Do you have multiple servers and storage devises running a variety of operating systems, middleware products and applications supporting your organization or business? You are not alone.
IBM Systems Director can help to simplify the management of your data centers. IBM Systems Director provides a set of common base functions, which are available to the entire family of IBM systems, including Linux on System z, at no charge.
The new version of IBM Systems Director for Linux on System z V6.1 obtains information about the Linux guest machines (virtual servers) running within the z/VM system.
Leveraging industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies across all IBM platforms - System z, System p, System i, System x, BladeCenter and Storage - and non-IBM platforms. Through a single user interface, IBM Systems Director provides consistent views for visualizing managed systems and determining how these systems relate to one another while identifying their individual status, thus helping to correlate technical resources with business needs.
IBM Systems Director base provides the foundation for platform lifecycle management
- Consolidation of Platform Management Tools
- Single consistent cross-platform management tool
- Simplified tasks via Web based interface
- Manage many systems from one console
- Integrated Physical and Virtual Management
- Discovery and Inventory of physical and virtual resources
- Configuration and provisioning of platform resources
- Status, Health, and Monitoring of platform resources
- Visualization of server resource topologies
- Move virtual servers between systems without disruption to running workloads
- Platform Update Management
- Simplified consistent cross-platform tools to acquire, distribute and install firmware and OS updates
The IBM Systems Director for Linux on System z is offered at no additional charge. The IBM Systems Director for Linux on System z is not shipped automatically together with a System z server shipment. It can be ordered through Entitled Software Warehouse (ESW), ShopzSeries or Electronic Transfer.
IBM Director for Linux on System z V5.20 (the previous version) run together with IBM Systems Director V6.1 on distributed platforms. Resources (systems, virtualization technologies, system images, etc.) can be managed from either one environment or the other but not concurrently from both. The expectation is that a customer running IBM Director V5.20 will be able to bring up an IBM Systems Director V6.1 environment and migrate the managed resources from the IBM Director V5.20 environment to the IBM Systems Director V6.1 environment in a staged manner that meets the business goals.
Available for the IBM Director for Linux on System z V5.20 are the optional, priced features:
IBM Systems Director VMControl for Image Manager Linux on System z 2.1 replaces z/VM Center. Using IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager, clients have the ability to clone Linux images in a manner similar to what was provided with z/VM Center Extension of IBM Director V5.20. As stated in Software Announcement 208-291 dated October 7, 2008, Systems Director would not be providing any functional replacements for the Server Complexes and Utility Service Configuration Manager tasks of the z/VM Center. IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager V2.1 provides the functional replacement for the Virtual Server Deployment task of IBM Director for Linux on System z, V5.20.
The Director Software Distribution Premium Edition will not be supported for IBM Systems Director Linux on System z, V6.1. Clients that want to create and distribute software packages to the systems on their network should consider enterprise management products such as those provided by Tivoli. Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software provides this capability today.
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IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager, V2.1 is designed to simplify the management of virtual environments across multiple virtualization technologies and physical platforms to support the growing requirements of a dynamic infrastructure. IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager V2.1 is a plug-in to IBM Systems Director V6.1, providing support to manage and automate the deployment of virtual appliances (images) from a centralized location. A virtual appliance is a group of one or more system images consisting of an operating systems instance and the software stack running on that operating system (for example, such as middleware and applications). A virtual appliance can be captured from a running system.
IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager for Linux on System z delivers support that manages the lifecycle, provisioning, and configuration of virtual appliances. A full-function graphical user interface and command-line interface is also designed to help improve productivity by allowing you to decide which virtual appliance management tasks to perform and which information you want to be displayed.
IBM Systems Director for Linux on System z and IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager for Linux on System z are designed to help reduce the total cost of ownership in your virtual environment by decreasing management costs, increasing asset utilization, and linking infrastructure performance to business goals. It is designed to provide simplified virtual appliance management for multiple IBM servers, including Linux on System z images for z/VM, which helps enable:
- More effective utilization of a client's virtual environment
- Centralized management of virtual appliance assets
- Faster time-to-solution in the event of a problem
- Higher return on investment
- An accelerated, more flexible response to changing business goals and strategies
- Support necessary for addressing the deployment management requirements of a dynamic infrastructure
For System z, management of virtual appliances focuses on Linux images on z/VM by capturing a Linux system image and storing a description of this image in a repository. Once captured, this Linux system image can later be deployed into a new or existing z/VM guest machine (known as a virtual server). Using IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager for Linux on System z, clients have the ability to clone Linux images in a manner similar to what was provided with the z/VM Center extension of IBM Director, V5.20.
IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager for Linux on System z is available on a per-managed server basis. Service and support is available for an annual fee. A 60-day trial version of IBM Systems Director VMControl Image Manager for Linux on System z will be available from the IBM Systems Director download site.
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