rd quarter 2005)
> 8205 new purchase - (1st quarter 2012)
> S814 new purchase - TBD
>
> 2) Also related to number of cores.
> We currently have an 8-core 8205, but only 3 cores licensed for i5/os.
> The remaining 5 active cores are useless.
> We needed to purchase them to get the 8205 features we needed.
>
> I see the same issue, but only worse with Power8, number of cores has
> increased.
> Also, not sure if many know this, but if you have more than 1 full
> processor allocated to an LPAR, and your running RPG or RPGIV, that 2nd
> processor will probably never be used.
> RPG and RPGIV is all single threaded, most work will always only use the
> 1st processor.
> Way back on Power5, our BP sold us additional processors with the
> perception that more work will get done quicker, not the case.
>
> Thank You
> _____
> Paul Steinmetz
> IBM i Systems Administrator
>
> Pencor Services, Inc.
> 462 Delaware Ave
> Palmerton Pa 18071
>
> 610-826-9117 work
> 610-826-9188 fax
> 610-349-0913 cell
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>
> psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx<mailto:psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> http://www.pencor.com/
>
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