IBM PowerVM

The virtualization platform for UNIX, Linux and IBM i clients

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PowerVM™ Enterprise Edition
PowerVM Enterprise Edition is offered exclusively on POWER6™ processor-based servers and includes all the features of PowerVM Standard Edition plus two new industry-leading capabilities called Active Memory Sharing and Live Partition Mobility. Active Memory Sharing intelligently flows system memory from one partition to another as workload demands change. Live Partition Mobility allows for the movement of a running partition from one POWER6 processor-based server to another with no application downtime, resulting in better system utilization, improved application availability and energy savings. With Live Partition Mobility, planned application downtime due to regular server maintenance can be a thing of the past.

Features:

Micro-Partitioning Support: Micro-Partitioning™ technology helps lower costs by allowing the system to be finely tuned to consolidate multiple independent workloads. Micro-partitions can be defined as small as 1/10th of a processor and be changed in increments as small as 1/100th of a processor. Up to 10 micro-partitions may be created per core.

Integrated Virtualization Manager: Manage your virtualized environment with the click of a button. The Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) literally allows you to point, click and consolidate workloads with its easy to use browser-based interface.

Virtual I/O Server: Save money by sharing I/O resources. The Virtual I/O Server is a special-purpose partition which provides virtual I/O resources to client partitions. The Virtual I/O Server owns the resources that are shared with clients. A physical adapter assigned to a partition can be shared by one or more other partitions. The Virtual I/O Server is designed to reduce costs by eliminating the need for dedicated network adapters, disk adapters and disk drives.

PowerVM Lx86: Run x86 Linux® applications on POWER™. This feature enables the dynamic execution of x86 Linux instructions by mapping them to instructions on a POWER processor-based system and caching the mapped instructions to optimize performance. PowerVM Lx86 software is designed with features that enable users to easily install and run a wide range of x86 Linux applications on Power™ Systems platforms with a Linux on POWER operating system.

Shared Dedicated Capacity: The benefits of dedicated resources without the waste. This feature allows for the "donation" of spare CPU cycles for dedicated processor partitions to be utilized by the shared pool, thus increasing overall system performance. The dedicated partition maintains absolute priority for dedicated CPU cycles, and sharing will only occur when the dedicated partition has not consumed all its resources. This feature is supported on POWER6 processor-based servers.

Multiple Shared Processor Pools: Let the system do the administration for you. Simply assign priorities to partitions and let the Hypervisor allocate processing power as needed by your applications. This feature allows for automatic non-disruptive balancing of processing power between partitions assigned to shared pools resulting in increased throughput and the potential to reduce processor-based software licensing costs. This feature is supported on POWER6 processor-based servers.

N Port ID Virtualization: NPIV provides direct access to Fiber Channel adapters from multiple client partitions, simplifying the management of Fibre Channel SAN environments. NPIV support is included with PowerVM Express, Standard, and Enterprise Edition and supports AIX V5.3, AIX V6.1, IBM i 6.1.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 partitions on all POWER6 processor-based servers, including blades.

Virtual Tape: PowerVM has two virtualization methods for using tape devices on POWER6 processor-based servers, simplifying backup and restore operations. Both methods are supported with PowerVM Express, Standard, or Enterprise Edition.

NPIV enables PowerVM LPARs to access SAN tape libraries using shared physical HBA resources for AIX V5.3, AIX V6.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers.
Virtual tape support allows serial sharing of selected SAS tape devices for AIX V5.3, AIX V6.1, IBM I 6.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers.

Live Partition Mobility: Move a running AIX or Linux partition from one physical Power Systems POWER6 processor-based server to another Power Systems POWER6 processor-based server without application downtime, helping clients to avoid application interruption for planned system maintenance, provisioning, and workload management. This feature is supported on POWER6 processor-based servers.

PowerVM Live Partition Mobility is now supported in environments with two Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs) supporting larger and more flexible configurations.

PowerVM partitions support both physical and virtual I/O enabling dynamic heterogeneous multiple path I/O. With this support, partitions can have paths to a storage device that includes both physical (ie dedicated FC adapters) and virtual (ie NPIV) adapters. Multiple path I/O is supported with Live Partition Mobility environments with AIX V5.3 and AIX V6.1 partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers.

Active Memory Sharing: Allowing for the more efficient utilization of system memory, the Advanced Memory Sharing capability of PowerVM dynamically reallocates memory to running virtual partitions based on changing workload demands.

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