PowerVM Express

To date, virtualization's rapid rate of adoption has been a phenomenon associated with large corporations. However, the well-documented benefits of virtualization—namely, reduced IT costs and business risks, greater efficiency and flexibility and simplified deployment and management—are equally applicable to small- and medium-sized businesses. Yet, such businesses often hesitate to take the jump into the virtualized infrastructure, possibly out of a fear of the unknown.

IBM offering PowerVM Express, an affordable option

Clearly, small- and medium-sized businesses are increasingly thinking about virtualization. To encourage their adaptation, IBM has introduced a new virtualization offering designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses consolidate server capacity, save energy and manage IT costs more effectively. The offering is IBM Power Systems PowerVM Express Edition and it joins the other PowerVM editions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition, which were designed to address the data processing needs of larger organizations. PowerVM provides virtualization solutions for a broad range of operating systems: AIX®—IBM's UNIX® operating system—Linux® and IBM i (formerly i5/OS®). When combined with new IBM POWER6 processor-based servers and blades-designed specifically for small- and medium-sized businesses-customers can create up to 10 virtual partitions per processor core in a single system, dramatically improving the utilization of the servers.

An added benefit of PowerVM Express is that IBM has made it easily affordable to smaller organizations. The pricing is meant to tell businesses, in effect: "Try it. You'll like it."

New features empower PowerVM users with flexibility and savings

New to all three PowerVM editions is the PowerVM Lx86 offering, which is included at no additional charge with PowerVM Editions, and allows Linux partitions on POWER processor-based servers to run many Linux x86 binary applications unmodified, without recompilation*. This new feature allows customers to immediately run any Linux applications, even before they have been natively compiled for Linux on POWER.

There are other features that make PowerVM a compelling offering:

• Shared Dedicated Capacity allows for the "donation" of spare CPU cycles from dedicated processor partitions to a Shared Processor Pool. The dedicated partition maintains absolute priority for dedicated CPU cycles. Enabling this feature may help to increase system utilization, without compromising the computing power for critical workloads in a dedicated processor. This feature is available for POWER6 processor based servers.
• Multiple Share Processor Pools allow 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 licensed via PowerVM Standard or Enterprise Edition along with a POWER6 processor-based server.
• The Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is a special-purpose partition, called the Hosting Partition, which provides virtual I/O resources to client partitions. These client partitions can run AIX and Linux, and now with POWER6 processor-based servers, IBM i 6.1. The VIOS 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 VIOS is designed to reduce costs by eliminating the need for dedicated network adapters, disk adapters and disk drives, and it is available with all three PowerVM Editions.
• The Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) literally allows the user to point, click and consolidate workloads with its easy-to-use browser-based interface. The IVM lowers the cost of entry into POWER6 and POWER5™ processor-based virtualization since it does not require the use of a hardware management console for single system partitioning. With IVM, the user can partition a single system, including the creation of LPARs, and management of virtual storage and virtual Ethernet. IVM is available with all three PowerVM Editions.
• Shared processor logical partitioning (LPAR) allows clients to "slice up" a machine into virtual partitions, and provides the flexibility to dynamically change the allocation of system resources for those environments. The Micro-Partitioning™ feature on Power™ Systems servers provides the capability to create multiple virtual partitions within a processor to a granularity of 1/100th of a CPU. Any of the virtual servers may run on any of the physical processors, meaning that the processor resources are fully shared, making it possible to run the physical server at very high utilization levels. Micro-Partitioning is available with all three PowerVM Editions.
• Live Partition Mobility is designed to allow you to move a running AIX or Linux partition from one physical server to another compatible server without application downtime, helping clients to avoid application interruption for planned system maintenance, provisioning and workload management. Live Partition Mobility is licensed via PowerVM Enterprise Edition for POWER6 processor-based servers.
• Active Memory Sharing is a capability that dynamically reallocates memory between LPARs based on their activity levels. It is designed to allow customers to make more efficient use of physical memory and optimize their hardware resources. Active Memory Sharing is provided with PowerVM Enterprise Edition and requires POWER6 processor-based servers.

The benefits of virtualization with PowerVM

Examples of IBM customers who have virtualized their IT environments and realized the benefits of virtualization abound. Osram Sylvania, a leader in lighting solutions and specialty products that feature innovative design and energy-saving technology, was reaching server capacity and wanted to avoid costly upgrades to their existing systems. The company was challenged to significantly reduce operating costs as IT implemented a new five-year strategy. IBM Power Systems servers, PowerVM virtualization technology and migration services from IBM provided the right solution.

In two separate projects, Osram Sylvania consolidated a total of 61 UNIX and x86 servers from HP and Dell to 11 Power Systems servers running AIX. As a result, system response is twice as fast, and the CPU footprint was reduced by a factor of four. The client is able to deliver better business results with less power, less cooling and significantly lower software licensing costs.

Many of the attributes of virtualization technology, a mainstay in many IBM large systems for more than 40 years, are now being utilized by customers large and small. Tens of thousands of Power Systems servers use PowerVM technology today. PowerVM makes virtualization an irresistible proposition.