End of IBM Power6/7 support. Shall we migrate?
If you have AIX, IBM i, or Linux systems running on IBM Power Systems, this article may be of interest to you. IBM has finalized hardware support on POWER6 machines (released in 2007) at the end of the first quarter of 2019, after more than 12 years. The same will happen with POWER7 at the end of the third quarter of 2019. Details about the servers affected by the service outage are in the following announcement.
How does it affect me?
Many customers have Power 6 and Power 7 systems running. All of them in general, in perfect condition because it is well known in any data center that a Power system is so well designed and built that some replacement of discs or power supplies by means, it is not uncommon that they reach 10 or 15 years of life. Over the years, it’s not uncommon to find customers who discover after several years that part of their infrastructure was running on a Power server they didn’t even know existed :)
Going back to these cases, it is important to plan a transition to the new POWER8 and POWER9 systems in order not only to have a support from the manufacturer but also to save a lot of money. It’s not complicated to migrate to 10 Power6 systems to an environment with 2 Power9 in DR, thanks to PowerVM virtualization and the proper use of LPARs. This applies to systems with IBM i, AIX, and Linux.
Other challenges to face in these months are the upgrade of the VIO servers, operating system, HMC and firmware of the servers, in many cases as a step prior to the migration to modern systems.
What options do I have?
At Sixe Ingeniería we know that many companies are not sure what steps to take to ensure a smooth transition and that, fundamentally, does not involve significant risks or interruptions of service. Costs are also a fairly widespread concern. That’s why we’ve developed several options for customers affected by these end-of-life deadlines. We offer infrastructure services and solutions focused on IBM i, AIX, and Linux. We have a fairly comprehensive portfolio of solutions and services to help you through the process including designing the new architecture, acquiring the HW, eliminating or consolidating unnecessary licenses, installing hardware and systems configuration, migration of environments, performance tuning and post-project support.
We continue to recommend keeping critical environments on Power, using the operating system that best suits the workloads you run. No other hardware provides you with half half the years of continued support and can not offer 99.96 availability.
