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Since its introduction as a Domino® platform in 1998, IBM eServer® iSeries™ and its AS/400® predecessor have consistently demonstrated scalability leadership and outstanding sub-second response time on many record-setting NotesBench™ audits of R4.6 Mail, R5 Mail, R5 iNotes™, and R6 iNotes workloads. AS/400 was the first Domino platform to break the 10,000 NotesBench user mark; iSeries was the first Domino platform to break the 100,000 NotesBench user mark and then the 150,000 NotesBench user mark (which still stands).
The announcement of each new generation of AS/400 or iSeries servers has typically been accompanied by a high-end NotesBench benchmark. In May of 2004, IBM is introducing IBM eServer i5 -- the latest member of the iSeries family and the first IBM server to use POWER5™ technology. For this announcement, IBM has chosen to take a different approach to demonstrating excellence as a Domino server. Rather than scaling as high as possible on the most processors possible, this benchmark demonstrates the ability of the new eServer i5 to maximize the number of users (24,000) on a 2-way processor while delivering outstanding response time of 0.092 seconds. This benchmark reinforces the message that the iSeries server family can deliver excellence and value as a Domino server for organizations of all sizes -- whether their Domino users number in the hundreds or in the tens of thousands.
Year after year, IBM has invested in NotesBench benchmarks for AS/400, iSeries, and now IBM eServer i5, the newest member of the iSeries family. Why do we continue to focus resources on this benchmark and performance effort? Three reasons:
Reason One: Our iSeries NotesBench audits demonstrate the ability to leverage investment and the latest technology. Each iSeries NotesBench audit has featured new technology -- newer faster processors, more and faster memory, newer and faster disk drives -- running on the latest releases of Domino and i5/OS™ and its predecessor OS/400. iSeries architecture allows iSeries applications (including Lotus® applications) to benefit from the latest technology with no disruption. iSeries software vendors and customers can immediately take advantage of the "latest and greatest," typically without having to rewrite or recompile. iSeries owners move to new technology at varying rates, as their business needs dictate, with the confidence that their software should run without requiring changes.
Probably the most dramatic demonstration of this investment protection was the introduction of 64-bit PowerPC™ RISC processors to the AS/400 line in 1995. Since then, tens of thousands of AS/400 customers have migrated to 64-bit without having to change or recompile their applications.
The latest POWER5 iSeries processors used in this benchmark are the 9th generation of PowerPC processors used in the new IBM eServer i5. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) this spectacular accomplishment -- being the first enterprise system to rapidly migrate the majority of installed customers to 64-bit -- iSeries customers are notoriously unimpressed by hardware for the sake of hardware. They don't want to talk about chip speeds or Ghz or disk latency. They're interested in the business value of the latest hardware: can a leading-edge robust application like Domino (that thrives on CPU and memory) take advantage of the latest and greatest hardware technology and continue to scale? Each iSeries NotesBench audit delivers a resounding "yes" to this question.
Reason Two: Our iSeries NotesBench audits demonstrate the flexibility, versatility, and "elasticity" that iSeries delivers to organizations of all shapes and sizes. From the beginning, AS/400 and iSeries have capitalized on an under-appreciated Domino feature -- Domino software partitioning. On iSeries, each Domino partition gets its own OS/400® subsystem -- an isolated, manageable, and tunable software environment. Just as one copy of Domino server code can have multiple instances (called Domino partitions), one copy of OS/400 can be subdivided into logical software environments (called subsystems). The unique marriage of Domino partitioning with OS/400 subsystem architecture delivers real business benefit. The scalability achieved in NotesBench audits is one example. For this latest audit of 24,000 R6mail users, we used 4 Domino partitions on a 2-way processor. In previous audits, iSeries supported 150,000 users with Lotus Notes® clients with 27 Domino software partitions and 28,500 iNotes Web Access users with 10 partitions. Both of these audits were run on 32-way processors. Every iSeries NotesBench audit, from 10,000 to 150,000 users, has used a single system image with a single copy of OS/400, leveraging Domino partitioning.
