IBM Systems Management solutions for Power Servers

IBM Systems Director Editions are designed to provide the tools you need to better manage your Power servers for improved service delivery. The Systems Director Express, Standard and Enterprise Editions provide a set of integrated platform management or enterprise management solutions to:

• Monitor and repair your systems status
• Deploy and optimize your workloads
• lan and document your infrastructure

Reduce the time required to find and troubleshoot problems with cross-platform monitoring and repair capabilities

• Maintain service availability via proactive alerts and automated responses
• Easier administrator collaboration when troubleshooting cross-platform services
• Manage energy use and thermal output of servers and other systems across the data center within capacity constraints
• Comprehensive service troubleshooting and root cause analysis

IBM Systems Director Express Edition provides the common console Power server administrators need to collaborate with other server administrators when identifying the root cause and fixes for cross-platform service problems.

IBM Systems Director Standard Edition includes the Express Edition and adds energy monitoring not only of the Power servers, but also any systems plugged into intelligent power distribution units, uninterruptible power supplies or the status of computer room air conditioning units. IT administrators can also broaden problem identification to include when networking systems have problems that can impact service delivery.

IBM Systems Director Enterprise Edition adds to the Standard Edition features, the ability to monitor the status of applications and middleware, to look for changes that can could be the source of a service problem. Roughly 60% of IT problems are a result of something that changed in the infrastructure, so having this knowledge can speed up troubleshooting and reduce downtime of the service.

Reduce the time required to deploy systems and optimize utilization of virtual resources and energy

• Simplify managing virtual machines of multiple Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs), along with IBM and third-party virtualization solutions by using a single user interface
• e more responsive to requirements for new and expanded AIX® or Linux™ workloads with virtual image management
• Pooling resources across multiple AIX and Linux servers for unparalleled flexibility and utilization
• Manage energy use and thermal output of servers and other systems across the data center within capacity constraints

IBM Systems Director Express Edition can help make LPAR deployment for new workloads faster and easier than provisioning new hardware. This can be beneficial if you are just starting to deploy virtualization on a small scale or are consolidating servers.

IBM Systems Director Standard Edition includes the Express Edition features and then takes virtualization to the next level by speeding up deployment via images that encapsulate the correct maintenance levels of an OS, middleware and application and automatically configure the storage area network connections. You can also optimize the energy use of most POWER6 and all POWER7 processor-based systems with the Standard Edition.

IBM Systems Director Enterprise Edition adds to the Standard Editions features the ability to automate workload deployment across the resources of multiple servers in a system pool. It can also help you to improve workload availability through visualization of workload status (instead of resource status), and automated mobility of workloads away from detected system errors.

Get information to document the existing infrastructure and plan for future capacity needs

• Identify under-utilized servers for new or expanded workload deployments
• Manage energy use and thermal output of servers and other systems across the data center within capacity constraints
• Predictive capacity planning, potentially resulting in deferred hardware acquisitions

IBM Systems Director Express Edition provides automated discovery of servers, their relationships to other servers and the details about their resources and utilization.

IBM Systems Director Standard Edition includes the Express Edition features and adds discovery of networking systems, identifies systems connected to power distribution units, and allows the association of physical systems with CRAC units. For infrastructure planning, there is built-in trend analysis to help identify energy problems that may occur in the future that can be avoided through facilities adjustments or upgrades.

IBM Systems Director Enterprise Edition includes all Standard Edition features, and adds discovery of applications and middleware as they relate to physical and virtual servers. To help with capacity planning, there is predictive analysis of server resource utilization and built-in reporting.

IBM Systems Director VMControl provides a comprehensive virtualization management solution for clients using PowerVM on IBM Power Systems servers and blades. Available as a plug-in for IBM Systems Director, VMControl is offered in three Editions to suit progressively increasing levels of virtualization, making it easy for you to expand your management capabilities as you build out your virtualized IT infrastructure.

