Ed - I'm assuming you are referencing the Flash Express feature introduced on the zEC12 and not flash storage as used in storage controllers (DS8000, EMC DMX, etc).
We don't have first hand experience with flash, yet, but from the various webcalls I sat in on during the announcement cycle and updates we've received from our account team I took a number of notes. I'd say, though, that one of the best initial sources that seems to hit the majority of your questions is a FAQ doc IBM created and placed here: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/zsq03058usen/ZSQ03058USEN.PDF That said there are a couple of things I remember being asked that had immediate and emphatic answers from the IBM presenters. As to whether the flash cards wear out the answer was that, yes, ALL flash eventually wears out but that the life cycle of flash in a zEC12 should far exceed the lifecycle of the server itself (no doubt exceptions may occur for customers that tend towards really old/used boxes or extremely long lifecycles). Somewhere I had a note about the (list) price but have since misplaced that but recall it as sounding surprisingly reasonable. While we have a zEC12 we elected not to initially populate it with flash as it's our DR backup for our 2 z196's (and we are still DB2 V9 so no large page usage yet). I fully expect when we lifecycle our z196's to zEC12's we will populate all 3 machines with flash at that time. HTH. _______________________________________________________________________________ Karl S Huf | Senior Vice President | World Wide Technology 50 S LaSalle St, LQ-11, Chicago, IL 60603 | phone (312)630-6287 | [email protected] Please visit northerntrust.com CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This communication is confidential, may be privileged and is meant only for the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender ASAP and delete this message from your system. IRS CIRCULAR 230 NOTICE: To the extent that this message or any attachment concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law. For more information about this notice, see http://www.northerntrust.com/circular230 P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail. From: Ed Gould <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Date: 03/05/2013 03:38 PM Subject: Re: Flash Cards on MVS Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> I got one civil reply offline. The uncivil one from eastern Europe is not worth the courtesy of a reply. I will attempt to rephrase the question(s) below. I have a customer that is looking at the most current IBM system. I do not have contact with anyone that has the most current IBM system, so I am asking the group nicely, several questions. These are more operations (IMO) issues questions and figured the group would have the knowledge to reply. I did google and really didn't come up with any answers pertaining to IBM's MF implementation of Flash cards. Has anyone have experience with implementing IBM's (NOT STK or OEM) flash cards. What is the typical longevity of IBM's Flash cards and do you keep a few around just in case or ? IF/when they reach their end of life do you toss them return them to IBM etc... (how many spares do you keep on hand) How does your company handle replacements ie operations (or another group) handles the insertion and taking out of "old" cards. IOW operations side of the of the handling. Thanks in advance for any information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
