Re: Advise on Web topology on System i

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Jorge Merino
> is it a good idea to keep the System I to serve back-end
> as well as front-end?

Yes.  Use the system to host both applications and database.  It's designed to handle complex workloads.  No need to distribute workloads across more than one box, especially when you're just getting started with EGL and Websphere.

> How the performance will be affected?

Better than if you were to distribute the workload.  Inter-process communication is faster than communication over a socket.

> How many shops out there have their System i serving web
> pages and the back-end without issues?

Good question.  I'm personally aware of about 55 School Districts in the US that are using IBM i to host Web applications, written by me and several other colleagues.

> have you had to have different machines serving User Interface,
> Business Logic, Database, Archiving?.

No.

> Your thoughts will be highly appreciated, I want to get good performance
> for our 5250 users plus our Web users as well.

Newer servers from IBM make a big difference.  With RPG Web applications, I got decent performance on my model 170.  My model 520 is literally 50 times faster.  One of our customers is hosting hundreds of administrative applications, hundreds of concurrent users, and thousands of concurrently running jobs on an older 2-way server, and getting sub-second response times.

You didn't indicate the nature of your workload.  And I'm not very familiar with EGL and Websphere.  So your mileage may vary.  We look forward to hearing more.

Nathan.