IBM System z - Mainframe servers

Do you lose sleep worrying about how secure your systems are from both external and internal threats? Are you concerned about the spiraling costs and complexity spawned by your organization's "server sprawl"? You are not alone – managing security, IT costs and complexity are the top challenges facing enterprises of all types and sizes today.

Enterprises rely on information technology to maintain a competitive edge in their markets, build customer relationships, and manage operations. They require an on-demand, 24x7 infrastructure, resulting in an insatiable appetite for more capacity, security, scalability, and reliability.

Can a single system help manage all these requirements, without breaking IT budgets and adding even more complexity? The answer is yes – with IBM's System z9 servers, security and simplicity is within reach for even the most demanding enterprise environments. Now, IBM introduces new features for its System z9 Business Class (BC) and z9 Enterprise Class (EC) servers that are designed to deliver end-to-end data protection across the enterprise, increase data availability, and manage workloads more efficiently than other platforms on the market today. With its nearly unlimited scalability, legendary reliability, and powerful specialty engines that can handle new workloads, System z9 can take on mission-critical enterprise workloads without the proliferation of distributed servers.

Here's how the System z9 can help your business lower the risks of security, and increase availability, while improving the economics of computing:

End-to-end security
Surveys show that almost nine out of ten businesses have encountered some type of security breach, and many laws and regulations demand better management of customer and financial data. However, within many environments, the only way to encrypt data is by cobbling together various technologies.

System z provides industry leading security and encryption solutions (US) – with the simplicity of centralized management. System z9 now provides end-to-end encryption (IPSec) (US) across heterogeneous platforms and devices, enabled for zIIP specialty engine (US) support. DB2 encryption options (US) have also been expanded with DB2 9 for z/OS (US) database. The tamper-resistant CryptoExpress2 feature has been redesigned for low cost while maintaining high performance to satisfy midrange security requirements. In addition, Linux on System z also provides partner solutions for leveraging Linux as a "demilitarized zone" firewall (US).

The IBM enterprise tape encryption solution has been expanded to include the new midrange IBM System Storage TS3400 Tape Library (US) and the IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 (US), which support IBM System StorageTS1120 (US) encryption-capable tape drives. The encryption keys for these libraries can be managed centrally from a z/OS hub.

As a result of IBM's acquisition of Consul (US), System z offers capabilities to enable you to meet regulatory reporting needs with confidence. The zSecure™ suite (US) compliments RACF to help simplify security management, addressing auditing, monitoring, compliance and administration. The InSight suite (US) focuses on compliance across all enterprise platforms, including the mainframe.

Enterprise-wide consolidation and simplification
Data centers have grown enormously complex in recent years, resulting in rising power, software, and staffing costs. System z9 introduces massive scale consolidation and simplification possibilities, highly efficient use of resources, and advanced automation to help reduce administration and operation overhead. System z9 is designed to support workloads that typically require hundreds, or even thousands, of distributed servers. Industry-leading virtualization (US) and workload management (US) allows System z9 resource utilization up to 100 percent of the capacity, versus 5 to 20 percent utilization that many times occurs with non-virtualized distributed servers. In addition, System z9 may provide up to four times the same work in the same space, as well as up to 12 times the work for the same power consumption.  ¹

The z9 is highly flexible and open, with broad support for industry standards and a core role in service-oriented architecture (SOA). XML is the foundation for many web-based applications and SOA solutions. z/OS XML System Services (US) (an XML parser integrated in z/OS) can help provide high-speed XML parsing services for z/OS environments. IBM is announcing its intent to enhance z/OS XML System Services to be enabled for zIIP (US) and zAAP (US) specialty engines  ² - thereby enabling z/OS XML parsing cycles to be redirected to cost-effective processor environments and making System z an attractive platform for XML based new workloads.

End-to-end availability and risk avoidance
Replication as a business continuity solution is a simple concept, but in implementation can become quite complex, as many customers have thousands of DASD and disk volumes to mirror. System z9 servers are now designed to simplify and automate this process by managing instantaneous replication of mission-critical data between sites within 300 kilometers of each other, or anywhere in the world on an asynchronous basis - across town, across the country, or even across the world. TPC for Replication for System z (US) takes advantage of the server's lightning-fast FICON and TCP/IP connections environment to manage the transfer of data from both System z and distributed systems to backup sites. TPC for Replication for System z manages the replication of z/OS formatted and distributed platform data since the hardware based replication functions move data by tracks instead of by datasets or files.

Achieving high levels of security, availability, and efficiency within your infrastructure doesn't have to be a complex undertaking. System z9 can help provide comprehensive security solutions, higher server utilization, lower cost of ownership, and cost-effective, secure data serving that quickly provides value across the entire enterprise.

¹ This comparison is of a System z9 EC versus Linux running on Intel-based servers. Linux on Intel servers are considered functionally eligible servers for consolidation to a System z running at low utilization such that the composite utilization is approximately 5%. The utilization rate assumed for the System z EC is 90%. Actual utilization rates for both may vary.

² Statement of Direction - All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represents goals and objectives only.