As expected, Big Blue unveiled the highlights of its i5 hardware and i5/OS announcement at the iSeries Nation Town Hall and live Webcast from Spring COMMON last week. But in order to pin down the nitty-gritty details, Insider sat down with an IBM executive for further questioning.

      Last week, Insider gave you the scoop on i5/OS V5R3 and the new i5 Models 520 and 570 before the news went public (IW 5/3/04). This week, we give you an exclusive Q&A with IBM executive Tim Alpers, product development team leader, iSeries, IBM, Rochester, MN.

      In our exclusive interview, Alpers delved into key enhancements and additions to the operating system, such as Director Multiplatform, uncapped partitioning, Capacity on Demand (CoD), iSeries Navigator enhancements, and more:

      Insider Weekly: What are the key themes in this announcement?

      Alpers: There are three key messages that we have put in place over the last several years that really epitomize the iSeries offering. The first is a focus on simplifying the infrastructure for our customers. The second is integration. And the third is business continuity. We have heard from our customers that delivering the new functionality without disruption is a priority.

      IW: How does the new support for Director Multiplatform reflect these themes?

      Alpers: The key thing to remember with the Director Multiplatform is centralized management of system functions in different environments. I always use the analogy of printers. Linux, i5/OS, and AIX all support printers, but they all do it in different ways. Director Multiplatform gives you a screen to manage the printers on the system — activating them, deactivating them, sending jobs to the printers — and it all uses the same approach. Instead of learning three or four different ways, you learn one way.

      IW: There are several logical partitioning enhancements in this release, including the ability to support uncapped partitions. Why is this important to today’s users?

      Alpers: Today on an iSeries box, you have a set amount of resources that are allocated to a partition, and then you can move those resources — but it has to be done consciously by an external event or an external trigger to the system. Uncapped means that as the system is running and it hits the maximum resources available to that partition, the system will go to that shared pool and apply that resource automatically in real-time so that the 100% utilization drops down and you can handle peak workloads. The irony in this is that today, customers are buying all this processor resource, but they are not utilizing it very much. Here we are going to sell the same processor resource, but it is going to be utilized much more, meaning that customers don’t necessarily have to buy as much processor. We are making our customers more self-sufficient because they don’t have to buy as many servers.

      IW: Last week we told our readers about the new Capacity on Demand (CoD) offerings. Can you give some more details on what they are and how they work?

      Alpers: We currently have On/Off CoD, where you purchase a processor day, but we really think that is going to drop in usage because of the new Reserve CoD. With Reserve CoD, customers can go to IBM before they would ever need the resource, establish a contract, and pre-purchase processor days. They have a pool of processor days sitting there, and as the usage of those processors hits 100%, the system can automatically go to the reserve pool of processor days, take one of those stand-by processors, bring it in, get that utilization down below 100%, and operate. Today, if customers are at 100%, they have to call IBM, get a key, and load it on. By that time, their peak is gone.

      Trial CoD gives you a one-time shot to turn on your standby processors to see how the performance on your system is affected — and you can turn on one or all of your standby processors for 30 days. It is available at no charge, but is a onetime shot, and once the 30 days lapse, you have to purchase On/Off CoD, Reserve CoD, or a permanent activation. However, if you do purchase a permanent processor, then your 30-day calendar gets reset and you can take advantage of the Trial CoD again. The power is that you don’t have to re-IPL the system or a partition or an application — it just gets moved into that environment.

      Memory CoD will only be available on the 570 and larger systems. The reason for that is, with the reduction in memory prices, memory is going to be so cheap that — for the low-end customers — it really doesn’t pay to have half of your memory in reserve. The process that you use to activate standby processors is the same process used for standby memory. You call IBM, get a key, insert that into the system, and it turns on the standby memory. So when you add processors, you can add memory as well. With the significant drop in memory prices, we will see some customers say, “I am going to just buy the memory and turn it all on, and then I will activate processors when I need them.” But the memory will already be there.

      IW: What are the key enhancements to iSeries Navigator with V5R3?

      Alpers: iSeries Navigator now allows you to start and stop Linux servers and create and manage virtual storage spaces. i5/OS can manage storage so that applications running on Linux will store files from i5/OS to the disk, giving you the capability to have a consistent backup and restore. Plus, it takes advantage of the characteristics of storage management in the OS/400, and it is a lower cost SAN implementation for small to mid-sized businesses. If you look at a SAN construct, it can be very expensive. If you could use i5/OS to manage your Linux and AIX storage space, which may not be very large, but you still want to have one approach to backing up your data and restoring it, this is a great solution.

      Read next week’s Insider for more from this exclusive interview with Tim Alpers, as well as details on i5 and i5/OS from other IBMers and industry experts.