Move Up to IBM Power Systems

IT managers have to grapple with the issue of server sprawl and the accompanying high cost of management combined with the explosion in energy use in the datacenter. One solution that many clients are implementing is server consolidation. The IBM Power™ 595 server, exploiting IBM PowerVM™ technology, is the epitome of a consolidation server because of its outstanding performance and capacity.

With the fastest processor in the industry, the 5.0GHz POWER6 processor, and outstanding memory and I/O bandwidth, the Power 595 has the capacity to support huge consolidation efforts that other servers just can't handle.

We ran a variety of benchmarks, and the answer is the same for all of them. The IBM Power™ 595 server outperforms systems from HP & Sun with 2 times the cores and outperforms systems with the same number of cores by more than 2 to 1.

The Power 595 server can offer you this fabulous performance for your UNIX® applications.

The 64-core Power 595 server outperformed the 64-core HP Integrity Superdome server by at least 2 ½ to 1 and the 64-core Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server by over 3 to 1 on processor intensive benchmarks. Even when the Superdome and M9000 servers were tested with twice the number of cores, the Power 595 server was faster by 18% up to as much as 71%. 71% faster than a system with double the cores is a very impressive result, but that is what you can expect form the IBM Power 595 server, very impressive results.

These benchmarks show the outstanding systems performance of the Power 595, but sometimes overall systems performance is not the most important factor, especially in a consolidated environment. Some applications are more bound by memory constraints, either based on the quantity of memory available or the memory bandwidth. Others are constrained by I/O bandwidth. When we compare those characteristics, the Power 595 is equally impressive.

Besides delivering two times the processor performance per core, the Power 595 also supports 4 times the memory per core, over 3 ½ times the memory bandwidth per core and over 5 times the I/O bandwidth per core of the Integrity Superdome and the M9000 highend systems.2 The tremendous capacity of the IBM Power 595 server can help you run challenging applications in every partition.

The Power 595 server is the fastest system with the fastest processor, the most memory capability, and I/O bandwidth. It is no wonder that it is a prime target for highly consolidated environments.

Compare midrange servers

The workhorse UNIX® database and application servers have to deliver cost effective, reliable performance for mission-critical applications. Using advanced features like virtualization, IBM POWER6™ processor performance, and mainframe-inspired reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) characteristics, the IBM Power™ 570 server epitomizes what today's mid-range server should be.

The POWER6 processor technology and advanced system design of the Power 570 server create a system with leadership-balanced performance. The very fast processor, up to 4.7 GHz, with system bus, I/O bandwidth, and large memory capacity that grows with the number of processors leads to the astounding number of leadership commercial and technical benchmarks.

The result is the very best performance for a mid-range server, and the very best performance per core of a mid-range server.

We compare performance because the exceptional speed of the Power 570 system is what allows you to meet your end user's service level objectives. And this is designed to be done with fewer cores which helps drive down your cost and improve system manageability.

The following table summarizes the best mid-range server performance result for the IBM Power 570 server versus Sun and HP 32-core UNIX servers. The results show that the Power 570 server has the very best performance of any midrange server.

The Power 570 server leads competitive midrange systems in capacity by far. However that is only one measure of performance. Better performance per core helps drive cost savings in hardware acquisition, software licensing, and a variety of operational areas. The following table shows the Power 570 server as compared to Sun and HP 32-core UNIX® servers.

With performance per core more than double the midrange competitors, the Power 570 server can enable you to reduce the number of servers and/or the size of servers you require to do your production. The PowerVM™ feature of the Power 570 server can also help you increase the utilization of your servers which could enable you to even further reduce the number. This combination could have a major impact on lowering your cost of server acquisition and your total cost of ownership for your IT environment.

Compare Entry Servers

As entry servers become faster, more customers find them the right performance for mission-critical applications. They also are often the right servers for distributed applications in stores and branch banks. The same POWER6 technology that makes the Power 570 the fastest midrange server helps make the IBM Power 550 Express system the fastest UNIX entry server. The comparison to the 8-core HP Integrity rx6600 and the 16-core Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers help demonstrate this. In fact, the Power 550 Express server has such excellent performance that its result for the demanding TPC-C benchmark is even better than the best HP 9000 Superdome result ever posted.¹⁰

The advantage of the Power 550 Express server is even more evident when you look at performance per core.

Compare Blade Servers

Blade servers provide a form factor designed to optimize management and operations for scale out applications. The servers are plugged into a chassis that provides power, cooling, management and many optional features shared by all the blade servers. This form factor can enable you to increase compute density, reduce overall power consumption, and eliminate expensive and hard to manage cabling. The shared features and the management capabilities can combine with those savings to reduce the total cost of ownership for scale out applications.

The IBM BladeCenter® JS22 Express combines the attributes of the industry-leading IBM BladeCenter chassis with the performance of POWER6 processor technology. This performance can enhance the overall cost advantage by reducing the number of blades required. The following table compares the performance of 4-core blade servers. The JS22 Express has an advantage of at least 30% in SPECint_rate2006, and 40% for both SPECfp_rate2006 and SPEC OMPM2001. Since there was no 4-core SPARC processor-based server results reported, the results for 8-core servers were reported in this table and the JS22 Express result was still 7% better in SPECint_rate2006 than the SPARC processor-based server with twice the number of cores and more than 20% better on SPECfp_rate2006 and SPEC OMPM2001 than the SPARC processor-based servers with twice the number of cores.

The next table documents the best performance per core for each technology for 2- or 4-core blade servers. Some very popular software is licensed based on the number of cores. Having the best performance per core can lead to lower software costs enhancing total cost of ownership. In this case, the comparison included both 2- and 4-core blade servers since both are popular for scale out applications. Once again the JS22 Express has a 30% advantage in peak throughput per core using SPECint_rate2006 results and 40% advantage in the other benchmarks.

One of the main reasons to use blade servers is to increase compute density. Server sprawl is a widely recognized issue for scale out applications. One way to contain sprawl is to increase the density. Therefore the next table looks at performance per 42U rack for the technologies. Each blade technology has multiple chassis options. For this measurement, the chassis which provided the greatest density was chosen for the comparison. The JS22 Express provided better than 20% more compute density based on SPECint_rate2006, 25% more compute density based on SPECfp_rate2006, and more than 60% greater compute density based on SPEC OMPM2001.

So if you need absolute performance, performance per core to minimize software licensing, or performance per rack to help control server sprawl, then the IBM BladeCenter JS22 Express is a computing solution you should be considering.

Learn more about the JS22 Express.

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