Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS)
Since its release in June of 2014 IBM has continued to expand the POWER8 line. With 4-core models and higher end enterprise versions out for a while now it is a good time to update our original article on POWER7 vs POWER8, the differences between them and what it means to for businesses and end-users.
In the time between our first article and today, the range of CPW the POWER8 machines are capable of has expanded significantly (from 359,000-911,000) to 10,300 on the 4-core S814 systems, to over 2,000,000 CPW on the enterprise class E880. What is CPW? CPW is IBM’s benchmarking score for how efficiently an IBM i system can handle heavy database intensive loads. This number can be used to determine the relative ability of individual IBM systems to efficiently handle a given workload.
However, CPW is not the only factor that POWER8 improves upon over POWER7 systems. A major consideration for many, and likely a make or break factor for some, is the cost of maintenance and support for your system. With the myriad of innovations IBM has implemented into the POWER8 systems, the power available at all support tiers has increased significantly. Which means businesses can now get more power than ever before, with lower maintenance
In addition to CPW and maintenance costs, here are a few other things to take into consideration for upgrading ANY system for your business: