Re: z890 model upgrade
Jim Marshall writes: Bad news is you would have to buy Parallel Services to have ADABAS running on multiple engines. But the original poster is nowhere near hitting a uniprocessor capacity limit yet. For example, a System z9 BC with one processor active would offer up to a little over 4 times the capacity as his current dual processor z890 configuration. (That's a z9 BC Model Z01 compared to a z890 Model 230.) Moreover, a z9 BC would have 18 intermediate steps from H01 through Y01 (inclusive) just in the uniprocessor capacity configurations. So this potential processor affinity issue may not be a problem, at least not in the short term. Similar logic applies for the (x)02 (dual processor) range of models, except that the capacity multiple would be about 8 times what he has today (z9 BC Z02 compared to z890 Model 230). All of which means it would be a very, very good idea to have a thorough discussion of all reasonable options with a smart person or two. Although, as a rule of thumb, it's not a good idea to embark on large capacity upgrades of older models. (Large gets smaller as the model gets older.) It almost always makes much more sense to order the capacity upgrade in the form of a model (technology level) upgrade. IBM at least is going to respect MSUs, and the original poster has got at least z/OS in the equation. As a powerful clue concerning this rule of thumb, IBM is withdrawing z890 capacity upgrades from marketing effective September 30, 2008. (Originally the date was June 30, 2008. That original date was announced in June, 2007. In May of this year, IBM announced a 3 month extension.) Starting next month, increasing capacity on a z890 can still be done but requires moving up in hardware technology. Or swapping whole physical machines via the secondary market I suppose. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
as we heard that upgrading from a 2086-230 to a 2086-270 would cost us 350.000 Euro, we abandoned our consolidating project on the mainframe. The price is, at least for a small company like us, too high, and doesn't take into account the higher sw licence costs which would come along due to more MSUs. We are still at z/OS 1.7, Com-plete and ADABAS 7.4.4., online and batch being our main workloads. In general SAG does not give us any breaks for z9 MSUs and sticks to the notion IBM is pulling a fast one. Here have grown the MIPS/MSUs by 25-30% and our IBM charges have stayed close to the same. Other vendors is another story. Now specifically with your batch workload, unclear if you ADABAS Parallel Services implemented. We did have all ADABAS executing one one TCB and as we gained workload and went from 1CP to 2CP to 3CP's we got more power but ADABAS did not pick up much. All the other STC's now could get a shot at a CP and in the short term is help things like CICS, JES2, etc. Bad news is you would have to buy Parallel Services to have ADABAS running on multiple engines. Ours is configured for 2CP's; need a spare CP for doing other work. The idea of a z9BC is not so far fetched because they are on the used market. Some of the z890 hardware might carry over at no charge. I sold folks on a z9BC-O02 with the idea in 13 months we'd dynamically downgrade the machine from 252 MIPS to 90 because a big application was leaving. I even wanted to give all the vendors the date so I could financially reallocate the savings, a year in advance. The customer was so sure they were leaving. Could get them to commit to showing the savings to people even though it was assured; 18 months later they are still here and am looking at an upgrade. jim -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
I concur with the general tenor of previous comments. It rarely makes financial sense to boost the capacity (especially significantly) of an older model when a newer model is available. As for what the right capacity is, it's very hard to say based on the limited information. Users are apparently happier when there is over 4 times more capacity supporting them, so that suggests they are experiencing constraints that may be affected their productivity (and business results). What is the value of that happiness, basically? What other costs do you avoid by securing this happiness in this manner? It's very easy to look at a euro or dollar or yen number with some zeros and say, That's big. Compared to what? For example, my company could cut its big paper bill to zero, but then we wouldn't be able to execute any contracts, so our even bigger revenue would fall to zero. Would users be just as happy or almost as happy with 3 times the capacity? 2 times? Particularly on the newer model, you have a tremendous number of capacity choices in between where you are now and 4 times. A mainframe is going to be honest with you. You can measure it, you can see the numbers. Transparency is a good thing, because it helps people make good business decisions. The trouble is, an awful lot of other things in IT and business are much less transparent. The solution is to gain more transparency over those other things., - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
z890 model upgrade
Hello list, as we heard that upgrading from a 2086-230 to a 2086-270 would cost us 350.000 Euro, we abandoned our consolidating project on the mainframe. The price is, at least for a small company like us, too high, and doesn't take into account the higher sw licence costs which would come along due to more MSUs. Are there guidelines, tools, books, etc. which would help us to estimate whether 3 or 4 CPs (i.e. 2086-350 or 2086-440) less fast would still improve our performance compared with 2 fast CPs like in the 2086-270 ? In other words: better more (slower) CPs of fewer (faster) ones ? What does it depend on ? We are still at z/OS 1.7, Com-plete and ADABAS 7.4.4., online and batch being our main workloads. Walter Marguccio z/OS Systems Programmer BELENUS LOB Informatic GmbH Munich - Germany -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
