IBM zEnterprise System

Highlights

• A 'System of Systems,' design that embraces the integration and management of multiple technology platforms – mainframe, UNIX® and x86 – to dramatically improve productivity of today’s multiarchitecture data centres
• Supports IBM® z/OS, Linux® on System z, z/VSE, z/VM, z/TPF, AIX, Linux on IBM System x and now Microsoft® Windows® operating environments
• Exceptional hybrid computing capabilities powered by the industry’s premier enterprise server, providing breakthrough innovation, virtualisation and extreme scalability, reliability and security
• Rapidly deploy services using prepackaged solutions and preintegrated technologies designed to meet the needs of specific workloads.

The demands of customers, partners, employees – and the demands of a fast moving market – are stretching the limits of today’s data centres. Add to this the management and integration challenges data centres face as they invest in the next generation of smart applications and it is clear something new is needed. Smarter computing systems – systems that raise the bar on efficiency, performance and cost savings while lowering management complexity.

The IBM zEnterprise System (zEnterprise) offers a revolutionary system design that addresses the complexity and inefficiency in today’s multiarchitecture data centres. The zEnterprise extends the strengths and capabilities of the mainframe – such as security, fault tolerance, efficiency, virtualisation and dynamic resource allocation – to other systems and workloads running on AIX on POWER7, Linux on System x and now Microsoft Windows – fundamentally changing the way data centres can be managed.

The zEnterprise is a workload-optimised, multiarchitecture compute system capable of hosting many workloads integrated together and efficiently managed as one single entity. It is designed to deploy and intelligently manage workloads across both mainframe and distributed technologies with the same tools, techniques and a single management interface.

The zEnterprise System includes a central processing complex (CPC) – either the zEnterprise 196 (z196) or the zEnterprise 114 (z114), the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) with its integrated optimisers and/or select IBM blades and the zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager.

Three key components make up the zEnterprise System

At the core of the zEnterprise System is the z196 or z114 – the next generation mainframe that provides new levels of performance, security, capacity for growth and dramatic infrastructure simplification capabilities. Both the z196 and z114 are designed to work seamlessly with system software, middleware and storage to be the most robust, cost effective, efficient and reliable data serving and transaction processing environment.

The zBX is an infrastructure component that hosts both general purpose blade servers and appliance-like workload optimisers which can all be managed as if they were a single mainframe. The zBX utilises a private high speed internal network that connects it to the CPC, which reduces the need for networking hardware and provides inherently high security. The zBX allows the zEnterprise to extend its strong portfolio to support AIX on Power and Windows or Linux on System x.

The IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager integrates multiarchitecture platform resources as a single virtualised system and provides unified and integrated management across the zEnterprise System with the same tools, techniques and resources for consistent, automated and reliable service delivery. The Unified Resource Manager can auto-discover new server, network and storage resources, load the virtualisation environments and prepare system resources for use. It can identify system bottlenecks or failures among disparate systems and if a failure occurs it can dynamically reallocate system resources to keep applications running smoothly. It can dramatically simplify operations across the various application environments. The Unified Resource Manager also provides energy monitoring and management, goal-oriented resource management, increased security, virtual networking and information management, all integrated into a single easy-to-use interface – dramatically simplifying operations across multiple application environments.

New application programming interfaces (APIs) allow integration between Unified Resource Manager and the broader ecosystem of management tools. This capability will allow service automation tools to be able to gain access to functions such as discovery, monitoring and provisioning for the heterogeneous resources owned by zEnterprise.