Cloud computing solutions

x86 cloud solutions and software

As companies require higher levels of flexibility from their IT, cloud computing is becoming increasingly important. Building on the benefits of server virtualization, cloud computing can improve resource utilization to help you make your business processes more efficient. With the right hardware, a cloud computing infrastructure can help lower costs and improve your return on your IT investment.

IBM System x® and IBM BladeCenter® x86 systems provide robust platforms for cloud computing. Only IBM offers X-Architecture® technology, including MAX5 memory expansion, simple-swap drives, Predictive Failure Analysis, eXFlash SSD technology and light path diagnostics on x86 servers. These advances enable System x and BladeCenter x86 systems to deliver leadership performance, simple scalability, and extreme reliability. Whether you deploy an integrated “quick start” solution, or do your own integration, IBM x86 cloud solutions can help transform your data center into a highly responsive IT environment that can quickly respond to changing business demands.

Benefits

With IBM x86 cloud solutions you can:

Rapidly deploy a comprehensive data center with minimal disruption
Improve reliability and uptime with tested configurations that incorporate best practice architecture and design
Reduce complexity with simplified management and support for heterogeneous environments
Adapt to changing requirements with the ability to scale without major infrastructure changes
Improve business resiliency with an IT infrastructure designed to have no single point of failure

Cloud software

IBM SmartCloud Entry delivered by IBM Starter Kit for Cloud x86 Edition¹ provides a fully integrated software stack for transforming a virtualized environment to a cloud environment. An intuitive self-service portal allows users to get up and running quickly. Built-in workload metering and additional tools enable tight controls and planning.

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Integrated solutions

IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud provides solutions for both virtualization and cloud. Additional customization and services are available as reference configurations through IBM and IBM Business Partners.

For virtualization: IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud provides a comprehensive, converged solution that brings together the hardware, software and services needed to quickly establish a robust virtualized environment.

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For cloud: IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud also provides a cloud solution. This can be achieved by adding IBM SmartCloud Entry software when purchasing BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud from IBM or an IBM Business Partner. The end result is a robust, fully integrated, private cloud solution that is reliable, secure and scalable.

Reference configurations

Reference configuration for VMware on System x with IBM SmartCloud Entry provides an affordable, easy to deploy private cloud architecture with configurations based on leading-edge technology from IBM, VMware and Juniper Networks

Reference configuration for Hyper-V on System x with Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud provides a robust private cloud architecture designed for any size organization with configurations based on industry-leading hardware and software from IBM and Microsoft.

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Read customer success stories

MacromatiX rings up smart IT growth With IBM BladeCenter H and System x

MacromatiX needed an infrastructure solution that would improve availability and transaction speeds for its cloud services amid exponential business growth. The IBM solution provides a flexible, scalable virtualized environment that processes transactions 20 percent faster and increases availability to near 100 percent.

Digital Medics GmbH answers the demands of its distributed medical imaging solution with IBM technology

Digital Medics and IBM created an elastic private cloud, which can be easily scaled to handle very high peaks in workload. The cloud runs in a virtualized Linux environment supported by IBM BladeCenter technology. IBM System Storage DS8300 and TS3100 systems are used for data storage, configured by IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

City and County Healthcare Group consolidates servers - building a cloud-ready infrastructure with IBM System x and System Storage technologies

Great Benefit, an IBM Business Partner, helped the IT team consolidate more than 30 HP production servers onto just seven IBM System x3650 servers, hosted at a Virtustream data centre.

Private Cloud Offering (PCO)

IBM SmartCloud is the family name for IBM cloud offerings. We refer to our key entry level cloud offering as "IBM SmartCloud Entry delivered by IBM Starter Kit for Cloud x86 Edition", which was the formal name of the product at launch. We will be officially changing the product name to "IBM SmartCloud Entry for System x" at the end of 2Q12.