[CentOS] IBM buying RedHat

Simon Matter
2018-10-30T17:14:21Z

> On 30/10/2018 14:40, Simon Matter wrote:
>>> On 30/10/2018 06:46, Simon Matter wrote:
>>>>> On 10/29/18 1:55 AM, Simon Matter wrote:
>>>>>> To me it seems like, if they are smart, they will try
to push IBM
>>>>>> POWER
>>>>>> and RedHat Linux together to establish real competition
in the
>>>>>> hardware
>>>>>> market again (and of course don't forget to keep
Fedora/CentOS
>>>>>> alive)!
>>>>> Er, RHEL has been running on Power for a very long time.
The fastest
>>>>> supercomputer in the world is Power9 + RHEL.
>>>> What I meant is that POWER could become a competitor for
Intel/AMD
>>>> based
>>>> servers. We're now running AMD EPYC servers with
64Cores/128Threads
>>>> and
>>>> we
>>>> didn't find any POWER system which could compete in this
area.
>>> As a matter of interest, did you look at IBM's own Power
Systems (IBM
>>> System i, AS/400, System p, as was)? They promote some of these
models
>>> as having very powerful processing capabilities but I wonder how
they
>>> compare in practice with Epyc or Xeon systems.
>> I always had the impression that those IBM systems were priced in a
>> different range from what we were interested in. And I know that I
>> didn't
>> find any price listed online when looking for POWER servers from IBM
>> last
>> time - and I know what that means :-)
>
> Yup, I thought they'd be eye-wateringly expensive.
>
> Nevertheless, they are just rackmount servers, much like the kinds of

Are you sure, has this changed? In the past time when I had to do with
iSeries, they even had their own rack size, no chance to put them into a
standard server rack.

> x86-64 servers you can buy from Dell, Lenovo, HPE, Tyan, Gigabyte, etc.
> Better CPUs and buses but otherwise quite similar.
>
>> If they came back now with something like their deprecated X86 servers
>> (Netfinity, System x) but on POWER, that could be interesting.
>
> Haven't the IBM x86 servers gone to Lenovo now?
>
> As far as I can see, IBM Power Systems *are* in effect what you are
> looking for, i.e. a Power-based server to run Linux (or AIX or IBM i  if
> you prefer) -- well, that's how IBM would see it I think. They already
> support Linux on Power Systems. But I don't think they are going to
> undercut themselves, sadly.

I agree the Power System L922 looks promising, but I'm afraid the
"Please
contact us for pricing" still means the prices are eye watering. The
problem is that there is almost no competition in the POWER server market
which results in higher prices. IBM has the chance to change this now.

Regards,
Simon