Memory and Disk Prices Slashed on Selected Power i Gear
May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan
As part of the April 28 Power System i product line enhancements, IBM has decided to cut the memory, disk, and processor prices on selected models of its Power Systems lineup. It is hard to say for sure what IBM’s thinking is whenever it cuts prices, but there is little doubt in my mind that Big Blue is feeling the competitive pressure from Intel‘s “Nehalem EP” Xeon 5500 servers, which compete head-to-head against the Power 520 and Power 550 machines as well as their analogues in the Power blade lineup, the JS12, JS22, JS23, and JS43. Not every machine got price cuts, as you can see from the announcement letter. Oh, but wait. You can’t see that, because IBM never tells you what the features are when it cuts prices. That’s why you keep me around, I guess. So here are the details on the price changes, including the feature descriptions so you can figure out what the deal is:
As you can see, memory on the JS12 and JS22 blade servers (those are Power6 models) was slashed, as were prices on 4.2 GHz Power6 cards for the Power 520 and processor core activations for those cards. Disks for the earlier generation of Power6-based Power 570 servers also saw some cuts, as did disk, memory, and processor activations for the Power M25 Power5+ user-priced box from two years ago. I guess IBM must still have inventories of their M25 and 520 machines that it wants to get rid of. RELATED STORIES Sundry Spring Power Systems Storage Enhancements Power Systems Finally Get Solid State Disks New Power6+ Iron: The Feeds and Speeds IBM Launches Power6+ Servers–Again IBM Adds New SAS, SSD Disks to Servers Sundry October Power Systems Announcements IBM Doubles the Cores on Midrange Power Systems Various System i and Power Systems i Nips and Tucks Power Systems Memory Prices Slashed to Promote Virtualization Sundry July Power Systems Announcements
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