IBM intros workload-optimised systems for data centre

ARMONK, USA: IBM announced workload-optimized systems for data centres. The offerings span IBM's systems portfolio, across chips, hardware and software.

The new systems include a new offering for zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX), IBM's systems design that allows workloads on mainframe servers and other select systems to share resources and be managed as a single, virtualized system; and Storage and System x products.

Also Read: Cloud data services to push data centre boom

zEnterprise System: The zBX has added support for IBM WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50 for zEnterprise.

The DataPower XI50z is a workload-optimized appliance, which as per the company helps data and applications on different servers to communicate regardless of the type of platform.

The company claims that when integrated with zBX, the DataPower XI50z can offer up to 23 times better price/performance compared to competitive systems. When integrated with zBX, it can be managed as a single system with in the zEnterprise System. The appliance complements other supported zBX systems, such as select POWER7 Blades and IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer.

Storage: IBM Storwize Rapid Application Storage (RAS) solution combines IBM's Storwize V7000 with management software (Tivoli Storage Productivity Center and Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager) and implementation services delivered by IBM or an IBM Business Partner.

IBM claims that the integrated offering , when compared to traditional storage offerings, can be implemented in half the time and delivers up to 90 percent reduction in downtime associated with backing up data for software such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Exchange.

System x: IBM also announced a new, ready-to-deploy, pre-configured eX5 Blade System for database applications, for the likes of big data.

System Networking: IBM is also announcing offerings from Blade Network Technologies (BNT), the company that IBM acquired in October 2010 that specializes in Ethernet switches and software that route data and transactions to and from servers, storage and networks.

The offerings include two top-of-rack Ethernet switches that will be closely integrated with IBM servers and storage to support dynamic workloads that require high-speed and low-latency performance, such as cloud computing, business analytics and high performance computing (HPC).