Domino partitioning is a key ingredient to superior iSeries scalability. But it delivers much more... Domino partitioning on iSeries gives a Domino administrator the flexibility to architect the best Lotus environment for an organization. "Imagine if you could forget about hardware. How would you design an optimal Domino environment that's manageable and delivers the best availability to end users?" Music to a Domino architect's ears; and a tune iSeries plays very well. With iSeries, we don't require or even recommend a particular relationship between hardware size and Domino partitioning. Some small organizations run 15 partitions to divide up their Domino mail and applications. Some larger organizations run 8 partitions for 10,000 mail and calendaring users.
Domino partitioning and OS/400 subsystems can also put an end to the need for single-purpose servers and ever-expanding server farms. IBM recently published a "Three-in-One" iSeries "benchmark" that combines collaboration, line-of-business transaction processing, and Web application serving -- all running simultaneously on a single one-way iSeries server suitable for a small-to-medium business. The collaboration portion of this "benchmark" includes 200 users accessing a Domino server using iNotes Web Access and 200 IBM Lotus Instant Messaging users. Flexibility, versatility, elasticity...
You might have also heard of LPAR (logical partitioning) and even dynamic LPAR. iSeries has an excellent implementation of dynamic LPAR, which many Domino for i5/OS customers use, for example, to completely separate their production and test environments or to isolate Domino from their ERP applications. Without delving too deep technically, suffice it to say that Domino software partitioning meets the needs of many Domino customers. iSeries LPAR provides additional capabilities and complements Domino software partitioning for organizations with additional requirements. Flexibility, versatility, elasticity...
Reason Three: Our iSeries and AS/400 NotesBench results demonstrate continued commitment and expertise. In 1998, the AS/400 management team made a pivotal decision to invest heavily in our Domino launch. Until that time, AS/400 had built a strong reputation as a reliable, dependable, easy-to-manage, highly secure system for "back office applications." Tens of thousands of businesses around the world literally bet their business on AS/400 every day... running everything from payroll to order processing to production management on the system that sat quietly in the corner and never hiccuped. Under the covers, IBM had transformed AS/400 several times (including the 64-bit transformation mentioned above), making it well-suited for "front office applications," too. But in early 1998, neither customers nor the IBM sales force were aggressively exploring the new potential of AS/400.
As the Domino for AS/400 team began to appreciate the benefits that OS/400 architecture brings to Domino, they started making plans to propel Domino into the forefront as the leading next generation application for AS/400. They delivered the first NotesBench audit to surpass 10,000 users with unheard-of sub-second response time. (The next closest audit at the time was 6,500 users.) And they demonstrated ease-of-management, outstanding availability, and low total cost of ownership at a time when companies were rapidly tiring of the trials and tribulations of managing server farms.
The rest, as they say, is history. Many existing AS/400 customers discovered the wonders of Domino for the first time. Many existing Domino customers discovered the benefits of consolidating their servers to AS/400 and later iSeries. The AS/400 and iSeries team began building an ecosystem to support this rapidly growing franchise. The performance team that regularly produces record-breaking NotesBench audits is an important component of this ecosystem. They continually explore tuning and configuration options and analyze each release of OS/400 and Domino to eke out performance gains. They provide feedback to the iSeries and Lotus development teams. Probably most important, they continually refine the data that we use for a critical iSeries tool -- the IBM Workload Estimator for IBM eServer.
iSeries customers, new and old, mean business when they plan for and purchase an iSeries server. From a capacity perspective, iSeries spans a huge range -- from small servers appropriate for a few hundred users to multi-million dollar servers that can accommodate tens of thousands of users. iSeries customers don't want to guess or to experiment. They rely on the Workload Estimator combined with the expertise of many experienced Domino for i5/OS professionals inside IBM and at our Business Partners to design a configuration that is right for them. And that, ultimately, is why we benchmark. To prove our unmatched Domino scalability, of course. But more importantly, to gather information and knowledge to make our Domino for i5/OS customers -- large and small -- happy and successful.
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