I work for IBM and in particular support OEMs and other Business Partners I am not sure if Simon is using try true IBM speak here as any OEM purchase of Spectrum Scale inherently has tin included, be it from DDN, Seagate, Lenovo, etc.
Remember there are 4 main ways to buy Spectrum Scale: 1. as pure software, direct from IBM or though a business partner. 2. as part of a hardware offering from an OEM 3. as part of a hardware offering from IBM. This is what ESS is. 4. as a cloud service in Softlayer. Spectrum Scale (GPFS) is exactly the same software no matter which route above is used to purchase it. What OEMs do do, as IBM do with their ESS appliance product is do extra validation to confirm that the newest release is fully compatible with their hardware solution and has no regressions in performance or otherwise. Hence there is often perhaps 3 months between say the 4.2 official release and when it appears in OEM solutions. ESS is the same here. The two difference to note that make #2 OEM systems different are though are: 1: When bought as part of an OEM through say Lenovo, DDN or Seagate then that OEM owns the actual GFPS licenses rather than the end customer. The practical side of this is that if you later replace the hardware with a different vendors hardware there is no automatic right to transfer over the old licenses, as would be the case if GPFS was bought directly from IBM/ 2. When bought as part of an OEM system, then that OEM is the sole point of contact for the customer for all support. The customer does not first have to triage if it is a hw or sw issue. The OEM in return provides 1st and 2nd line support to the customer, and only escalates in-depth level 3 support issues to IBM's development team. The OEMs then will have gone though extensive training to be able to do such 1st and 2nd line support. (Of course many traditional IBM Business Partners are also very clued up about helping their customers directly.) Daniel Dr.Daniel Kidger No. 1 The Square, Technical Specialist SDI (formerly Platform Computing) Temple Quay, Bristol BS1 6DG Mobile: +44-07818 522 266 United Kingdom Landline: +44-02392 564 121 (Internal ITN 3726 9250) e-mail: [email protected] From: "Simon Thompson (Research Computing - IT Services)" <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: 02/03/2016 16:30 Subject: [gpfsug-discuss] GPFS vs Spectrum Scale Sent by: [email protected] I had a slightly strange discussion with IBM this morning... We typically buy OEM GPFS with out tin. The discussion went along the lines that spectrum scale is different somehow from gpfs via the oem route. Is this just a marketing thing? Red herring? Or is there something more to this? Thanks Simon _______________________________________________ gpfsug-discuss mailing list gpfsug-discuss at spectrumscale.org http://gpfsug.org/mailman/listinfo/gpfsug-discuss Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU
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