There have been plenty of arguments for and against putting System i on a blade server. Proponents say that being able to have their i, p and x86 servers all in one BladeCenter chassis is a big selling point. Detractors worry that I/O performance won’t be the same on a blade, or that System i shops in general don’t really need the small-form factor of the blade.

But as Chris Maxcer points out in his talk with IBM business partner Sirius, interest in the i blade has been high so far, but sales are low. Why? Well, when you get to the end of the post, it seems that maybe it’s just because System i blades are still in their infancy. IBM announced the first i blade at the beginning of April, so we’re only a couple months in.

Because it’s early on, configurations are limited. Users can get IBM i (formerly i5/OS) on the JS12 blade, which has a single dual-core Power chip, or the JS22 blade, which has two dual-core Power chips. Even there, though, there is some confusion on IBM’s own website regarding the JS22. While one Power blade overview site mentions support for IBM i on the JS22, the more detailed server specs page says nothing about IBM i support. In the end it doesn’t matter that much — if JS22 supports IBM i, then it supports it. But there could be some confusion in the meantime from users (or nosy reporters) browsing the site.

Maxcer also quotes Sirius as saying that there essentially needs to be a trifecta for a user to want to buy i blades. One, they have to be an i user. Second, they should probably already be running blades and have a BladeCenter chassis on the ready (with empty slots, of course). And finally, Sirius said the user would also have to have DS4000 or DS8000 external storage server.

One final note on the post: At the end, we find out that Sirius is actually bullish on i blades, with the director of System i and x products at the company saying that “(i)n the future, five-to-ten years, it’s going to be widely adopted.”

So far the feedback on renaming the operating system from i5/OS to i or IBM i has overall been mixed, although there are some detractors who have some strong opinions. This one comes directly from an IT employee from an Arizona-based general contracting company:

Changing the name of the operating system to just “i” is just another idiotic idea from IBM, probably initiated by the same stupid “marketing geniuses” that dreamt up the latest super dumb campaign starring brainless “Gil” and his young clueless “geek” buddy, whose name (thankfully) escapes me.

IBM could have at least dropped the “5″ and made it i/OS or or i-OS or OS/i or OSi or something beyond just the single letter “i.”

Are they going to now change z/OS to z??

Fictitious scenario, similar to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” :

1. What operating system do you run ? i.
2. I what ? Just i.
3. Just you ? No, not me - i.
4. (repeat 2 and 3 above, ad infinitum)

Who would be stupid enough to choose a non-capitalized first-person pronoun to represent absolutely anything (beyond its normal English meaning/usage) ?

Lastly, the really nice thing (not), is that until IBM either reverses this name change or until the next (inevitable) name change, everyone in the AS/400 (yes, I said it) community gets to perpetually respond to their Microsoft Outlook client spell-check feature (F7) to “Ignore” every instance of i.

Even enclosing the i inside quotation marks still “throws” a “Not in Dictionary:” error. The only viable alternative is to tell spell-checker to “Add” “i” to its dictionary, after which the spell-checker forever loses its ability to find a bona-fide yet accidental neglect to capitalize a legitimate reference to one’s self, via the pronoun I. Between the above two choices, I will begrudgingly be forced to continually inform spell-checker to “Ignore” every occurrence of an i (to refer to the OS).

Even though no other words — other than “i” — in this e-mail are misspelled, it still took me about 15 seconds to respond “Ignore” to all of the occurrences of i in this e-mail. Hopefully, IBM’s bone-head decision to call the operating system “i”, will cause it to spend many thousands of dollars when its own employees are forced to do the same.

Most disheartening is that (to my knowledge) the user-community wasn’t even queried for suggestions as to whether to change the name or, given a name change, what to call it. They could have even made a contest out of it, and given away a “blade” (or would that be an i-blade?).

Don’t take this personally, because I know it’s not your doing; however please feel free to forward it to anyone in IBM who 1) would care; and 2) would actually be instrumental in rectifying this mistake (like that could/will happen).

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Ken Jack, a software engineer at trucking software company TMW Systems, has created the T-shirt you see to the right. He has it on his personal CafePress website called iWhatever.

Jack reflects the anguish of many System i users — er, users running i on Power Systems — who have a hard time figuring out what to call the server platform on which they run all their business applications. In a recent story on feedback of the System i/p merger, one user told me that he spent a long time trying to convince everyone in his organization that the server and platform should be called System i and i5/OS, not AS/400, iSeries, or OS/400.

Now that IBM has renamed it again to Power Systems and just “i,” expect some folks to just say forget it and start calling it AS/400 again.

That’s how Jack feels, as is apparent by this T-shirt he’s selling. He’s been selling a similar shirt for a while now, just adding on whenever IBM decides to rename the platform again.

“It’s honestly to the point where if IBM changes the name one more time, I’m going to have to put ‘continued on other side…’ on the front of the T-shirts,” Jack wrote in an email to me. “Just last month somebody bought a shirt that stopped at ‘System i.’ I bet he’s pissed.”

