ADSM-L

Re: Win 2K VS AIX

2002-05-12 10:18:36
Subject: Re: Win 2K VS AIX
From: Zlatko Krastev <acit AT ATTGLOBAL DOT NET>
Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 16:22:16 +0300
IBM/Tivoli are commited to Wintel so improvements to Windows TSM server
should not surprise us. However some of the improvements (IMO) are just
"bells & whistles" but that's what Wintel users like.
Enough buses to spread the I/O are main reason to go to 4-proc (capable)
or higher Intel-based system for TSM. I am always trying to explain to
customers that they do not need too many processors - 1 or 2 are enough
but in a 4-processor capable box to get more than one *primary* PCI bus.
All 2-proc SMP Intel boxes (I am aware of) are having one primary PCI bus
and secondary through PCI-PCI bridge. Thus all the I/O performance such a
box can have is 533 MB/s total (DB disks, stgpool disks, tapes, LAN).
Recently I had conversation with an IBM rep and he said that in their
high-end x360 & x440 servers I/O is organized as in RS/6000 H-, M- and S-
models. Four primary PCI buses per drawer sound nice but these are again
4-proc and more systems. I would bet such a box should be able to handle
even up to 100 nodes. But comparison of 16-way Intel Xeon to 2-way HP, IBM
or Sun would be apples to oranges.
Going back to initial post - H70 does have 4 PCI buses, all are primary
and 3 of them are with 64-bit slots. Mike, look carefully what does have
the Intel-based box the vendor is offering. Ask hard questions - how many
buses, how many bridges the box has. Trying to sell you "more" if the
sales person answers to *both* questions with "many", make the conslusions
youself. Secondary PCI buses are of no benefit to TSM!
If upgrade is absolutely necessary I would stay with current platform.
This will prevent the need to use export/import (usually you cannot
restore DB between platforms). pSeries 660 can have up to 4 drawers (4
primary PCI buses each) so for sure you will not fill all of them.
And on the end - you wrote you do not have any complaints with the
platform. Stay there.

Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant




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Subject:        Re: Win 2K VS AIX

There are some major improvements on the WINTEL at 4.2.1.  First of all,
they do raw IO to the disk pools with 256K blocks.  We observed some
significant performance improvements that lead me to believe that up to 50
Windows Server clients could be supported by a 4 way WINTEL if you have
fibre channel disk and tape like Shark and Magstar and there are enough
buses in the WINTEL to spread out the IO.  You will find that the high-end
Wintel server to do this probably costs more than the UNIX server would
that
could do it with 2 processors and half the memory.  So, you have to
decide.
With the right hardware WINTEL will run well.  Actually, much better than
some competitive products.

Paul D. Seay, Jr.
Technical Specialist
Naptheon, INC
757-688-8180


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