The new rPerf document from IBM released on the 17th of Aug contains some big rperf numbers for the POWER7 795, and due to the dramatic leap in processor core count (64 on a 595, to 256 on a 795) they have paid some thought to the way they display the rPerf figures.

I was interviewed the other day by an IT journalist who was posing some interesting questions on the effect of virtualisation on IT staff - do they need to have different skills? do we need more or less of them? usual kind of questions. But as we discussed the ramifications of increasing the level of virtualisation one area I was keen to press home was the need for really good communication and shared objectives between the IT staff that understand the technology and the accountants who count the cost.

POWER7 in the smaller cheaper rack mount options have been announced making the new POWER7  chipset available to the SME market as of Sept. I'm looking forward to doing some costing against x86 solutions in this zone, the prices look competitive, especially if you take OS and virtualisation software into account.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/08/17/ibm_power7_low_high/page2.html 

On the hunt for some tools for managing POWER boxes running multiple (AIX and linux ) LPAR's ? You will find this link useful:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/Performance+Other+Tools

IBM have issued the following bulletin for POWER6 systems with 12X I/O PCIe drawers attached. If you need some help checking/updating your system please get in touch.

"With POWER7  you get twice the performance, use half the power and four times the virtual capacity for the same price as POWER6".  IBM 08 Feb 2010.

We all know the pitch, consolidate your storage, virtualise your servers and share the infrastructure where possible  through use of a blade based solution for the best possible TCO.  Why would anyone do anything else? We are all agreed. OK lets look at some prices to back up our cost busting claims. I have used list prices throughout. Discounts will vary according to customer, vendor and the time of year.

Example 1

Customer has been buying HP-UX servers and storage for one application and IBM AIX servers and storage for another application that often sit together in the same rack. Would it make sense for both systems to use the same storage? Of course it will. OK what's is the price? The HP storage being used is an MSA60 SAS attached with 9 disks....

Asynchronous I/O is handled differently under AIX 6.1.

I have been trying find the substance behind the 'cloud' for a few months now. The following model introduced at a NetApp conference the other week really helped me get the point.

NetApp consider there to be 4 different cloud markets

I'm not sure what "Nodal Scope Speculative Coherence Broadcast" means but I understand 4 threads per core, 1000 partitions per system and up to 256-way SMP system. See the below for lots of information on POWER7
http://bit.ly/2le8t1