Tomorrow morning, Buell Duncan, IBM's General Manager for the iSeries, will be holding an iSeries Nation online chat with customers to discuss his company's strategy for the server. The public briefing could not come at a better time, as the level of speculation about the iSeries' future has been steadily rising over the last several months.
Much of this speculation has focused on what IBM will do once it enables the iSeries to run AIX--the Unix operating system that powers IBM's pSeries servers--within iSeries logical partitions (LPARs). As I reported in an article two months ago, IBM plans to support AIX LPARs on the iSeries with the next major release of OS/400. This release could ship in late 2003, though some IBM sources are indicating that it might slip into the first half of 2004.
Naturally, the iSeries' future support for AIX raises the question of whether IBM will merge the iSeries and pSeries into a single product line. This is currently not a viable option because of the different designs of the two servers' operating systems. For instance, both OS/400 and AIX support LPARs, but their partition managers (known within IBM as "hypervisors") run on different code bases with different characteristics. Here are some of the major dissimilarities between the hypervisors found on OS/400 V5R2 and AIX 5L Version 5.1, the most current version used at pSeries sites:
- The OS/400 hypervisor supports dynamic LPARs that can be reconfigured without a reboot; the AIX hypervisor does not.
- The OS/400 hypervisor can create sub-processor LPARs that use as little as one-tenth of a POWER processor; the AIX hypervisor requires LPARs that utilize a full processor.
- The OS/400 hypervisor can create virtual LANs between LPARs and can assign virtual I/O resources to LPARs; the AIX hypervisor can do neither.
- The OS/400 hypervisor requires that the primary LPAR run OS/400; the AIX hypervisor requires that primary LPARs run AIX.
Clearly, if the two server lines are to converge and effectively support both iSeries and pSeries customers, they must standardize on a hypervisor that possesses the more advanced LPAR capabilities of the OS/400 hypervisor but does not require iSeries customers to use AIX or pSeries customers to use OS/400. IBM has not made any public statement of its intent to create such a hypervisor. However, sources within IBM are indicating that such a hypervisor--or one highly similar to it--is under development within the pSeries organization. They expect this hypervisor to be ready for the next major release of AIX 5L, which will likely ship in the first half of 2004.
As you may know, the pSeries organization officially announced AIX 5L Version 5.2 two weeks ago and began shipping the release last Friday. Among the enhancements in AIX 5L V5.2 is a hypervisor that supports dynamic LPARs and as many as 32 partitions on 32-way POWER4 servers. The new hypervisor also enables some other useful features, such as the ability to activate a spare processor to replace a failed one without a reboot.
For most iSeries customers, however, what should be more interesting is the AIX development team's plans for AIX 5L Version 5.3. While AIX 5L V5.2 still requires at least one processor per LPAR, AIX 5L V5.3 may support sub-processor LPARs using as little as one-tenth of a CPU--the same requirement as OS/400 V5R2. The next AIX release could also support virtual LANs and virtual I/O services similar to those on the iSeries. Most importantly, the AIX 5L V5.3 hypervisor is expected to host OS/400 within its LPARs as well as AIX and Linux environments. This means that the LPAR support within AIX 5L V5.3 will likely meet all (or at the least, nearly all) of the requirements for a fully converged iSeries and pSeries server family.
There is more to the pSeries organization's plans for iSeries convergence than just LPAR technologies. The group is also increasing its focus on packaging Unix servers that will appeal to mid-market organizations. Historically, the pSeries organization has spent the vast bulk of its marketing resources on large customers running high-end enterprise and e-business applications. Two months ago, however, the group introduced Express Configurations, prepackaged entry-level and midrange pSeries servers that offer significant discounts over custom configurations. Moreover, pSeries product managers are now stating that they intend to go after Sun and Hewlett-Packard in the midmarket in the same way that they have taken on these competitors at the high end with the p690 Regatta server. Indeed, IBM is expected to unveil a powerful midrange server next month that is specifically focused on winning mid-market customers to the pSeries.
In short, IBM's pSeries plans are quietly pointing the way to an iSeries-pSeries convergence in 2004. That is probably not something that Buell Duncan will discuss in his online chat tomorrow, but it is something that I hope he will address soon. So as you listen to Duncan talk about initiatives to make the iSeries more appealing to the IT community, keep IBM's convergence plans in mind. If you feel so inclined, ask him about those plans in the Q&A session. It would be interesting to see what he is ready and willing to say.
Lee Kroon is a Senior Industry Analyst for Andrews Consulting Group, a firm that helps mid-sized companies manage business transformation through technology. You can reach him at
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