IBM today announced it is bringing its POWER6 microprocessor-based technology to small and medium-sized customers and delivering new virtualization offerings designed to help those customers consolidate server capacity, save energy and more effectively manage their IT costs.
i5/OS V6R1 Is Good to Go
IBM also introduced i5/OS V6R1, which allows customers to consolidate their POWER, Intel and i5/OS systems, conserving space and energy and adding to their bottom line. IBM noted that today's announcement further demonstrates its investment in i5/OS, part of the Power Systems Software portfolio. i5/OS V6R1 will help customers maximize the return on their IT investments by:
• Reducing costs and simplifying creation of i5/OS test and development environments through virtualization of i5/OS storage.
• Delivering improved performance for i5/OS and IBM Systems Storage environments through improved SAN support.
• Enabling consolidation of i5/OS and x86 servers on an IBM BladeCenter solution.
• Improving energy efficiency with monitoring and control of power/thermal utilization through POWER6 EnergyScale technology enabled by IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager software.
• Helping customers adopt modern, open source-based technology and more easily transition to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) with new and updated IBM Rational Software offerings and support for i5/OS, including: WebSphere Development Studio for System I, Rational Developer for System i, IBM Rational Business, IBM Rational Developer for System i for SOA Construction, and IBM Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) for 5250 Applications.
Virtualized Approach
A "virtualized" approach to computing is designed to allow corporations around the world to reduce energy consumption by as much as 80 percent1, better manage system growth, and achieve total cost of ownership reductions of up to 72 percent2.
Virtualization technology allows multiple server functions to run on fewer servers. For example, one server could run many operating systems and simultaneously host several business applications. Deploying these virtualization capabilities can help lower IT costs and business risks, increase efficiency and flexibility, simplify deployment and management, enhance overall business resilience and enable new forms of innovation.
Addressing these requirements, IBM introduced today a new virtualization platform - PowerVM Express - specially made to enable customers to better manage their IT costs, drive maximum energy efficiency and increase resource utilization. PowerVM provides virtualization solutions for the broadest range of operating systems in the industry, including AIX-- IBM's UNIX operating system, Linux, and i5/OS for System i customers.
When combined with new POWER6 microprocessor-based System p servers and BladeCenter servers - designed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses - customers can create up to 160 virtual partitions in a single system, dramatically improving the utilization of the servers.
"Virtualization has typically been in the domain of large enterprises. Today we aim to simplify the adoption of virtualization technologies, making it available to small and medium-sized businesses," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. "The capabilities we deliver when combining IBM's leadership virtualization software and POWER6 technology in our new offerings take us beyond just world-class performance and allow us to help clients build more efficient businesses by saving time, space and money."
PowerVM software - formerly known as Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) - is now available in Express, Standard and Enterprise Editions. New to all three PowerVM editions is a feature - at no additional charge - that allows System p servers to run Linux x86 binary applications unmodified without recompilation, in addition to UNIX and Linux on POWER applications.
According to IDC, spending on virtualization software and services is expected to exceed $15 billion worldwide by 2011, up from $6.5 billion in 2006.3 Forrester says that awareness of server virtualization by companies with 500-999 employees jumped from 60 percent to 86 percent in one year.4
Many of the attributes of virtualization technology, a mainstay in many IBM large systems for more than 40 years, are now being utilized by customers large and small. Nearly 70 percent of IBM POWER6 processor-based System p servers use PowerVM technology today. In addition to systems management and cost benefits, the PowerVM platform provides customers with new options to improve system and application availability, allowing reductions or elimination of planned downtime.
While competitive virtualization offerings in the industry are limited to supporting Intel processor-based servers, IBM's leadership innovation with the POWER6 microprocessor and PowerVM virtualization software enables customers to partition below the processor level to one-tenth of the processor.
Osram Sylvania, a leader in lighting solutions and specialty products that feature innovative design and energy-saving technology, was reaching server capacity and wanted to avoid costly upgrades to their existing systems. The company was challenged to significantly reduce operating costs as they implemented a new five-year strategy. IBM System p servers, PowerVM virtualization technology, and migration services from IBM provided the right solution.
"Upon researching the problem, we were convinced that IBM offered the best support for the transition, the best technology for operations, and the best strategy for long-term development," said Jeffrey Ruck, director of IT infrastructure services, Osram Sylvania. "In two separate projects, we were able to consolidate a total of 61 UNIX and x86 servers from HP and Dell to 11 System p servers running AIX. The IBM Migration and x86 Server Consolidation Factory teams spearheaded the project, and as a result system response is twice as fast, the CPU footprint has been reduced by a factor of four, and we're able to deliver better business results with less power and less cooling, and with significantly lower license costs."
In addition to the introduction of PowerVM today, IBM also announced:
• Two new POWER6 processor-based UNIX servers, the entry-level System p 520 Express and entry-level System p 550 Express, both built to handle mission-critical business workloads and both expected to entice additional Solaris and HP/UX customers to switch to IBM.
