'Why Power 7R2 server is better than Intel or VMware's'

BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM is very bullish about its new Power 7R2 servers, targeting x86 in Linux market and sees a point why the x86 users should migrate to their's. It says this plug and play box has been specifically engineered for lower end of the segment that predominantly runs on Linux and is catered by x86, and VMware.

Viswanath Ramaswamy, director, Power Systems, IBM Systems & Technology Group, India South Asia in an interview with Srinivas Rasoor and Deepa Damodaran of CIOL talks about it and more. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is the new Power 7R2 server on Linux all about?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: While the Power processors have been there for many years, this is a new Linux offering on Power.

We are looking at three primary segments, big data analytics, industry applications and open source infrastructure, which are primarily catered by x86 Linux and VMware kind of environments.

In industry applications, we are looking at telecom ISVs or VAS providers, finance, micro-finance, training solution healthcare applications etc.

There are many clients who are deploying or have deployed Open Source applications or services on Linux infrastructure, such as Apache, MySQL, JBoss or Tom Cat. Traditionally, they have been running on multiple discreet servers or virtualised ones on VMware

Power 7 will be a cost effective preposition to run entire open source infrastructure on Linux since it will provide them ease of management as it has only one layer of management. The virtualizaton layer, Power VM, is built into the server itself and is robust than VMware's Vsphere5.

You can create up to ten virtual machines per core in Power 7, compared to three or four in a VMware environment. It is going to come with two sockets, and eight cores, each capable of creating 160-260 VMs.

Unlike when you used virtualization software, operating system, x86 servers separately, and then integrated and fine tuned, this will help in getting the system up and running within hours as compared to weeks in other solutions.

With regards to big data analytics, we are targeting customers who are looking at large in-memory data like Hadoop technologies or IBM Infosphere. While this particular area is only starting to grow now, we do see huge potential coming from small and medium customer segments (SMB).

We want to come down to the lower rung, where customers are looking for an affordable, cost effective and robust server.

SAP is a popular application among SMBs and they tend to go with x86 Linux or Microsoft platform.

Since they would not like to risk running an SAP on something which is not really robust, Power Linux can come into help as it delivers the SAP benchmark, and the box can take up to 500 users.

This new server product will beat the performance of x86 server. It has a more robust engine than that of VMware's, or any other non-Unix operating system.

From the total cost of acquisition perspective the entire stack will be 33 per cent lower than an x86 offering from Intel or AMD.

CIOL: IBM and open source relationship goes back to late 90s. So why is IBM thinking of a complete Linux box now?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: Linux has always been on Power. Power systems can run all the operating systems (OS), except Microsoft.

This plug and play box has been specifically engineered for lower end of the segment that predominantly runs on Linux and is catered by x86, and Vmware.

We are providing three years support on the entire stack, i.e, servers, OS, and Power VM. Customers can save on software licensing also.

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CIOL: Why is IBM making this move from Unix to Linux platform?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: We are not moving away from Unix to Linux. Our flagship and lead brands continue to be AIX and accounts for the majority of our business.

This offering leverages on our hardware technology on Linux and caters to a particular market.

There is only one box and we are not coming out with a family of products. It has one server; 7R2, one configuration and two speeds of processor, i.e two sockets, 16 cores, with 3.3 GHz or 3.5 GHz speed and a 2U rack.

We are targeting mid market, those who run open source applications and could be even large customers, forms of x86 servers. all new SAP applications, which are coming up for smaller customers like 50-100 users, ISVs where they need better performance in IO.

CIOL: Why should businesses which are already running x86 Linux move on to a new platform?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: With regards to telecom VAS providers, their applications today run on Linux x86, where at the most you can put two or three cards in the PCI that is available. The IO new box that will be soon announced from IBM can take up two IO draws and more PCI slots.

So, if an ISV is looking at buying 18 cards, he/she has to buy six Intel servers, where with one IO drawer you can house up to 10 cards. Whereas, with our solution you can do the same with one server.

Most of these ISVs would be looking out for means to crash down the density of servers, because denser the server the more you save on the rack space.

Utilisation levels of the same application on Power 7 can peak up to 80-90 per cent as against an Intel server, where average utilization is not more than 20-25 per cent.

CIOL: However, won't companies look at utilising existing environment to the maximum than moving on to a new one, however compelling it is?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: In large enterprises, the existing servers could be already three-six years old. Technology obsolescence in an x86 stack fast. So the investments made on the first year will be almost obsolete by the end of the second year itself.

So utilisation levels are low and upgradation becomes all the more expensive. It makes sense for them to go for a product whose lifecycle is much longer and utilisation levels are higher.

Supercomputer Watson is built on power 7 servers, and runs on SUSE Linux. We are looking at customising it for applications which can be put into commercial business use, such as healthcare, financial trading, on BFSI.

On Power 7 we have never lost any customer, otherwise we would not have grown quarter after quarter. We have customers who are migrating from competing platforms to Power on AIX, instead.

CIOL: Are enterprises today comfortable in putting mission critical application on an open source or Linux kind of environment?

Viswanath Ramaswamy: Mission critical is a very relative term. While a hospital management solution is the lifeline of hospital, SAP applications is the lifeline for an automobile company, so are core banking apps for banks.

When it comes to mission critical applications, customers go for a stable environment or ecosystem, not just from the hardware perspective, but also with regards to operating system, middleware application and database.

It does not make sense if you have the best of the servers in the world, but the weakest of the middleware, or operating system, or database, which does not have a robust roadmap.

We have about 41 per cent share in the market in FY 11 according to IDC fourth quarter tracker, since hardware, operating system and middleware are powerful, and we have a roadmap for the database on the OS.