Compare UNIX Servers. Learn about the benefits of IBM Power Systems compared to competitive UNIX servers.
IBM POWER6™ processor-based Linux, i, and UNIX servers are designed to help you implement a dynamic infrastructure. The combination of leadership performance, energy efficiency, flexible virtualization features and RAS features are designed to reduce your cost, improve service to end users and reduce risk – especially for mission critical applications and highly virtualized, consolidated operating environments.
Join the movement to realize the benefits
More than 1800 users of competitive hardware have eliminated server farms by migrating to Power Systems over the past three years.
Learn why Sun, HP and x86 users are moving to Power. View Video
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- Performance
- Availability
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How does your system stack up against POWER6 processor-based servers?
Power performance
IBM Power™ servers lead HP and Sun in performance in highend systems, in midrange systems, in entry systems, and in blade systems. That's right – Power servers are the leader in all the categories.
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Power efficiency
The combination of performance, consolidation, and virtualization enables you to save up to 90% of the energy required by Sun, HP and Dell servers. POWER6 processor-based servers require less power for same class servers and provide even greater savings in highly consolidated environments.
Learn more about power efficiency
Power availability
The IBM Power servers implement reliability, availability and serviceability features inspired by more than 40 years of mainframe experience in running mission-critical applications.
Our POWER6 processor-based servers support:
- First Failure Data Capture
- Processor Instruction Retry with Alternate Processor Recovery
- Bit Steering
- I/O EEH
- FW isolated partitions
- Live Partition Mobility and Application Mobility
No competitive UNIX or Linux server has a majority of these features.
Power virtualization
POWER6 processor-based servers are unique among UNIX® and Linux® servers in that they support the same virtualization product, PowerVM™, and almost all of the same virtualization features in the entire IBM Power server product line. Even more impressive are the features of PowerVM.
Features like:
- Minimum partition size as small as 1/10 of a processor with granularity of 1/100 of a processor
- Automatic CPU adjustments based on load (POWER Hypervisor™)
- Dynamic reconfiguration without rebooting
- Dedicated and virtual devices in guest operating systems
- Virtualize network and storage for guest operating systems
- Live Partition Mobility between systems provide exceptional capability for the user consolidating homogeneous and heterogeneous workloads



