Explore how to prevent urgent IT issues by upgrading your IBM iSeries platform, ideal for smaller workloads with enhanced security features.
In the recent article “It’s Never Today’s Problem (Until It Is)”, Director Ray Pritchett discusses how to avoid the urgent problems like loss of support or lack of skilled IT professionals by taking proactive steps. Many businesses have mission critical applications running on an extremely reliable IBM iSeries platform that needs very little attention for years, decades even. What are your plans for upgrading your iSeries platform, once it becomes “today’s problem”?
Are you on an older, smaller IBM iSeries hardware platform and worried about future hardware support? Does the thought of IBM no longer providing preventive service, new updates or security patches/fixes keep you up at night? If you’re on an a POWER6, POWER7, or POWER8 platform, IBM support for your hardware will end in 2024. With IBM’s September 12, 2024 announcement, even newer POWER9 hardware will go end-of-support (EoS) in January 2026!
If you’re on one of these platforms going out of support, IBM has a new Power10 S1012, a miniature server that could be an ideal replacement for your aging hardware. The S1012 is a 2U, half-width rack mount or small deskside (tower) configuration model that is ideally suited to smaller IBM i (nee OS/400) workloads. Single and four-core models are a P05 class software, meaning a price point that allows you to meet your budget requirements via the lowest cost for OS maintenance. Eight-core models, which are rack-mount only, are a P10 class software. One- and four-core models have a maximum of 64 GB of memory, and the eight-core has a maximum of 256 GB. The single core tower model has a maximum of 1.6 TB of NVMe SSD storage, while the rack mount version has a maximum of 3.2 TB. These offerings are well sized for shops with only a handful of users, allowing you to customize your Power10 solution to meet your specific requirements.
This machine is intended by IBM as a low-cost replacement for all these deprecated machines, targeting smaller shops that have been putting off upgrades for far too long. Other benefits of the Power S1012 include:
- Flexible power supply and rack or desk side configurations for easy integration into your environment
- Enhanced cryptography support for improved encryption performance
- Fully functional AI acceleration allowing lower latency at the location where the data is collected
- Support for memory encryption for end-to-end security without impacting performance
With Power10 tentatively supported through 2028, Power11 not slated for release until sometime in 2025, and an across-the-board pricing increase of six percent effective January 1st 2025, now is a good time for migration to reduce the risk of having no hardware support or paying more to obtain it through third-party vendors.
There are also some limitations to consider when you plan for migrating to a Power S1012:
- Only the two newest IBM i releases 7.4 and 7.5 are supported on the S1012 model, which could require more extensive migration planning for older releases (especially prior to version 6.1) where program recompiles are necessary
- Tape compatibility can also be a migration issue if you are on a version prior to LTO-6 or have different tape formats which prohibit a save/restore function.
Keller Schroeder can help your business with purchasing and configuring a new IBM Power S1012 server to best suit your needs. Reach out to us today to discuss our implementation services including installation and migration of your data.
Written By:
Kyle Creasey
Senior IBM System i Engineer
Applications Solutions Group