By simplifying and automating the processes involved in creating virtualized workloads in PowerVM (using the AIX, IBM i or Linux on Power operating systems), VMControl helps you to reduce costs, improve service levels and manage risk. Most importantly, it allows CIOs and IT managers to link their virtualized infrastructure performance to business goals and manage virtualized resources as strategic assets.

VMControl is unique among virtualization management solutions in that it provides a common interface for managing virtualized workloads across multiple computing platforms and virtualization technologies. In other words, configuring or provisioning a virtual machine (VM) using PowerVM on Power Systems servers involves exactly the same steps as managing virtual workloads on IBM System x servers or System z mainframes. So IT managers no longer need to struggle with the redundancies of “silos of virtualization management,” and a standardized, easily-learned skill set can be utilized to manage all virtualized resources across the enterprise.

Better still, clients can deploy VMControl as part of the IBM Systems Director Editions and use the same graphical framework to manage their physical resources as well, including servers, networking and storage. Each of the Systems Director Editions (Express, Standard or Enterprise) includes the corresponding VMControl Edition.

VMControl Express Edition provides consistent life cycle management capabilities for individual VMs, including the ability to create, delete and modify VMs. These VMs can contain the AIX, IBM i or Linux on Power operating system, along with appropriate applications for those platforms.

VMControl Standard Edition includes all of the functionality of VMControl Express Edition, in addition to the capability to manage pre-built virtual appliances and store these in a shared repository. New ready-to-run AIX or Linux workloads can then be provisioned and deployed on demand, with a few simple mouse clicks.

VMControl Enterprise Edition goes one step further, by including the functionality of VMControl Standard Edition and adding the capability to manage system pools - which are groups of virtual appliances running on multiple Power Systems servers – as easily as managing a single VM. In this way, system pools provide simplified management of complex multi-tiered workloads that include AIX and/or Linux VMs.

Other management solutions for Power servers

IBM provides additional tools to address specific needs to reduce complexity, manage virtualization, and manage energy of your Power servers.

Tools to assist with reducing complexity:

• IBM Systems Director Console for AIX provides web-based management access to common systems administration tasks on the AIX operating system. This solution can be used with or without IBM Systems Director.
• IBM System i Navigator is a Microsoft Windows-based tool that offers a graphical interface with platform level server navigation, configuration, planning capabilities for your IBM i operating environments.
• Performance Management for Power Systems is an automated performance analysis and capacity planning offering that allows you to monitor your IBM i and AIX systems or partitions with little effort. It can easily help you spot utilization trends that will need your attention in the future. Performance Management for Power Systems™ includes basic reports for no additional charge, and provides an option for an advanced reporting package for a nominal charge. These capacity reports can be very useful in helping you plan for and manage the growth and performance of your system.
• IBM Systems Planning Tool helps you to size, order and set up a virtualized environment at a component level, and then install AIX and Linux partitions with just a few mouse clicks.
• Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating Systems Deployment provides bare-metal deployment of AIX and Linux operating systems on Power servers.

Tools to assist with virtualization management:

• Integrated Virtualization Manager facilitates processor partitioning, managing logical partitions (LPAR), and virtual storage and Ethernet management on a single server. It is included at no additional charge with the purchase of PowerVM, lowering the cost of entry into virtualization on Power Systems.
• Hardware Management Console is a dedicated appliance that helps to configure and manage partitions as well as Capacity on Demand processor and memory activations on Power Systems.

Tools to assist with energy management:

• Systems Director Active Energy Manager is a plug-in to Systems Director that monitoring and management of energy consumption across supported Power servers and facilities equipment within the IT infrastructure. It displays information on both current and historical trend analysis of energy and thermal status for monitored systems and facilities equipment. This broad perspective enables you to make required adjustments that can ensure your server operations fit within your energy policies and constraints.
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management helps manage energy usage of IT and facility resources for efficient data center operations. This product includes Active Energy Manager, but also stores real-time, historic, and trending energy and thermal metrics in a common repository to aid in decision making and for use by other IBM service management solutions. You can use enhanced reporting capabilities to estimate the potential power and cost savings of proposed energy optimization recommendations.