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Consolidate your multiple stand-alone servers with IBM i
Instead of supporting and maintaining multiple disparate servers running Windows®, VMware® ESX and Linux®, you can integrate operations, networking and server management with IBM i technology integrated with BladeCenter® and System x™. This powerful combination can help simplify your IT infrastructure, reduce costs and run the applications your business needs. Best of all, this is done using the resources and skills you already have. And that's just the beginning. To learn more, watch this overview video.
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The integrated design, advanced systems management and enhanced virtualization technologies make IBM i ideal to help you reduce costs, improve productivity and increase responsiveness. What the Power Systems family allows you to do is integrate, extend and grow your business applications like never before by integrating a variety of operating systems, including IBM i®, IBM AIX®, Linux, VMware ESX and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003. You choose and run the best mix of applications for your business and manage them centrally. By helping reduce complexity and enabling a high level of IT flexibility, IBM i integration with IBM BladeCenter and IBM System x platforms offers an uncomplicated approach to gaining real business value.
System i Navigator provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for managing the IBM i and attached BladeCenter and System x servers. You can easily start and stop servers, enroll IBM i users in a Windows domain and perform storage management tasks such as adding new virtual disks to a Windows, Linux, or VMware ESX server.
System x and BladeCenter servers can communicate over Power server virtual Ethernet network connections, which may be utilized for Windows-to-Windows, Windows-to-IBM i, Windows to AIX, or even Windows-to-Linux on POWER™ communications. Because there are fewer cables, connectors, hubs and routers, there are fewer points of potential failure. Network traffic travels within the IBM i infrastructure and less across client networks. Using virtual Ethernet networks can isolate server-to-server traffic to help provide more reliable communications between applications and reduce external network traffic.
One of the most significant advantages of IBM i is its unique storage architecture. It can provide more flexibility than standalone Windows, Linux, or VMware ESX server implementations, where dedicated disk drives are typically attached to each server and every server's capacity is managed separately. With IBM i integration, there is a pool of virtual storage that Windows, Linux, and VMware ESX may share. "Virtual disks" are allocated in IBM i to each System x or blade server individually, yet all physical disk capacity and drive utilization is automatically managed by IBM i for improved performance and asset utilization. If a Windows, Linux, or VMware ESX server begins to run out of disk space, additional virtual storage may be allocated simply and easily, without rebooting.
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