1.3 Positioning of WebSphere for OS400 and Linux on iSeries

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1.3 Positioning of WebSphere for OS/400 and Linux on iSeries

One obvious difference is Express Edition is only available for OS/400, whereas Enterprise Edition is only available for Linux on iSeries. That said, the rest of the differences between the two operating systems, as far as WebSphere is concerned, are quite relative.

One consideration point could be the topology. If you want vertical scalability, you may consider running WebSphere on the OS/400 side. Utilizing the OS/400-integrated feature of subsystems, you can manage multiple WebSphere application servers quite easily. However, if you want horizontal scalability, the Linux environment could be a more optimal choice. You might have multiple independent Linux LPAR partitions with less cost than multiple OS/400 LPAR partitions.

Table 1-1 on page 5 lists some decision factors between the two environments.

Table 1-1: Decision factors between OS/400 and Linux

Decision factor	OS/400	Linux
WebSphere Express Edition	Available in OS/400	Not available
WebSphere Base Edition	Available	Available
WebSphere Network Deployment Edition	Available	Available
WebSphere Enterprise Edition	Not available	Available
Application availability	Good for native applications	Good for new applications
Reliability	Advantage of the environment	High (especially compared with Windows)
Security	Advantage of OS/400	Good, as for every kind of UNIX®
Manageability	Better tracking of problems related to the environment	You can search between output files
Cost	Cost of OS/400 LPAR partitions	Cost of Linux LPAR partitions
Skills	Depends on the customer workforce	Depends on the customer workforce
Scalability	High vertical scalability via subsystems	High horizontal scalability for less cost in LPARs
Customer Strategic OS	Depends on the customer strategy	Depends on the customer strategy

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