IBM systems management solutions for System x

Systems management solutions for System x

IBM Systems Director provides an integrated set of tools to help IT organizations address major concerns associated with managing both physical and virtual server infrastructures: Reducing the time required to monitor and repair your systems for higher availability, and deploy and optimize systems for increased efficiency.

• Automatically discover Microsoft Windows or Linux physical and virtual server systems and dependencies
• Administer servers and associated storage, networks, and energy to maintain service availability by quickly identifying and resolving issues
• Manage heterogeneous virtualization environments across System x®, Power Systems™ (including multiple HMCs), System z® and third-party x86 servers with a common interface
• Optimize the use of virtual servers for higher levels of server consolidation
• Deploy new workloads faster and more reliably with virtual image management and system pools
• Automatically identify and update server OS and firmware levels to ensure consistent deployment
• Generate current and historical reports of system status for troubleshooting and system planning
• Analyze trends of server resource usage to plan for future capacity needs

Highlights

• Optimize virtualization to more quickly respond to changing business requirements
• Visualize and monitor physical and virtual servers at the platform, system, and enterprise level
• Administer servers, storage, networks, applications and energy in a unified solution
• Reduce time required to identify and resolve service availability issues

IT staffs today have more flexibility in deploying new and expanded business workloads due to proven technologies like virtualization. However, the lack of effective systems management tools and processes can increase the workload on an already-overburdened IT staff, inhibiting their ability to deliver innovative services in support of business growth. To build a dynamic infrastructure that addresses today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities, you need to not only ensure high availability and quality of existing services, but also meet customer expectations for flexible access to innovative new services that are delivered in the shortest possible time.

Only IBM offers comprehensive solutions that enable you to improve service delivery by providing a consolidated view of physical and virtual resources, and management of servers running any workload combinations on Microsoft Windows, and Linux operating environments.

IBM offers IBM Systems Director Editions for IBM® System x® servers—management solutions designed to reduce the time required to monitor and repair systems for higher availability, deploy and optimize systems for increased efficiency, and to plan and document your infrastructure for a better understanding of your current capabilities and future capacity needs.

IBM Systems Director Express Edition provides the basic monitoring, system configuration and update capabilities IT administrators need to remotely manage System x servers.

IBM Systems Director Standard Edition includes the Express® Edition functions and adds OS deployment, energy management, network control features and upward integration into Microsoft System Center® and VMware vCenter.

IBM Systems Director VMControl Enterprise Edition for IBM x86 significantly expands the virtualization management capabilities available for IBM System x platforms by delivering comprehensive system pools support for virtual servers deployed within a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) environment. For the first time, VMControl life-cycle management, image management, and system pools are available for IBM x86 KVM technology-based systems.