• A new release of the i5/OS operating system, IBM's flagship operating environment for small and medium-size clients using the System i platform with new support for the IBM BladeCenter POWER6-based JS22 blade server.
• First-time support for the BladeCenter JS22 and JS21 Express blade servers with AIX and Linux in the breakthrough office-friendly BladeCenter S chassis, designed for smaller firms and distributed enterprises.
• A new x86 Server Consolidation Factory offering, built on the success of previous IBM Migration Factory offerings, designed to help customers migrate from competitive x86 platforms to IBM System p with the new PowerVM virtualization software.
For more information about IBM's announcements today, visit http://www.ibm.com/press/attachments/23379.pdf.
Additional Facts About Today's Announcements
New System p Hardware: Both the new System p 520 Express and the new System p 550 Express feature the groundbreaking POWER6 processor--the world's fastest chip--and are available in entry rack or deskside configurations. The new servers feature dynamic LPAR and advanced virtualization capabilities with the new PowerVM and are ideal solutions for customers planning to migrate from competitive UNIX systems or Linux x86 servers to IBM.
The p520 Express features one, two or four cores of a 4.2 GHz POWER6 processor and up to 64 GB of memory. It is built to manage business critical workloads running ERP, CRM and logistics applications in remote locations or small robust database servers.
The p550 Express has a maximum of eight cores with either a 3.5 or 4.2 GHz POWER6 processor and up to 256 GB of memory. It is built to be a mid-sized database server for DB2, Oracle and Sybase applications, or as an application server for ERP and CRM applications or for both when a single physical server is configured as multiple virtual servers. The 256 GB of memory in a 4U form factor is designed for large databases or for UNIX or x86 server consolidations supporting dozens or hundreds of server images.
The entry-level p520 servers are targeted to compete aggressively with Sun and its Niagara 2 portfolio on the low end. The p550 trounces Sun's M4000 and handily beats HP's rx6600 in price/performance but IBM and its partners will also include a rebate offer of up-to $4,800 per server for 3.5 GHz models ($600 per core) and up to $9,600 per server for 4.2 GHz models ($1,200 per core) good throughout 2008 for competitive HP and Sun UNIX server replacements in the US, available now. IBM will extend the offer to select countries worldwide throughout the first quarter.
Both new servers are attractive offerings for small and mid-sized customers. The System p 520 can be used in roll-outs, such as in-store processing for retail chains. The System p 550 is ideally suited for departments and for use as a database server or to reduce server footprints via consolidations.
POWER6 processors continue to display their versatility in performance benchmark results. The System p 5501 Express topped all non-IBM, eight-core systems, including UNIX systems from Sun and HP, in three of the most widely used benchmarks for UNIX servers-SPECint_rate2006 (measuring integer-calculating throughput common in business applications), SPECfp_rate2006 (measuring floating point-calculating throughput required for scientific applications) and SPECjbb2005 (measuring Java performance in business operations per second required for web applications). The System p 5202 beat all non-IBM, four-core systems, including those from Sun and HP, in both SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006.
In addition, the p550 Express3 server running the Linux for POWER operating system offers more than 44-percent higher performance than an eight-core HP Integrity rx6600 server with HP/UX, based on the popular SAP SD 2-tier benchmark. Organizations can now chose the open source Linux operating system as they migrate from older business applications onto the integrated SAP ERP suite, helping them to make smarter decisions and quickly respond to changing business dynamics.
New IBM BladeCenter Servers with POWER6
Beginning February 29, the BladeCenter JS22 Express blade server with two dual-core POWER6 processors and the BladeCenter JS21 Express blade are now supported in the IBM BladeCenter S chassis, allowing users to run AIX and Linux on POWER or Linux x86 applications4 in an office-friendly environment. Designed to integrate applications most commonly used for business functions-such as antivirus/firewall, voice over IP, email, collaboration, back-up and recovery and file and print applications-BladeCenter S is intended to run outside the datacenter as the perfect officemate.
In addition, IBM and its Business Partners can now offer customers for the first time a fully customized, pre-configured BladeCenter solution, including BladeCenter JS21 or JS22 blade servers installed in a BladeCenter H chassis, combined with System p servers and selected I/O and storage options, all pre-installed in the same enterprise rack. The rack is shipped to the customer location with servers and storage fully installed, and the AIX operating system can be pre-loaded.
Beginning in March, customers will be able to run a BladeCenter JS22 blade with the i5/OS operating environment in a BladeCenter H chassis. This summer, support is planned for the JS22 with i5/OS in a BladeCenter S chassis.
New IBM Power Systems Software
The new PowerVM Express Edition is designed for users looking for an introduction to more advanced virtualization features at a highly affordable price. With PowerVM Express, users can create up to three partitions on the server, leverage virtualized disk and optical devices with the built in Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), and utilize "shared dedicated capacity" to help optimize use of processor cycles.
