With its wealth of new features, i5/OS V6R1 will help the System i maintain its key role in many data centers.
Last Tuesday, IBM took the wraps off a much-anticipated new version of the i5/OS operating system. In its announcement, Big Blue did more than just trot out new features and functions for System i users. It also indicated that the System i will participate in a cross-brand initiative to woo small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) away from competitive server vendors. That initiative will pair up i5/OS with new products that could change how the IT community perceives the operating system.
Since IBM's announcement is sweeping in its scope, it will take several articles to cover it. In this column, I will examine the new features in i5/OS V6R1 that will enable it to participate in IBM's latest SMB initiative. Then, MC Press Online news editor Chris Smith will discuss V6R1 enhancements in the areas of database management, high availability, and disaster recovery. In future issues, other members of the MC Press Online team will do "deep dives" on different parts of the announcement.
Virtualization for the Rest of Us
As I said in my opening comments, IBM is positioning V6R1 as part of a broader initiative. At the heart of that initiative is the goal of making it easier for SMBs to consolidate multiple standalone servers onto systems running on the vendor's POWER processors. Historically, SMBs have relied on underutilized standalone servers running on Intel x86 processors because they are easier to manage than virtual partitions within a more powerful system.
Last week, IBM sought to change that by announcing a family of simple, inexpensive virtualization products that run across its System i, System p, and BladeCenter servers. The products, known collectively as PowerVM, combine System i technologies such as the i5/OS hypervisor with virtualization offerings from IBM's System p division.
As a result of this repackaging, i5/OS V6R1 comes with a PowerVM offering that significantly improves the virtualization capabilities of the System i. At the forefront of these improvements is support for Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), a tool that comes from the System p. As its name implies, VIOS provides storage and I/O resources to multiple client operating systems running in partitions. VIOS supports AIX, Linux, and i5/OS V6R1 partitions running on POWER6 servers. Users manage VIOS via the Integrated Virtualization Manager, a browser-based tool that simplifies the task of creating and maintaining partitions.
Why are VIOS and Integrated Virtualization Manager so important? Because they do not require users to dedicate storage or adapters to each partition. This significantly reduces the cost and complexity of managing a virtualized environment. In addition, VIOS and Integrated Virtualization Manager eliminate the need for the dreaded Hardware Management Console (HMC) on POWER6 servers (except on the POWER6-based Model 570). They also make it easier to manage V6R1 partitions on the System p and other POWER6 servers that use VIOS.
At Long Last...Blades!
This brings us to some exciting news about one of those "other POWER6 servers" that will run i5/OS V6R1. Last week, IBM announced support for V6R1 on its BladeCenter JS22. The JS22 contains a four-core POWER6 processor running at 4.0GHz that supports up to 32GB of memory. IBM rates the JS22 at 11,040 CPW when running i5/OS workloads. By contrast, a System i Model 525 running a single 1.9GHz POWER5+ processor churns out 3,800 CPW. Clearly, the JS22 has the headroom to support multiple partitions running some hefty workloads. However, the blade server connects to storage area networks (SANs) rather than internal disk drives, so System i customers will need to gain SAN management skills to use it. Fortunately, IBM has written an informative "Read Me First" document about implementing i5/OS on the JS22 for newcomers.
At present, any JS22 blade that runs i5/OS must reside in a BladeCenter H chassis. The chassis supports up to 14 blades; customers can mix and match Intel processor-based blades running Windows and Linux workloads with JS22 blades running i5/OS, AIX, and Linux. This enables the BladeCenter H to consolidate workloads from both the System i and Intel servers and then manage them in virtual partitions using a consistent set of tools. Indeed, IBM will market the BladeCenter H as a workload consolidation platform to System i customers, many of whom have a single System i surrounded by non-IBM Intel servers. Later this year, Big Blue will also enable i5/OS V6R1 and the JS22 to run on the BladeCenter S chassis. This six-blade chassis caters to small companies and remote offices of larger firms.
While BladeCenter support may be the top story for i5/OS V6R1, the new version is packed with dozens of helpful but less headline-grabbing improvements. In the virtualization area, for instance, V6R1 includes the following enhancements.
•· Virtual I/O resources for i5/OS partitions: For some time, System i users have been able to create Linux and AIX partitions that obtain virtual I/O resources from an i5/OS partition. With V6R1, you can create i5/OS partitions that run on virtual I/O resources as well. This reduces the cost of creating additional i5/OS partitions for testing or development purposes as these partitions no longer need their own physical disk storage or adapters.
•· Shared Processor Pools: This feature allows administrators to group partitions into pools and limit the number of processors that each pool can consume. With pools, companies can potentially reduce the number of processors that an application uses, thereby reducing license costs. This enhancement is only available on POWER6 systems.
