The idea of running i5/OS on a blade popped up this summer when System i marketing executive Elaine Lennox poked the System i world with a stick at the OCEAN User Group Conference and buzzed everyone with the hint that i5/OS may soon be available in nontraditional form factors as opposed to the familiar black boxes. She didn't say that the System i would operate on a blade, exactly, but industry experts interpreted her veiled comments to mean that i5/OS would run on a POWER6-based blade that would plug in to IBM's popular BladeCenter chassis.

What does this mean? Is the System i world a bee's nest that has been forever dislodged, broken, and stirred on the forest floor? Or are we talking about the possibility that new hives will slide into boxes and be managed by beekeepers?

Maybe it's both.

What's a BladeCenter Anyway?

A BladeCenter is IBM's answer to a blade server, which is basically a tightly compressed rack system in which individual servers (blades) can slide into a joint rack to share common sources of power, cooling, networking, administrative software, and connections to external storage solutions. HP has its HP BladeSystem, Sun has its own Blade family, and Dell has been dabbling in blades as well.

Sound complicated? Compared with a System i, it is — but then again, isn't almost everything?

One of the cool things about a BladeCenter is that it lets an organization run various forms of Windows, Linux, or AIX and more or less centrally manage it all, which is similar to a System i using LPARs with an attached or integrated server for running Windows. BladeCenters, in some ways, are the solution for out-of-control x86-based server farms. They've been evolving as product lines during the last couple years, and IBM's BladeCenter is doing well for Big Blue.

Enter the POWER6 Blade

Reporting on IBM's i5/OS blade plans is difficult right now because IBM has tendered no official announcements regarding it and doesn't want to talk about it publicly for a variety of reasons. First, the whole premise is complicated for many System i-focused shops to get their heads around, and whenever a company introduces complexity, it tends to slow down the sales process while customers figure out what's available, how things work, how much everything costs, what they should buy, and how they should buy it. IBM is in the middle of a major System i Enterprise versus SMB organizational overhaul right now, and the last thing it wants is purchasing confusion. Plus, to further complicate things, V6R1 is on the horizon.

IBM may also be working on the technology of the blade itself to make sure that it meshes seamlessly with the BladeCenter, so where things are in the pipeline is a bit up in the air. We have only a few concrete details.

In a blade-related press release in early November, IBM published a note reporting that an i5/OS blade that would plug in to the BladeCenter H and BladeCenter HT chassis would be available November 30, but then IBM updated the information by removing any mention of i5/OS. I wrote about it on my blog, Maxed Out, and IBM called me and attributed the change to a public relations snafu. IBM confirmed that an i5/OS blade would indeed be forthcoming but not until it was ready to support V6R1. So basically, yes, IBM has an i5/OS blade planned, but it won't be announced until V6R1 is ready to run. I asked IBM officials for additional details, but they declined to answer.

The AIX Sibling

What IBM did announce was a POWER6 processor-based blade for AIX and Linux on POWER in the JS22 configuration, which includes 4 GB of memory and a 73-GB hard disk drive priced at $10,363. Basically, a customer will get a lot of POWER6-based processing muscle at an astounding price. It's more complicated than acquiring a cheap System p, of course, because a blade running AIX is nowhere near an integrated "system." The System i, which is the most integrated business system on the planet, would be something less in a blade form factor.

So what would an i5/OS blade be good for? What would it bring to existing customers and, indeed, to IBM?

It's a Plus

For most existing System i clients, an i5/OS-based blade would be a plus — an option, not a replacement. In the future, I think there's a good chance that IBM will try to "BladeCenter" the whole world, but for existing customers, the System i remains the most cost-effective business solution. So what kinds of organizations might be most interested in running i5/OS on a blade?  

"In my opinion, this makes a lot of sense for customers with multiple distributed sites who would like to have the ability to host multiple OS's from a common blade chassis while sharing common switches and other I/O," explains Stan Staszak, director of System i/x products for Sirius. "Some customers may create a new test or development environment on a blade, but I think the majority will opt to carve out a logical partition for this purpose."

