IBM Server Snapshot: Big Changes at Big Blue

The big news since the last IBM server snapshot in February, of course, is the combining of the System i and System p, but obviously, that isn’t all IBM has done in the past six months.

Hard-Core Hardware: A new mainframe offering, and the consolidation and launch of sever lines are but some of the big changes at Big Blue in the past six months.

Among the highlights are the next-generation System z mainframe, a new line of servers known as System x iDataPlex, and several new blade servers — the HS12 and JS12.

Power

In April, IBM announced the birth of Power Systems. This effectively represented a combination of System i and System p into a single group. As part of the reorg, IBM appeared to be primarily focusing on reducing costs via organizational streamlining, and component sharing. Both System i and p have used the same POWER-family processor for several years now for example, Steve Sibley, manager, Power Systems Offering Management, noted:

The new Power Systems line offers IBM virtualizationtechnology and energy-saving capabilities to help dramatically reduce bottom-line operating costs, such as those for energy, floor space and systems management, while improving system performance, helping customers transition to a new enterprise data center.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata (Nashua, N.H.), put things in historical perspective. “System i and System p sprang from wholly different roots,” he said. “System i, long known as the AS/400, was an independent thread of IBM systems development. System p, on the other hand, was long called the RS/6000, then later pSeries.”

According to Haff, this also means that there’s now one common set of system models that can run AIX, i, or Linux operating systems &3151 or a combination thereof using the integrated server virtualization features that fall under the PowerVM umbrella.

What does this mean in terms of products? Several new low-end Power Systems have been introduced, such as the Power 520 Express, Power 550 Express and the i Edition Express for the BladeCenter S.

“They deliver value and performance in a package suitable for the budget constraints and limited administrative assets of SMBs,” said Sibley.

Shortly after announcing these servers, IBM introduced two new high-end Power Systems servers. The Power 595, which Sibley characterizes as a “water-cooled supercomputer,” and the Power 575, which he claims is the world’s fastest Unix server.

The unification of the IBM i operating system (formerly known as i5/OS) with AIX and Linux on Power systems and POWER processor-based BladesCenter, according to Sibley, is providing users new opportunities to optimize their IT infrastructure.

“Clients taking advantage of the simple-to-use, integrated i operating environment and database can now leverage the systems industry’s fastest processor and most popular midrange servers to update their infrastructure and run both their traditional applications as well as AIX and Linux applications,” he said.

System z

The major change to System z is the introduction of the z10EC, which IBM markets as its next-generation mainframe. According to Anne Altman, general manager, IBM System z, this new machine enables businesses to better manage and accommodate the complexity of today’s data centers as well as eases the transition to managing IT as a service.

“The arrival of the System z10EC mainframe addresses the fact that data center costs and complexity continue to rise and intensify,” said Altman. “Built to be shared, the z10 helps business units within a firm to share, track and automate the management of IT resources.”

She believes the z10 compares well against virtualized x86 servers — i.e., IBM touts this as a better platform than x86 for virtualization. In addition, the z10 is up to 50 percent faster and offers up to 100 percent performance improvement for CPU-intensive jobs, and up to 70 percent more capacity than the previous z9 line.

System x

The iDataPlex is the new member of the System x family. It was built with Web 2.0 style computing in mind. As such, it is designed to operate massive data centers with tens of thousands of servers.

“iDataPlex is a new line of rack systems featuring design innovations in cooling and efficiency that can help replace the inefficient white-box servers commonly used by Internet companies,” said Rajesh Sukhramani, manager System x marketing. “As consumers demand richer content and more immediate access to Web-based applications, iDataPlex can allow online gaming, social network, search and Internet companies to scale rapidly to meet this need.”

According to Sukhramani, the iDataPlex uses less space, which enables administrators to double the number of servers they can run in a single rack for better space utilization. He also states that it saves up to 40 percent energy and less air conditioning.

iDataPlex solutions are arranged in rack configurations with IBM Flexible Node Technology to tailor it for each specific business — you can mix and match to achieve the right balance of compute intensity, networking and storage-rich nodes.

“System x servers are an important element in helping clients develop a new enterprise data center, which offers dramatic improvements in IT efficiency and provides for rapid deployment of new IT services to support future business growth,” said Sukhramani.

Coming in September, the dx320 will be the next addition to the iDataplex family of servers. It is said to be optimized for significantly lower power and is aimed at extreme scale environments.

The Future

Like most vendors these days, IBM is going all out on the green bandwagon. In fact, its strange predilection to air primetime ads about System z products, has now been augmented by an equally puzzling series of ads with a green flavor. The ads may make sense to techies but not to the millions watching TV who hardly even know what a server is.

Anyway, at least IBM is not just hot air. It is investing heavily to back up its green trumpet blowing.

“Looking to the future, scientists at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory recently presented a pioneering concept of a zero-emission data center at CeBIT 2008,” said Sibley. “A new kind of water-cooling system embedded on a chip is the basis for an innovation that captures the water at its hottest and pipes it off the chip for reuse in heating a building or for hot water.”

The research team is currently trying to get the water even closer to the chip, not with a copper plate but actually inside the chip. Sibley states that once the water is captured, it can be routed out of the computer and pumped into the heating system for re-use.

IBM’s Software Offerings, at a Glance

¹ The System z line also includes the S/390 G5/G6 and S/390 Multiprise, which are no longer sold but are still supported.
² Based on IBM’s posted prices.
³ Commercial Blue Gene3 powered by PowerPC 450. Contact IBM for pricing.