•· Support for VMware VMotion: If your company has integrated System x or BladeCenter servers with your System i and is running VMware ESX Server on those integrated servers, I have good news for you. With V6R1, you can use VMware VMotion to move ESX virtual machines from one integrated server to another while they are running. This improves the availability of the virtual machines and makes it easier to maintain the underlying servers.
•· Partition availability enhancements: While we are talking about availability, V6R1 sports a new function called Storage Space Snapshots that performs "on the fly" backups of System i partitions and integrated servers. This eliminates downtime due to scheduled backups. In addition, V6R1 supports file-level backups of Linux partitions and integrated servers running Linux.
Performance and Manageability Enhancements
Besides offering numerous virtualization enhancements, i5/OS V6R1 includes technologies that make the System i a better platform for Java applications and Web services. The version offers a new 64-bit Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that works with popular industry tools and boosts Java performance by a wide margin. Indeed, IBM sources are telling us that Java performance under V6R1 will be only a few percentage points less than that of AIX running on comparable System p models. This will make the System i a competitive Java platform after years of languishing in the shadows of other systems.
Like i5/OS V5R4 before it, V6R1 comes packaged with an integrated Web services environment that makes it easier to expose RPG and COBOL as Web services. Also like its predecessor, V6R1 includes a lightweight Integrated Web Application Server that supports JavaServer Pages (JSPs) and JavaServer Faces. In case you did not know it, this server supports the new DB2 Web Query product that many System i users are deploying.
On i5/OS V6R1, the Integrated Web Application Server supports a new tool that will significantly change how IT staffs manage the System i. That tool, the IBM Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS, takes 300 management functions (including 90 percent of the functions in System i Navigator) and packages them in an intuitive browser-based interface. While V6R1 still supports System i Navigator, IBM intends to replicate its remaining functions within the new Web-based tool. In other words, despite its long and forgettable name, Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS is replacing System i Navigator as IBM's strategic tool for managing the System i. Later this year, the new tool will act as a client to IBM Systems Director, a cross-platform systems management solution that is currently under development.
...And Now for Some Fine Print
As many of you have heard, upgrading to i5/OS V6R1 will take extra work compared to previous upgrades. That is because your programs must be converted to take advantage of the new version's many enhancements. While the actual conversions will not take that long, you will need to do some planning prior to running them. Above all, you will need to ensure that each of your programs has its creation data, as the conversion tool must access that information. To learn more about the conversion process, check out Joel Klebanoff's article on V6R1 as well as IBM's Redpaper on the subject.
Before you upgrade, you should also familiarize yourself with the changes that V6R1 could make to how your IT staff works. In the new version, for instance, IBM made extensive changes to how it packages and prices its development tools. While some of those changes could be welcome ones, others could present your programmers with difficult and (dare I say) expensive choices. With that thought in mind, be on the lookout for a study by Joe Pluta of IBM's development tool repackaging in a future MC Press Online issue. I guarantee that you will not want to miss it.
While upgrading to i5/OS V6R1 may take some extra effort, most companies will eventually want to upgrade to the new version. If you are itching to be among them, your first opportunity to do so will be on March 21, the date when V6R1 becomes generally available. Customers running i5/OS V5R3 and V5R4 can upgrade directly to the new version. (If you are on V5R3, be aware that IBM will discontinue support for that release in April 2009.) As expected, V6R1 runs on all System i Model 5xx systems as well as on the iSeries Models 800, 810, 825, 870, and 890. By the way, V6R1 is the final release of i5/OS that will run on Model 8xx servers.
Final Thoughts
With the announcement of i5/OS V6R1, IBM is doing something unusual with the System i. It is linking it with other products and brands in a unified effort to bring new SMB customers into its fold. IBM's pitch to those customers is that by consolidating their servers onto POWER system partitions, they can eliminate redundant management tasks, increase IT staff productivity, maximize system utilization, and reduce their power bills. It is welcome news that IBM has made i5/OS V6R1 part of this value proposition. It positions the System i as part of a modern and efficient IT environment rather than as a legacy system.
At the same time, one has to wonder whether SMB customers will understand the capabilities of the System i when they are also trying to absorb messages about the System p, BladeCenter, Linux, and AIX. After all, most companies have limited capacities for absorbing new information and tend to focus on products and technologies that are familiar to them. As a result, they may never parse the unique strengths of the System i out of the volumes of information that Big Blue is sending their way.
In short, while the V6R1 announcement demonstrates that IBM still considers the System i to be a strategic product, it is not clear that it will help the System i win new SMB customers. Whether it does so or not will largely depend on the size of the "marketing spotlight" that IBM puts on the System i versus its other SMB offerings in the coming months. I will be addressing that marketing effort in future issues, so stay tuned.
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