Linux Workload Consolidation

Business Challenge

The past 40 years of IT evolution have left many businesses with infrastructures that are heterogeneous, complex, widely distributed, and very costly. The cost and complexity of maintaining a proliferation of dedicated mail, file, print, network, Web servers, and associated storage devices are becoming a concern for today's IT managers. They are already under pressure to control costs and drive more value from IT investments.

Today companies need an enterprise infrastructure that integrates existing systems to deliver long-promised business benefits.

Solution

Consolidation is about simplifying and optimizing existing end-to-end infrastructures. It includes servers, databases, applications, networks, and systems management processes. The goal is to reduce costs while providing a common, stable foundation for growth and new solution deployment.

Linux on IBM is designed to provide an open, highly secure, adaptable, reliable consolidation platform for integrating components of your existing IT environment.

At a Glance - Solution Components

By selecting IBM, businesses can take advantage of the power of one of the world's largest information technology companies and our Business Partner network. IBM has the comprehensive portfolio of resources, ranging from servers, storage and software solutions to financing, business design, and IT consulting. These resources can support a successful consolidation initiative – within specified budget constraints. Available worldwide, Linux workload consolidation is appropriate to all industries and to businesses of all sizes. Linux workload consolidation can include:

Hardware	IBM pSeries, IBM iSeries, IBM xSeries, and IBM zSeries servers with their partitioning capabilities; scalable hardware offerings such as IBM BladeCenter, IBM Clusters, Intellistation; IBM TotalStorage offerings including disk, tape, storage area network (SAN), and storage virtualization software.

IBM Middleware	IBM DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli systems management software and additional middleware.

Services and Support	IBM Technology Assessment and Consulting Services, IBM Design, Migration, and Implementation Services, IBM Support Line, IBM Linux Application Porting, IBM Virtual Hosting Services.

Benefits

Using Linux to consolidate workloads onto fewer servers (or a single server) can help you reduce cost of ownership, increase efficiency, and simplify management. Specific benefits that you can achieve through Linux workload consolidation can include:

Improved total cost of ownership (TCO) through reduced hardware, software, and systems management costs
Reduced space and power requirements through reduction of server and storage devices
Improved return on investment (ROI) through enhanced server and storage resource utilization and optimized scalability
Unified operating environments and simplified application development and deployment
Optimized performance, improved uptime and availability, and increased recoverability and operational resiliency
Standardized policies, procedures, and operations
Simplified systems administration and management
Minimized retraining and hiring expenses through leveraged in-house UNIX skills
Accelerated adoption of open standards
Accelerated on demand business integration and positioning of infrastructure for an on demand operating environment
Stabilized, coherent foundation for future growth

Real World Customer Success Story

	Boscov's
Boscov's department store chain consolidated the bulk of its servers to a Linux partition on an IBM mainframe and its storage in an IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server. This eliminated many of the expenses associated with a server farm and dispersed storage devices while taking advantage of the reliability of Linux and IBM .

	GHY International
GHY International consolidated its servers onto an open, standards-based, integrated platform built by IBM. The company migrated the business processes previously running on its server farm onto two iSeries servers. An iSeries Model 270 runs several customs- and trade-related applications and IBM Lotus Domino 6.0.2 under IBM OS/400. An iSeries Model 820 acts as GHY International's Linux server. It delivers 14 different services, including imaging applications, a firewall, file-and-print serving, and Web application serving. The iSeries Model 820 leverages logical partitioning (LPAR) capabilities to deliver nine virtual Red Hat Linux servers. It has the ability to support additional Linux servers in the future.

Technical Details and Architecture

It is possible to replace existing multiple-server installations of UNIX or Windows NT with zSeries, iSeries, pSeries, and xSeries servers. They can run Linux with each available partition simulating an individual, independent server.