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January 2008 IBM announced a new major release of the i5/OS operating system - V6R1. From a functional and performance viewpoint, V6R1 should be installed and utilized as soon as possible, especially if you are on a release prior to V5R4.
Key new and enhanced functions are in the areas of:
- Virtualization of i5/OS storage including i5/OS running on IBM POWER6 BladeCenter servers
- Security
- Enhanced Java performance
- Improved performance with IBM System Storage™ devices
- Backup and recovery, including base i5/OS, Backup Recovery and Media Services, and introducing the IBM High Availability Solutions Manager (HASM) product
- IBM Systems Director-based system management
- Easier Web enablement
We expand on these V6R1 capabilities later in this description.
A relatively small number of hardware enhancements were also announced, with one of them being very significant - the "IOP-less" SAN Fibre Channel adapters. These adapters and V6R1 deliver improved performance with IBM System Storage™ devices.
Throughout 2007 a set of V5R4 software enhancements were announced as well as the first IBM Power Systems™ POWER6 technology Model 570, some new i5/OS user-based licensing on POWER5 models 515 and 525, and miscellaneous I/O adapter enhancements focused on "IOP-less" configuration requirements.
This set of presentations provides a medium level of technical details on the January 2008 announcements and at the hardware level, the 2007 announcements. The presentations are focused on V6R1 capabilities. Where appropriate, V6R1 functions also enabled in V5R4 are indicated.
V6R1 is a major step forward, building on V5R4 with very significant enhancements or new functions in the following areas:
- i5/OS security (expanded "base security" options and greatly expanded network Intrusion Detection options)
- Virtualization of i5/OS storage (including V6R1 as a client using virtual I/O hosted by either another V6R1 partition or a Power Virtualization (PowerVM™) Virtual I/O Server partition)
- Backup and recovery and system availability, including more save while active options, and journaling and clustering options that enable more flexible save and restore operations and backup (high availability) system configurations
- Encryption of data on disk and tape-based backups (includes management under the Backup Recovery and Media Services product)
- IBM Systems Director management (via the IBM System Director Navigator for i5/OS, the browser based interface that includes new graphical performance analysis capabilities)
- Easier Web enablement (using the integrated Web application server and "first step" enablement of RPG and COBOL applications as SOA Web services and clients)
- Enhanced Java performance (under the IBM Technology for Java 32-bit (introduced with V5R4) and 64-bit (new in V6R1) JVMs
- Improved performance with IBM System Storage™ devices (using new IOP-less capable Fibre Channel adapters)
- IBM DB2® for i5/OS® functional and performance enhancements, along with lower cost usage of the IBM DB2 Web Query for i5/OS product built for IBM by Information Builders
- RPG and COBOL enhancements including more flexible source statement importing and RPG multiple thread support and others with a focus on easier enablement of applications in a Web services environment
- IBM Rational Developer for System i, the workstation development tool that is the follow-on to the WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC) development tool
- Expanded support for IBM BladeCenter servers (V6R1 runs on specific POWER6 BladeCenter models and supports additional BladeCenter servers under System x and BladeCenter integration support)
- Support for IBM High Availability Solutions Manager (HASM), an IBM high availability product, introduced to the market place that makes maximum utilization of operating system enhancements and IBM Systems Storage devices attachment capabilities)
Note: V5R4 contains a wide range of medium to small enhancements and are best documented at a "technical overview" level in the set of V5R4 technical overview category you can link to from this technical support Web location and two large overview publications from IBM® Redbooks organization:
- IBM System i Overview: Models 515, 525, 550, 570, 595, and More, REDP-5052
- IBM System i5 V5R4 Technical Overview, SG24-7271
Notes:
- The Hardware presentation in this V6R1 Technical Overview presentation set contains extended content summarizing the January 2008 hardware announcements as well as the hardware announcements made during 2007. This technical overview Web site also has links to POWER6 hardware level documents, such as the HMC related and LPAR related manuals.
- Information Center for V6R1 and V5R4 contains significant overview and more detailed level information. The Memo to Users for each release summarizes differences with the previous release. Use URL http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iseries/ and select a release.
- Where appropriate a technical overview presentation page in this set, references other sources of information for more detail.
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