Midrange Information, Tips and Techniques
by Brian Coy
IBM ANNOUNCES NEXT GENERATION OF RISC-BASED AS/400s
On Tuesday, August 19, 1997 IBM made its biggest AS/400 announcement since it unveiled the first RISC systems two years ago. The announcement included:
•A whole new family of RISC-based systems known as the AS/400e Series (the e stands for e-business)
•A new OS/400 version (Version 4, Release 1) that runs on the AS/400e and all existing 4XX/5XX systems
•Radical changes in software prices, including the abolition of user-based pricing for all OS/400 releases
A Price/Performance Breakthrough
IBM lead off its announcement with three new AS/400 model lines that sport more powerful RISC processors. The first line, called AS/400e systems, are upgrades to traditional (nonserver) AS/400s. The line has four models-the 600, 620, 640 and 650-and thirteen processor feature codes. They range from a uniprocessor, with a Commercial Processing Workload (CPW) rating of 22.7, to a twelve-way system running at a breathtaking 2340.0 CPW. That's over 4.5 times faster than the largest four-way AS/400 running V3R7.
The second line, known as AS/400e servers, are upgrades for all AS/400 servers. They include four models-the S10, S20, S30, and S40-and eleven processor features. Their CPW ratings in client/server and batch processing environments range from 45.4 to 2340.0. Like all AS/400 servers, their performance when running traditional interactive applications is far lower.
A third line of custom servers includes models with better interactive performance. They come prepackaged with selected applications and are optimized for the solutions they run. Today's announcement includes custom S20 and S30 servers running software from J.D. Edwards, and Systems Software Associates. There's also an SB1 server that's optimized to run SAP's R/3.
OS/400 V4R1...The e in AS/400e
All AS/400e models come bundled with OS/400 V4R1, the only release that the new models can run. Customers can also purchase and run V4R1 on existing 4XX/5XX systems. Many of them will likely do so, as V4R1 offers key enhancements over V3R7.
First, there are the e-business enhancements, including many that beef up the AS/400's security in a network computing environment. These include a firewall that runs on the Integrated PC Server (IPCS), an HTTP server that sends encrypted data via the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, and facilities that restrict Web site visitors to selected files and programs.
The new OS/400 release also makes the AS/400 a more flexible TCP/IP platform. It lets dialup Internet users print to their TCP/IP network printers and Hewlett-Packard printers. It also supports Routing Information Protocol (RIP), a facility that largely automates the configuration of AS/400s within any TCP/IP network. Other ease-of-management features include support for multiple HTTP servers, and an Administration Server through which managers can configure their other servers and the firewall.
Next month I will list some the key enhancements to OS/400 Version 4, Release 1.