IBM Linux

IBM Power Architecture® technology-based Power Systems™ servers and BladeCenter® blade servers are packed with features designed to enable you to achieve lower costs and more flexibility, as well as have the peace of mind that comes from knowing applications are available when needed. Our leadership performance can save you money by providing exceptional performance per processor core. PowerVM™, a family of IBM virtualization technologies, capabilities and offerings is designed to dramatically increase server utilization by providing innovative capabilities that enable one server to act like many—while giving you the ability to automatically move more processing power to critical applications when needed. You can meet processing requirements with fewer servers—helping reduce hardware, software and facility costs and improve data center energy efficiency. Finally, Linux® applications on these systems will be available when needed thanks to time-tested IBM reliability features.

Consolidate workloads to rein in sprawling x86 server farms
To maximize IT investments, many clients today are revamping their application deployment strategies, migrating from sprawling server farm implementations comprised of single-purpose x86 servers to a consolidated workload approach. To help get a jumpstart on your consolidation initiatives, choose from powerful, yet low-cost Power Systems and BladeCenter platforms combined with PowerVM offerings to provide the potential for consolidating Web, application and database workloads from configurations ranging from a few servers to hundreds of servers.

Run AIX® and/or Linux for Power™, with Java™, IBM middleware and open source components
IBM Power Systems servers and BladeCenter blade servers provide support for both the AIX and Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) operating systems and are enabled to support Java applications, C/C++ and Fortran applications, DB2®, Tivoli®, WebSphere® products, and many enabled open source and commercial solutions. You can run critical business solutions with confidence with either the AIX or Linux OS or, for enhanced flexibility, both OS environments running completely independent of one another in a virtualized configuration using PowerVM offerings.

32- or 64- bit applications run equally well on 64-bit architecture
IBM Power Systems servers and BladeCenter blade servers are designed to enable 32-bit and 64-bit applications written for 64-bit IBM Power Architecture technology to run without any degradation between modes. Older 32-bit applications can run on 64-bit Linux operating system-based servers and take advantage of larger managed memory of the operating system. The applications can then be migrated at your pace to enable even more application efficiencies due to the larger addressable memory of the 64-bit system. Application migration can be further simplified by using the PowerVM Lx86 feature which allows these servers to install and run most 32-bit x86 Linux applications without requiring modification. (See application qualifications.)

The Power to choose
No matter what performance level you need now—or to what level you need to scale-up in the future—IBM offers a server to meet Linux application requirements. From 1U, single-core to 64-core servers, Power Systems and BladeCenter platforms are ready for your business-critical Linux applications. Unlike other server systems with limited choices, the IBM POWER processor-based servers provide a full range of servers with binary compatibility between the systems so you have uninterrupted growth as your company grows. Whether proven IBM POWER5+™ processor-based Power Systems5™ servers or IBM's newest servers, designed with POWER6™ processors, Linux for Power server solutions are designed to offer performance and price/performance advantages while ushering in a new era in the virtualization and availability of today's ever-demanding data centers.

Scaling and virtualization
Linux for Power servers offers choice of scale-out, scale-up, and virtualized scale-out to support a wide range of workloads, migration, and consolidation scenarios.

When configured with leadership IBM virtualization offerings such as PowerVM Editions these servers offer the potential to cut your energy and IT costs and increase business flexibility to meet anticipated and unanticipated processing capacity demands with a more streamlined system infrastructure.

RAS that grows with you
IBM Power processor-based systems offer reliability, availability and serviceability characteristics that are not commonly found in server families running the Linux OS and provide mission-critical applications a higher level of support than other 32- or 64-bit Linux environments. Through no charge available toolkits unique for Linux for Power systems, extensions are available to enhance the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems to support the RAS characteristics of POWER processor-based servers at a higher level.

A range of computational power on which to standardize
The Power 64-bit architecture found in the IBM Power Systems server and BladeCenter blade server has extreme computational abilities and supports a balance of processing loads from deep computing to high transaction oriented commercial systems. By offering multiple processors rates and SMP systems up to 64-cores and memory up to 2 terabytes, Power technology provides an architecture worth standardizing on to support your IT needs.

The Power to partition
IBM Power Architecture technology, as found in Linux for Power servers, support a Hypervisor that is hardware-based and provides partitioning capabilities to optimize system resources with extremely low overhead. Having the ability in a single server to create virtual servers to support workloads with security and integrity provides a low-cost solution to help you gain efficiencies that may not be available with x86 server farm configurations.

Industry proven and acclaimed
Power Architecture technology, as found in IBM Linux for Power servers, is highly acclaimed and accepted in the industry. Supporting embedded systems to consumer devices to large supercomputers, Power Architecture technology-based systems are pervasive today. Power Architecture technology has a very strong roadmap to provide peace of mind when choosing a strategic architecture for 64-bit Linux solutions. IBM POWER6, POWER5+ and PowerPC® processor-based servers provide even more capabilities with support for dynamic LPAR and Micro-Partitioning™ virtualization technologies.

Support for the on demand operating environment
The IBM on demand focus is a major thrust in the industry to support enterprises' ability to manage the rapid dynamics of today's business world. Linux for Power supports many of these initiatives including Capacity Upgrade on Demand, Capacity BackUp, self-healing features, performance and system monitoring.

End to end support
IBM offers extensive assistance in the form education, migration tools, services, and support to enable a low risk implementation or migration to Linux solutions.