I’ll go make my own memory, thanks.

I would like to work on the IBM product marketing team that decides how much to charge for upgrade components.  I am convinced they are passing around a pipe of some sort, and munching on some fungi of dubious origin - it has to be quite the party!  Why do I say such things?  Read on.

A client of my employer, for whom we host and manage a large e-Commerce web site, has a couple of IBM p5 p560 servers running a clustered Oracle database.  Each of these two servers has 32GB of RAM.  When I had IBM help spec out these servers about 18 months ago, they configured the memory in a way that filled all the slots.  Now, the client is asking to upgrade to 64GB of memory.  Since all the slots are filled, it means removing everything and installing larger memory modules.  OK, that’s a PITA, but not the worst of it.  The quote I received back from IBM for 64GB of memory?  $65,000!!!  YES, THAT’S RIGHT…SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS…or a little over $1000 per GB of RAM.  Now remember, the client has TWO servers, we are talking about over $130,000 to upgrade the memory in their servers.  That is CRAZY!  I went back to the original server quote, and the memory was exactly half the price per GB.  Why? Here’s the answer.  IBM has come out with the new generation of servers in this class- the Power6.  IBM really wants to sell more Power6 servers.  By making the upgrade paths on the previous models so outrageously expensive, IBM is not-so-covertly trying to pursuade the owners of Power5 servers to just replace the entire server with the newer model.  While IBM may consider that good business, I think it is devious.

Disclaimer: As with all posts on this blog, the above contains my opinions and mine only.  For my complete disclaimer, please click ‘About Me’ at the top of this page.