What are they calling it at TMW Systems? Jack said that “everybody at our shop still calls it ‘The 400.’ ‘Power System running i’ is just too much of a mouthful.”

By the way, in addition to buying the T-shirt, you can also buy other merchandise with the logo on it: mousepad, coffee mug, baseball cap, etc.

The iSociety group, which serves as a MySpace-like site for IBM System i users, is holding yet another “fireside chat” this week. The transcript will likely be up at the iSociety chat site.

The chat plans to cover IBM’s recent announcement of i5/OS V6R1, the new version of the System i operating system due out in March. Participants in the chat will include Craig Johnson, i5/OS product manager, and George Farr, product tools for System i tools and Rational.

Common, the System i user group that runs iSociety, made a lot of suggestions for improvement to i5/OS, so this should make for a good chat. People can also submit V6R1-related questions for the chat by emailing chat@isociety.org.

Timothy Prickett Morgan has an article over at the IT Jungle taking a look at product cycles for i5/OS and OS/400 — in particular, how long users can expect to receive support and upgrades on V5 releases when i5/OS V6R1 comes out, which is expected early this year.

Morgan mentions that IBM has stopped upgrades on V5R1 and V5R2 to V5R3 on Jan. 4, but hasn’t announced the stop date for upgrades from V5R2 and V5R3 to V5R4. He estimates that IBM will stop selling V5R4 about a year after announcing V6R1, but could end up stretching that to two years depending on user reaction.

Meanwhile, he sees the release of V6R1, along with some Power6-based blades running i5/OS expected out this year, to be a great opportunity for IBM to get some new customers — particularly SMBs — into the System i fold, as well as convincing existing ones to make the jump.

Continuing on the trend of looking forward to i5/OS V6R1, IBM Systems Magazine has an article on the new version of the System i operating system due out next year.

The article is about the upcoming features of V6R1, especially when it comes to ease in upgrading programs. The piece suggests reading hte IBM Redbook on the subject and a System i upgrade planning Web site:

With i5/OS V6R1, you’ll step up to a safer, faster, more flexible computing future.

IBM has published a draft for a Redbook on getting ready for i5/OS V6R1, the next version of the System i operating system due out next year.

Much of the Redbook focuses on helping users convert their System i programs to i5/OS V6R1, which is required for the new version. Though this Redbook doesn’t look at the issue, it will also be interesting to see how System i applications and i5/OS run differently, if at all, when running on a blade server, which is also expected to happen next year.

In a new IT Jungle article, Timothy Prickett Morgan discusses IBM’s Q4 sales strategy for System i. He offers some compelling arguments and analysis of IBM’s moves during 2007 as well as what the company’s short-term roadmap might mean for System i users. Here are some of the highlights I found interesting:

• “IBM is expected to roll out the Power6 processor across the System i and System p lines in 2008, with the System i perhaps getting a revamp with a 615, 625, and 655 box in the late January to late February timeframe.”
• “IBM is going to stop selling OS/400 V5R3 on January 4, 2008. No matter what, customers with AS/400 and iSeries 270s and 7XX machinery have to at the very least buy V5R3 before then because V5R3 is the final release to be supported on these machines.”
• “Upgrades from iSeries Model 810 and 825 servers to user-priced System i 515 and 525 servers or a 550 Enterprise Edition are being withdrawn on December 1.”
• “Upgrades to System i 5XX machines from iSeries 870 and 890 servers are still going to be available until April 8, 2008, and that is presumably because customers with these classes of machines need more planning time to figure out their upgrade path into the 9406-MMA 570 server that is a natural upgrade path for them.”

Check out the “Odds and Ends” column on IT Jungle looking at different issues in dealing with the Integrated File System (IFS).

As I said in a previous post, the i5/OS blade isn’t coming until next year. That is still the case, despite some confusion borne by an IBM press release.

I found out about the press release from Chris Maxcer over at the System i Network, who wrote that System i blades were coming on Nov. 30 of this year. Maxcer said he was looking around IBM’s Project Big Green, which eventually led him to another press release about IBM and data center energy efficiency. Near the end of that release is this paragraph:

POWER6 processor-based Blade systems for AIX and Linux on POWER are scheduled to be available on BladeCenter H and BladeCenter HT chassis beginning November 30. A JS22 Express configuration, including 4 GB memory, a 73GB hard disk drive and BladeCenter H chassis is priced at $10,363.

There is that Nov. 30 date. Although there is a footnote tied to the date basically saying, “Don’t hold us to this date,” I was surprised that this date would be thrown out in a press release the same week that an IBM executive in the IBM Power Systems group told me they wouldn’t be out until the first half of next year.

So I followed through to figure out which was correct, and received this email from a third-party IBM PR rep: “The i5/OS won’t be available on the JS22 until the first half of next year; November 30th was a typo. I apologize for the confusion.”

Hey, no problem. As long as we got it right (then or eventually), it’s all good.