Say "Goodbye" to Power 5! : 18th Feb 2011

It has come as a shock to some customers. Given POWER7 comes with vast improvements in price performance you might say: "Who cares and who would be buying POWER6 anyway?" Well some customers with long term roll-out plans, need consistent equipment for reduced complexity and reduced testing and so still want POWER6 and could get caught out. So if you care, here is our list of withdrawal dates after which you can't buy new machines:

	Machine	Model	Date
1.	Power 560	8234-EMA	07-January-2011
2.	Power 570	9117-MMA	07-January-2011
3.	JS23/J43	7778-23X	29-April-2011
4.	Power 520	8203-E4A	27-May-2011
5.	Power 550	8203-E8A	27-May-2011
6.	Power 595	9119-FHA	29-July-2011

At the same time IBM also announced the withdrawal of upgrades from existing POWER5 servers into POWER6 servers:

	Power 5 to Power 6	Date
1.	p5 595 -> p6 595	29-July-2011
2.	p5 550 -> p6 550	27-May-2011
3.	p5 520 -> p6 520	27-May-2011

Remember, there is currently no direct upgrade path from POWER5 to POWER7, so any customers who are looking to perform model upgrades to POWER7 will first have to upgrade to POWER6. Processor/memory upgrades for installed systems will be available for 12 months following the withdrawal date. So it you have machines with spare CPU/RAM slots that you want to upgrade - make sure you don't miss these deadlines in 2012.