Highlights
Realise more value from your Linux IT investment.
- Actualise cost savings through reduced power consumption, shared resources and increased utilisation
- Reduce risks and ensure uptime by running Linux on a system designed to optimise your investment
- Increase service by being able to immediately respond to your changing business needs.
Linux adoption continues at a rapid pace and more and more companies are turning to Linux applications to run their businesses – and more of these applications are becoming integral to their success. Linux has earned the reputation for flexibility and cost effectiveness. Companies are benefiting from the openness of Linux that is supported by a large worldwide open source community. Linux has thousands of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications. Skills and resources are readily available. It's maintaining technical parity with UNIX® and provides the reliability, scalability and security needed to run infrastructure to mission-critical workloads.
Whether running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), more and more companies are gaining competitive advantage and optimising their IT investment by running Linux applications on IBM Power Systems. Power provides significant cost savings, reduces availability risks and improves service through its advanced virtualisation capabilities. Many companies maximise their return on their Linux IT investment by moving workloads onto a single Power system, which saves not only administrative costs but energy costs as well. They reduce risks by running Linux applications on a continuously available platform. And they rely on Power to better service customers and allow for increased responsiveness to their dynamic business needs.
| Feature |
Benefits |
| Linux runs on IBM POWER processor-based servers |
- Offers enterprise class capabilities and energy efficiency that UNIX clients have depended on to run their businesses to the Linux marketplace
- Offers leadership reliability, availability and scalability for unparalleled dependability and improved responsiveness of systems and people
- Supports Capacity Upgrade on Demand (CUoD) (optional on selected platforms) to help meet ongoing capacity needs
|
| Linux runs on BladeCenter blades in the BladeCenter chassis |
- Provides floating-point acceleration for High Performance Computing (HPC) performance
- Allows POWER processor-based blades to be mixed and matched with Intel® and AMD Opteron processor-based blades
|
| Red Hat and Novell/SUSE Linux for Power operating system orderable through IBM |
- Linux distribution is easy to order with the hardware platform
- Distributions are tested by distributors and IBM
|
| Additional distributions support POWER |
- ASIANUX/RedFlag distribution supported as strategic Linux distribution in Asia
- Debian and other distributions are available from the Linux community to offer maximum choice
|
| Leadership Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) features |
- First Failure Data Capture designed to isolate fault conditions to help prevent reoccurrence
- Error Checking and Correction (ECC) and IBM Chipkill memory designed to reduce memory errors and keep applications running
- Includes hardware Service Processor that constantly monitors/reports system health
- Designed with fault tolerant power and cooling with N+1 redundancy to reduce downtime due to power and cooling component failures or required replacements
|
| Leadership virtualisation features (optional on some models) |
- IBM PowerVM virtualisation enables industry-leading virtualisation features for Linux applications to help reduce energy and IT costs and better manage growth without adding complexity
- Shared Processor Pools provide the ability to transparently share processing power between partitions and balance processing power
- Dynamic Logical Partition (LPAR) allows reallocation of system resources without rebooting affected partitions, offering greater flexibility in using available capacity and more rapidly matching resources to changing business requirements
- IBM Micro-Partitioning technology designed to further enhance flexibility by allowing fractional processor allocation down to 1/10th of a processor
- Virtual input/output (I/O) Server (VIOS) designed to help save costs by allowing partitions to share a single physical I/O adapter – Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI), Fibre Channel (FC), DVD, Ethernet
- Virtual LAN (VLAN) for extraordinary network performance between partitions
- Shared Dedicated Capacity helps optimise use of processor cycles
- Live Partition Mobility feature of PowerVM Enterprise Edition allows workload to be moved with no application downtime for better system utilisation, improved application availability and energy savings
|
| PowerVM Lx86 feature of all PowerVM Editions available at no additional charge |
- Allows x86 applications to be dynamically executed on Linux for Power platforms significantly expanding the potential application base
- Potential to enhance ISV and developer capability to offer their Linux on x86 applications to Linux for Power platforms more rapidly and at a minimal cost
- Single source and binary for Linux (x86 & Power Architecture) helps reduce cost
- Helps x86 Linux applications take advantage of the award-winning IBM PowerVM, leadership performance and superb RAS features
|
| Wide range of applications |
- Leading applications are available to support business needs
- Thousands of open source and ISV applications are available
|
| Choice in service offerings |
- Service for Linux for Power systems available through IBM Global Technology Services (GTS)
- Red Hat and Novell/SUSE Linux distributors also support and service the Linux for Power operating system
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