PowerVM Standard Edition provides the most complete virtualization functionality for UNIX and Linux in the industry. PowerVM Standard Edition includes all capabilities of PowerVM Express Edition plus IBM MicroPartitioningTM allowing up to 10 operating system partitions per processor core and adds support for multiple shared processor pools.
PowerVM Enterprise Edition includes all the features of PowerVM Standard Edition plus an exciting capability called Live Partition Mobility-a unique virtualization technique that enables POWER6 processor-based servers to move the entire operating system and its workloads from one server to another while the systems are running. With Live Partition Mobility, planned application downtime due to regular server maintenance can be a thing of the past since applications can be moved during business hours to alternate servers while still available to end users.
New to all three PowerVM Editions is the PowerVM Lx86 feature at no additional charge. This feature will now allow System p servers to run many Linux x86 binary applications unmodified and without recompilation in addition to UNIX and Linux on POWER applications, greatly expanding the workloads available to be consolidated onto System p servers. PowerVM Lx86 (formerly System p Application Virtual Environment or p AVE) allows the creation of an x86 application virtual environment so users may easily install and run a wide range of x86 Linux applications on a System p server with a Linux on POWER operating system.5 The Linux x86 application binaries are automatically detected at runtime and run seamlessly without additional configuration, allowing thousands of x86 Linux binaries to run easily on System p servers, helping clients consolidate, cut escalating power and cooling costs and improve performance.
More than 225 companies have used PowerVM Lx86 in an open beta program to consolidate x86 applications on their System p platform of choice, taking advantage of leadership performance and superb RAS features.
New IBM x86 Server Consolidation Factory
Building on the success of IBM's Migration Factory, Server Consolidation Factory and Availability Factory, IBM is extending the Factory offerings with a fourth x86 Server Consolidation Factory. This new initiative is geared to help companies reduce server sprawl by migrating their Linux x86 applications to System p servers with the new PowerVM editions and by engineering server makeovers that save space, energy, maintenance and software costs. IBM's successful Migration Factory offerings have helped more than 900 customers over the last two years move from competitive UNIX platforms-80 percent of which have been from Solaris and HP/UX environments-to IBM's AIX or Linux on Power platforms with IBM's leadership virtualization solutions while optimizing their overall IT environments and investments.
Footnotes
1Based on IBM Study. The virtualized system count and energy savings were derived from several factors: A performance factor of 2.79X was applied to the virtualization scenario based on SPEC results source: http://www.spec.org/. System p 570 (16-core, 8 chips, 2 cores per chip, 4.7 GHz) SPECint_rate2006: 466, as of 8/20/2007; HP Integrity rx7640 (16-core, 8 chips, 2 chips per core, 1.6 GHz) SPECint_rate2006: 167 as of 8/20/2007. A virtualization factor of 3X was applied to the virtualization scenario using utilizations derived from studies conducted by Alinean available at http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cio/optimize/opt_wp_ibm_systemp.pdf (PDF, 74 KB). A factor of 2X was used to represent the ability to install two 16-core System p 570 systems in a single rack. Power consumption figures of 5600 W for the IBM System p570 and 2128 W for the HP rx7640 were based on the maximum rates published by IBM and the typical maximum power consumption published by HP. Source for the HPIntegrity rx7640 information is QuickSpecs HP Integrity rx7640 Server dated August, 2007. It can be found at http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12470_div/12470_div.pdf (314 KB). Air conditioning power requirement estimated at 50% of system power requirement. Energy cost of $.0928 per kWh is based on 2007 YTD US Average Retail price to commercial customers per US DOE at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_b.html as of 8/20/2007. Datacenter floor space cost was estimated as of 8/20/2007 based on Alinean, Inc.'s ROI Analyst software. The reduction in floor space, power, cooling and software costs depends on the specific customer, environment, application requirements, and the consolidation potential. Actual numbers of virtualized systems supported will depend on workload levels for each replaced system.
2 "Impact of IBM System p Server Virtualization," Transforming the IT Value Equation with POWER6 Architecture. International Technology Group, May, 2007. Study methodology: Companies in financial services, manufacturing and retail with $15 Billion+ revenues focusing on UNIX large enterprise environments with multiple, broad-ranging applications. Study compared the cost of the company's workloads running on multiple vendor servers and employing minimal virtualization to the cost of the company's workloads running on System p 570 (POWER6 processor-based) as well as POWER5+ processor-based servers - all using Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV). APV is standard on System p5 590 and 595. Other System p servers have the option to add APV except the System p5 185. This cost analysis was performed for financial services, manufacturing and retail example environments with an overall average savings of up to 72% in TCO savings by virtualizing and consolidating on the System p servers. Total Cost of Ownership may not be reduced in each consolidation case. TCO depends on the specific client environment, the existing environments and staff, and the consolidation potential.
4 "Server Virtualization Accelerates In North America" Forrester Research, Feb 7, 2007
About IBM
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