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 Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: 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 -----Original Message----- From: Zlatko Krastev [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 6:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Win 2K VS AIX Main bottlenecks of Wintel platform are SCSI buses and (usually one) PCI bus. For example in many PC servers you cannot have both SCSI RAID adapter and FC adapter without performance penalty. Usually only high-end (4 proc and above) servers have more than one *primary* PCI bus. Others have only one primary and the rest are through PCI-PCI bridge. For those 250 GB/night Intel server ought to be enough but I am curious why to downgrade. Zlatko Krastev IT Consultant Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: Win 2K VS AIX Has anyone on this list performed any performance tests on Windows 2000K/Intel VS AIX/RS-6000's or have any general comments concerning the Windows 2000 VS AIX TSM configuration. We have around 2TB in storage and pass around 250GB a night to the server. We are planning on an upgrade and are currently using a RS/6000 H70 and have no complaints with this platform at all. One of our vendors is offering a Win 2K platform - I've always been a bit concerned using the Intel hardware configuration for this application ( Performance ). Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated Thanks Mike Walker St. Joseph. Celebrating 100 Years Of Healthcare You Can Have Faith In. (1902-2002) ++++++++++++++++++++++ Confidentiality Notice +++++++++++++++++++++ The information in this e-mail may be confidential and/or privileged. This e-mail is intended to be reviewed by only the individual or organization named above. If you are not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this e-mail and its attachments, if any, or the information contained herein is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Thank You.
