System i Virtualization Rises to the Challenge of Complexity

From their beginnings, IBM’s Virtualization technology and System i have been the perfect complement to one another, operating as seamlessly and effortlessly as a dance routine by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. After all, System i established a new standard for elegant simplicity by integrating database software, middleware, and applications in a unified, easy-to-manage framework. And virtualization created the opportunity to consolidate resources, streamline systems management, and reap greater efficiencies from hardware investments.

The concepts of simplicity, scalability, and efficiency resonate today across many small and medium-sized businesses deeply concerned about complexity in their IT systems, the costs of maintaining them, and how they can transform their IT infrastructure from a costly source of overhead to a meaningful competitive advantage in their industry.

Overcoming Complexity
Complexity is the biggest hurdle to achieving this goal. Owners and managers of businesses, regardless of size, region, or industry, voice universal agreement on the urgency of driving out the complexity that permeates most IT environments. Businesses agree that systems management is the largest and most rapidly growing IT cost component. With IT spending expected to increase 5.8 percent (PDF, 103 KB) in 2007, businesses are under renewed pressure to stretch dollars farther while extracting additional value.

Unfortunately, simplification has proved to be the Holy Grail of IT management. Over the years, many businesses have grasped at various strategies to simplify their IT environments—everything from server consolidation to rack-and-stack strategies. Server consolidation has worked as a first step, but with consolidation alone it can be hard to achieve the levels of infrastructure simplification needed. Businesses have many different applications and operating systems, many of which in the past demanded dedicated servers. In the end, whatever progress that businesses made toward simplification of IT management was undermined by the proliferation of new solutions and technologies.

Simply Virtual
That’s where Virtualization comes in. Virtualization promotes efficient resource management, and the ability to dynamically provision server, storage, and application resources according to users' changing demand and priorities. Under this model, a server has to be flexible, to both changing performance and capacity needs of applications within a single operating system image, but also between multiple images of a variety of operating systems.

In fact, System i has always relied on virtualization architecture that separates users and applications from the underlying hardware technology. System i's virtualization of system resources and its dynamic application workload management was the first essential building block towards the goal of utility-centric services. Next came support on System i for fully dynamic logical partitioning (LPAR) and the ability to divide a single processor into multiple partitions, making possible multiple 'virtual blades' or images of Linux, i5/OS and AIX 5L™. With the option to place an IBM Bladecenter attachment with the System i or attach external System x servers, System i utility management services also extends to Windows based applications. As one of the first IBM systems to deliver the IBM Virtualization Engine™, and with Capacity on Demand a standard feature on most models, System i continues to extend its leadership in virtualization technology.

“Thanks to virtualization, a single System i can run up to four different operating systems, including i5/OS, AIX 5L, Linux, and Windows (via integration with IBM BladeCenter and System x servers) on a single server.”

Thanks to virtualization, a single System i can run up to four different operating systems, including i5/OS, AIX 5L, Linux, and Windows (via integration with IBM BladeCenter and System x servers) on a single server. It is the only solution in the world to feature this capability.

Meeting Real Business Requirements
Moreover, the simplicity extends throughout the various operations and functions that businesses require. For instance, most System i boxes are shipped with internal storage. By using virtualization to partition internal storage for as many as four different operating systems, a single system can manage storage across all operating platforms. Everything, whether it is storing Operating Systems code, user profiles, files, or databases, is stored using objects in single level storage. The shorthand for this feature is “SAN in a can,” where SAN stands for storage attached network.

The advantage of SAN-in-a-can is that the user, with a single command, can back-up and store data on all operating systems, not just i5/OS. No longer does each operating system, whether it’s AIX, Linux, or Windows require a separate set of operations and instructions to back-up and store data. The advantages of this easy-to-use storage process extend beyond simplification. The one-step approach also greatly reduces the chances that data will be mixed or corrupted in the back-up/storage process.

Virtualization also allows micro-partitioning, another important feature for small- and medium-sized businesses that want to gain maximum benefit for their IT investment dollar. Micro-partitioning enables the user to segregate as little as one-tenth of the capacity of a processor for a certain operation when capacity is needed for another function. For instance, a business can set aside 10% of its processing capability for its firewall protection while running a program requiring more processing power, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application in another partition.

Virtual Infrastructure, Real Performance
Even with the ease-of-use afforded by virtualization, businesses using System i platform aren't sacrificing performance for simplicity. With dynamic partitioning the system can automatically move processor resources between i5/OS, AIX, and Linux partitions based on what demands are being placed on each environment.

The simplicity of IBM System i and Virtualization extends to its management tools that function with all of the operating systems being used, whether it’s i5/OS, AIX, Linux, or Windows. So, for instance, System i’s ease of use is enhanced by system management tools, including IBM Director, the basic tool kit, and the System i Navigator, the suite of tools that goes beyond Director cross-platform management to enable resource allocation for i5/OS on a deeper plane.

Are virtualization and System i sounding a lot like the sort of simplified solution that businesses today crave? Certainly, the thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses that have bought the System i think so. In the end, virtualization means that businesses aren’t only buying a new “system” when they purchase a System i; rather, they’re also buying a true solution to the challenge of complexity.