IBM opened the i5/OS candy store Tuesday and stocked it full of goodies sweet enough to pass muster with Willy Wonka himself. Move over Everlasting Gobstoppers: features that IBM is releasing in V6R1 just might secure the operating system an eternal position in IT infrastructures everywhere.

Highlights of V6R1 include storage virtualization capabilities, enhanced Java performance, encryption for backups, database enhancements, and Systems Director. In addition to V6R1, the announcement includes enhanced support for storage area networks, BladeCenter support, the High Availability Solutions Manager disk-clustering product, and restructuring of development tools.

"There's a lot in this release," says Craig Johnson, IBM's i5/OS product manager. "And you get a group of users and customers together and there's something that interests almost everybody. There are a lot of things in here that meet a lot of customer requirements."

The System i faithful will have to wait until March 21, when the new version of the operating system becomes generally available, to taste them.

Until then, candy connoisseurs can contemplate the mouth-watering tidbits IBM announced Tuesday.

Servers running V5R3 or V5R4 can upgrade directly to V6R1. Support for V5R3 ends April 2009. V6R1 runs on System i POWER5-based systems 800, 810, 825, 870, 890, 520, 550, 570, 595, 515, 525, and POWER6-based 570 and the JS22 blade. The next release of i5/OS won't support any of the 800-series System i servers.

V6R1 costs the same as V5R4, according to IBM. The basic operating system ranges in price from $1,795 per processor for an i515 to $53,000 per processor for an i570 or i595. Complete price information is available in U.S. Announcement Letter 208-014.

IBM Announced:

-- i5/OS on a Blade
V6R1 systems can run i5/OS on a blade in a Blade Center. i5/OS V6R1 supports the existing JS22 blade, a four-core, 4GHz POWER6 blade. The JS22 can run in the BladeCenter H Chassis, which supports up to 14 x86 and POWER blades. A partition containing VIOS and the Integrated Virtualization Manager (see Virtualization Enhancements below) manages the blade resources and storage (over a SAN -- supports DS4700, DS4800, DS8100, or DS8300 or external SAS tape drive). i5/OS on BladeCenter also will support VMware VMotion. Future support will be offered for the S Chassis, which runs up to six x86 and POWER blades plus 12 disks.

-- Storage Area Network (SAN) Feature
A new Fibre Channel Adapter (4Gbit, IOPless, with dual port adapters) delivers improved I/O performance that is comparable to using internal storage. It increases capacity with up to 64 LUNs per port, enhances flexibility with support for disk and tape attachment, and adds support for booting off tape. The adapter requires V6R1 and a POWER6 processor-based system. It supports the DS8000.

-- Virtualization Enhancements
i5/OS Operating System-based Virtualization lets i5/OS partitions use disk and storage resources from another i5/OS partition, eliminating the need to buy adapters and disk drives for each i5/OS partition on a system. It works the same way as the current process for virtualizing i5/OS partition storage to an AIX or Linux partition. The feature requires POWER6 processor-based systems, and the partitions must be running V6R1.

An alternative solution for virtual storage is VIOS-based virtualization, similar to how System p handles storage virtualization. A single VIOS appliance partition serves out storage to other partitions running i5/OS, AIX, and Linux. The feature requires POWER6 systems and V6R1 and supports DS4700, DS4800, DS8100, and DS8300. The Integrated Virtualization Manager for creating and managing partitions runs in the VIOS partition.

Storage Space Snap Shots enables data backup while a virtual partition or integrated server is active. The enhancement supports i5/OS, Windows, Linux, AIX, and VMware storage spaces.

A logical partitioning enhancement for shared processor pools lets users group partitions into separate pools and set limits on the amount of processor capacity each pool can consume. It supports i5/OS V5R4 and V6R1, AIX, and Linux partitions on POWER6 processor-based systems.

-- IBM Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS
A new web-based tool for managing i5/OS, Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS is joining the Systems Director family of IBM tools. It's the out-of-the-box management solution for i5/OS in a browser and an alternative to iSeries Navigator (which is also available in V6R1).

Future versions of IBM Systems Director software will support multiple, heterogeneous operating systems within the same browser.

-- Java and Web Services Technology
A 64-bit Java Virtual Machine helps software vendors with application portability and provides improved performance over the Classic JVM. Integrated Web Application Server (the same web application server used by DB2 Web Query) simplifies the deployment of Java applications and supports JSF, JSP, and servlets and access to DB2 for i5/OS. A new integrated web services environment makes it easier to expose RPG and COBOL programs as web services and to invoke web services from RPG, COBOL, C, and C++ programs.

V6R1 also features Java and WebSphere performance improvements primarily in JDBC, DB2 for i5/OS, and Java (including 64K pages).

-- Security Enhancements
V6R1 introduces software encryption to help customers meet regulatory compliance. Companies can encrypt data on backup tapes as well as data residing on the disk in an auxiliary storage pool. V6R1 also offers enhanced intrusion detection capabilities through realtime notification of security issues via pagers and e-mails, and prevention features can throttle down clients initiating a Denial of Service attack. IBM has also strengthened i5/OS integrity through digital signatures for all i5/OS executables and the eradication of any altered programs (read: not approved by IBM) running in system state.

-- High Availability Solutions Manager
The High Availability Solutions Manager is a new disk-clustering solution for high availability and disaster recovery that provides near continuous application service. It provides data replication through i5/OS and disk-based (DS8000) mirroring. IASP data is synchronously replicated. It offers automatic or manual failover and new administration capabilities.

-- Performance Data Investigator
A new performance investigator tool (Performance Data Investigator) included at no additional charge in V6R1 provides enhanced viewing and analysis of i5/OS collection services data. It offers visualization of data in charts and tables. Collection Services files from a previous release can be converted to a V6R1 format and then viewed via the tool.

-- DB2 Enhancements
Enhancements to DB2 for i5/OS include performance improvements, improvements to the on-demand performance center for customizable reports, additional database functions, and full text document searching through DB2.

-- DB2 Web Query
Features a new runtime user license enablement component that provides for a flexible pricing option. A single user license can be defined as either a report "author" for creating and editing reports with web-based tools or as a "runtime-only group of users" for the purpose of only running reports so that license prices are reduced for companies with large numbers of runtime users.

-- Restructured and Enhanced Development Tools
IBM has made major changes to the packaging and pricing of System i development tools. Details were not available at press time, but Rational development tools for creating i5/OS applications include: Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) for 5250 applications v7.1 (combines HATS and WebFacing technology in a single product offering with simplified pricing and licensing options) for transforming 5250 screens to modern user interfaces, WebSphere Development Studio (WDS) v7.1/Rational Developer for System i v7.1 (repackaging of compiler and tools offerings in WDS replaces WDSc with a user-based pricing model) for extending core business functions as services, and Rational Developer on the System i for SOA Construction v7.1/Rational Business Developer, and v7.1 for building next-generation internet, intranet, and wireless application for System i.

-- i5/OS Program Conversion
A new program conversion step is required to run V6R1. The conversion requires a program's creation data (observability) and is performed during install/restore of applications at first use or at scheduled time.