A beta program review of IBM S1112

Pete Massiello IBM Lifetime Champion

I have been working on this platform since it was called something else, and I spent twenty years running an IBM Business Partner before I sold the company. In that time, I have installed, upgraded, tuned, and rescued more small Power systems than I could put a number to. So when I say that the S1112 is the most significant thing to happen to the IBM i P05 software tier in years, I want that read as the assessment of someone who has seen every other entry machine before.

I have had this box for two months. Here is what I found.

Out of the box

The first thing worth reporting is how little there is to report. From the moment the machine came out of the carton to the moment I was installing LIC and the operating system was under two hours. Unboxed, set up, cabled, powered, and installing.

That is not a small thing. The entry Power customer is very often a shop where one person owns the system, and that person does not have a week to spend on a hardware install. Two hours from carton to LIC means the S1112 respects the reality of the customer who buys it.

I connected my HMC to the machine through the single-port eBMC and it appeared on the HMC immediately. No fighting with it, no reseating anything, no calling anyone. It was simply there. Just as easy would be to use LAN Console; just remember to always start with the latest version.

The configuration I ran

My machine has four PCIe slots and four NVMe bays.

I populated it with one Ethernet adapter and one 12Gb SAS tape adapter, to which I attached an LTO8 drive. I ordered four 800GB NVMe drives.

I built two IBM i partitions. Each got two NVMe drives, which I then mirrored for protection. The Ethernet adapter went to the first partition, and I created an Ethernet bridge on the HMC so the second partition could reach the outside world through it. The tape adapter is shared between both partitions.

That is a real, workable, two-partition production topology out of a box this size, and it went together cleanly.

Storage

The machine can be ordered with up to 12TB of storage, which you would mirror as you would expect. That is a meaningful step up from what we had available on the P9 and P10 machines in this class.

For a lot of P05 customers, storage capacity has quietly been the ceiling that forced them into a larger, more expensive machine they did not otherwise need. That ceiling has moved.

Memory, and why this is the headline

This is the part of the review I would ask IBM to pay the most attention to, because I think it is the single strongest selling point of the machine and it deserves to be told clearly.

I ordered 64GB and split it between my two partitions.

The machine itself can be ordered with up to 512GB. IBM i partitions can use 64GB of it. If you are running AIX or Linux partitions alongside, they can use the rest, so the additional memory is not wasted on a mixed workload box, or even worse if you have multiple workloads you don’t have to share the 64GB between IBM I and those other workloads.

Now think back to the P9 and the P10 in this tier. The FSP firmware consumed some of the memory on the machine, which left you with roughly 50 to 52GB usable by your IBM i partitions. You ordered 64 and you did not get to use all 64 for IBM i.

On the S1112, if you want your IBM i partitions to have the full 64GB available to them, you order 128GB. Some of that memory will go unused, and that is fine, because what you get in return is all 64GB genuinely available to IBM i.

Every IBM i administrator reading this already knows what that means. IBM i performs better with more memory. It has always been true, it is still true, and for years the entry tier has been the place where customers quietly went without. This is the first P05-tier machine where that compromise is removed.

I would call this a genuine advantage over any previous machine in this class, and I do not use that phrase loosely.

Performance

The memory on this generation machine is faster, and you feel it.

I will be honest about the frame I brought to this. I expected a competent entry machine. What I got was a machine that is legitimately quick, to the point where I kept mentally checking myself, because it does not perform the way a P05 has trained me to expect a P05 to perform.

For the customer sitting on an aging entry box and wondering whether a refresh is worth the disruption, that is the answer.

Power modes

Power11 offers something I did not expect to enjoy as much as I have: the ability to change the machine's power mode. It affects processor frequency, energy consumption, and response time, and the changes take effect immediately with no system restart.

There are three modes.

Maximum performance. Processor frequency varies, and the system can reach its maximum frequency by leveraging thermal and energy headroom from idle cores, lighter workloads, and favorable environmental conditions.

Energy efficient. Frequency varies, and the system targets mid-frequency values, again drawing on available thermal and energy headroom.

Maximum energy saver. Processors are held at a fixed low frequency regardless of workload and ambient temperature. Energy consumption drops, and performance stays predictable.

Frequency can also be reduced by capping partitions, using virtual shared processor pools, and employing external workload managers.

The practical effect is that there is a mode for everyone. The shop chasing every last cycle has one. The shop in a hot closet watching its power bill has one. The shop that wants predictability above all else has one. And because the change is immediate, you can actually experiment on a live machine rather than theorizing about it. Actually, you can also set up a schedule that automatically changes the mode based on your schedule.  Maximum power during the day when you need it, efficient energy when you have variable workloads, and maybe maximum energy saver during the night when only a handful of users are on the machine. The best part, besides being cool, is that it is easy to do.

Operating system support

The S1112 runs IBM i 7.4, 7.5, and 7.6.

That covers where customers are today and where they are going. I fully expect it will run the next release and the one after that as well, which makes this a sound machine to buy for a customer who needs the investment to last. Future proofing is a phrase that gets used carelessly, but in this case the support matrix earns it.

The bottom line

I have enjoyed testing this machine, and I mean that in a way I do not usually mean it about entry hardware.

The S1112 fixes the memory problem that has held back the P05 software tier for two generations. It lifts the storage ceiling. It installs in under two hours. It gives the customer real control over power and performance. And it does all of that in a box that a small shop can actually afford and actually manage.

My honest prediction is that on day one of the announcement, this becomes the new standard in Power for the entry customer, and that every P05 software-tier customer will want to be on it.

I am glad IBM built it, and I am glad I got to spend two months finding out what it can do.