Steve is correct in observing that IBM i on a POWER6 blade server does not support SATA drives. However, from that he should not conclude that x86 virtualization software has exceeded what IBM offers. Any limitations on the use of SATA drives with i are intentional. The "read me first" document for planning storage virtualization with IBM i strongly recommends the use of Fibre Channel physical drives due to the performance and reliability requirments of production workloads. SATA drives have a reputation for being, relatively speaking, slow and less reliable. Rather than let the lure of cheap disks become a substitute for good capacity planning, IBM has chosen not to support SATA drives for i on blades . . . at least for the time being." --Kurt Rump *Read more...