Staszak, as well as other experts I consulted, may or may not be under nondisclosure agreements with IBM concerning IBM's BladeCenter plans; regardless, the sources spoke about the idea of an i5/OS blade, not the impending reality of it. They weren't confirming or denying any such existence and weren't speaking from any possible "inside" information. They were willing to talk to me in terms of industry scenarios that could possibly make sense based on their experience with the System i world.

"A System i blade solution, in my view, would initially be of interest to organizations that have technical depth and/or existing BladeCenter experience," notes Kevin Fratzke, vice president of the System i Solutions Practice for MSI Systems Integrators. "By this I mean the skills to integrate external storage with i5/OS and organizations that already have xSeries blade solutions. Many smaller System i shops, although having both Intel and System i, do not have the skills to mix the two. That is something the IBM business partner community would have to step up to enable."

Fratzke says he expects the initial benefits to be reaped by organizations that have large investments in Storage Area Networks (SANs) with xSeries (Windows-based) blades and have a relatively modest System i footprint. "We have had a lot of success with BladeCenter with Intel customers, and the traction with System i customers integrating with it [BladeCenter] via iSCSI continues to increase," Fratzke notes.

A New SMB Play?

With IBM breaking its very large enterprise System i customer group from its SMB customer group, an i5/OS blade could bring a whole new set of solutions to the table for everyone.

"Before this year, I think it would be of primary interest to larger organizations looking for a way to consolidate i5/OS, Windows, and (even) AIX workloads," says Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT. "The recent introduction of the BladeCenter S takes that opportunity down to small businesses too. In fact, it will be very interesting to see how IBM positions this discreetly for its higher-end power systems and lower-end business systems offerings."

The BladeCenter S is a small form-factor BladeCenter geared for small businesses. It handles a half-dozen or so servers and plugs in to a standard 110-volt wall outlet.

The ISV Opportunity

ISVs may be able to work with IBM resellers and business partners to offer i5/OS-based applications ready to run on i5/OS blades, which could open some doors to i5/OS-based applications in organizations that otherwise would not invest in an entire System i.

"I expect to see System i ISVs jump into the pool because BladeCenter gives them, and potential new customers, a way to seamlessly deploy System i apps without taking on the management of new, unfamiliar hardware," King explains.

On the flip side, an i5/OS blade could also help an organization continue to wring benefits from existing System i applications. The applications could continue to run, which could help retain System i diversity in the overall IT world environment. Furthermore, an i5/OS blade could have the potential to help mainstream i5/OS. Instead of being locked to a "proprietary" System i form factor, an i5/OS blade could gain some acceptance from those who see it as fundamentally something else.

Complicating Factors

Although server blades come with some built-in storage, they aren't mean to hold entire integrated databases. This means that the storage is all external. "I think managing external storage would be the biggest change for longtime System i customers," Fratzke says.

In addition, right now there are some unanswered questions about compatibility. "The System i uses 520-byte blocks for its external storage as opposed to the industry-standard 512-byte block," Staszak explains. "This format is supported on IBM's high-end storage servers, such as the DS6800, but not on the lower-end storage. IBM has preannounced support for Virtual I/O Server in V6R1, and this might be a potential work-around for this restriction — by having an AIX blade host its virtual storage . . . [but] this is purely speculation on my part at this time," he notes. 

The BladeCenter World

Overall, blades have been successful solutions for many companies, particularly those that are already starting from a position of complexity with multiple servers, lots of applications and databases, and difficulty managing it all. For the traditional System i-focused shop, these issues belong to other divisions if not to other companies entirely. Although an i5/OS blade has the potential to change the System i landscape, it'll be business as usual for years to come for many in the System i world. Until IBM delivers a concrete package with tangible pricing and documentation, the potential will remain just a guess.

Chris Maxcer is the news editor for System iNEWS magazine and SystemiNetwork.com. "The i5/OS blade is both the best- and worst-kept secret at IBM," he says. “Although the information broke loose, essentially, this summer, IBM has been fantastically quiet about it.” (But, he adds, he’s not sure how much of that has to do with intentional secrecy versus getting lost in the massive organizational shuffle that IBM is working on. One thing is becoming clearer, though, and that is that IBM’s new Business Systems unit will be bullish on blades in 2008.)