Have a look at the below link. http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP100258 --- On Mon, 9/22/08, Walter Marguccio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Walter Marguccio [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: z890 model upgrade To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Date: Monday, September 22, 2008, 9:48 AM Hello list, as we heard that upgrading from a 2086-230 to a 2086-270 would cost us 350.000 Euro, we abandoned our consolidating project on the mainframe. The price is, at least for a small company like us, too high, and doesn't take into account the higher sw licence costs which would come along due to more MSUs. Are there guidelines, tools, books, etc. which would help us to estimate whether 3 or 4 CPs (i.e. 2086-350 or 2086-440) less fast would still improve our performance compared with 2 fast CPs like in the 2086-270 ? In other words: better more (slower) CPs of fewer (faster) ones ? What does it depend on ? We are still at z/OS 1.7, Com-plete and ADABAS 7.4.4., online and batch being our main workloads. Walter Marguccio z/OS Systems Programmer BELENUS LOB Informatic GmbH Munich - Germany -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
Walter, IBM can fill your requirements using extracted SMF/RMF data and modeling the proposed CPU configuration. Contact you IBM SE Kevin -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Walter Marguccio Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 5:48 AM To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: z890 model upgrade Hello list, as we heard that upgrading from a 2086-230 to a 2086-270 would cost us 350.000 Euro, we abandoned our consolidating project on the mainframe. The price is, at least for a small company like us, too high, and doesn't take into account the higher sw licence costs which would come along due to more MSUs. Are there guidelines, tools, books, etc. which would help us to estimate whether 3 or 4 CPs (i.e. 2086-350 or 2086-440) less fast would still improve our performance compared with 2 fast CPs like in the 2086-270 ? In other words: better more (slower) CPs of fewer (faster) ones ? What does it depend on ? We are still at z/OS 1.7, Com-plete and ADABAS 7.4.4., online and batch being our main workloads. Walter Marguccio z/OS Systems Programmer BELENUS LOB Informatic GmbH Munich - Germany -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:48:25 -0700, Walter Marguccio wrote: Hello list, as we heard that upgrading from a 2086-230 to a 2086-270 would cost us 350.000 Euro, That's a big upgrade About 4x. we abandoned our consolidating project on the mainframe. The price is, at least for a small company like us, too high, and doesn't take into account the higher sw licence costs which would come along due to more MSUs. You might want to consider upgrading to a z9 BC or a small z10. a 2097-401 will give you about 30% more compute power with just an increase from 26 to 27 MSU. It's a marketing thing. Are there guidelines, tools, books, etc. which would help us to estimate whether 3 or 4 CPs (i.e. 2086-350 or 2086-440) less fast would still improve our performance compared with 2 fast CPs like in the 2086-270 ? You have a 26 MSU machine. Your first plan was to increase it to 107 MSU. Now you are talking about either 74 or 62 MSU. It sounds like you are not very sure of your needs. In other words: better more (slower) CPs of fewer (faster) ones ? What does it depend on ? Do you have any workloads that can only use one processor and that are constrained because the processor is too slow? We are still at z/OS 1.7, Com-plete and ADABAS 7.4.4., online and batch being our main workloads. Do Com-plete and Adabas multitask well? Online and batch? What else is there? -- Tom Marchant -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
- Original Message From: Tom Marchant [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 22 September, 2008 14:49:47 You have a 26 MSU machine. Your first plan was to increase it to 107 MSU. Now you are talking about either 74 or 62 MSU. It sounds like you are not very sure of your needs. February last year within a 'TryBuy' agreement with IBM we got our z890 upgraded to a 2086-470 to test DB2 under zLinux. In this timeframe I left our PROD LPAR with 2 dedicated CPs for three months (the other two CPs were dedicated to zLinux). So for three months we had de-facto a 2086-270 and everybody was enthusiastic about that. Due to this previous, successful experience, we asked IBM how much this upgrade (from 230 to 270) would cost . Do you have any workloads that can only use one processor and that are constrained because the processor is too slow? The batch window is shrinking. What I don't know is if our jobs have a single TCB architecture or can exploit more CPs in parallel . Do Com-plete and Adabas multitask well? I don't know. I need to investigate this together with SAG. Thanks. Walter Marguccio z/OS Systems Programmer BELENUS LOB Informatic GmbH Munich - Germany -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Re: z890 model upgrade
In a message dated 9/22/2008 9:23:02 A.M. Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't know. I need to investigate this together with SAG. Thanks. What's the quote from Alice? 'If you don't know which way you're going it doesn't make any difference.' with apologies to Lewis Carrol. This is the LSPR link for wkloads and processors. Probably be wise to go for a z10 in the long run. With subcapacity licensing and specialty engines might come out with more bang less money but I'd get it in writing for sure. _http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/management/lspr/Systemz10zOS18MI.h tml_ (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/management/lspr/Systemz10zOS18MI.html) **Looking for simple solutions to your real-life financial challenges? Check out WalletPop for the latest news and information, tips and calculators. (http://www.walletpop.com/?NCID=emlcntuswall0001) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
