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IBM Powervm Express Edition and IBM Management Edition for AIX Offerings Help Allocate Systems Resources to Where They Are Needed

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IBM Powervm Express Edition and IBM Management Edition for AIX Offerings Help Allocate Systems Resources to Where They Are Needed IBM United States Announcement 208-011, dated January 29, 2008 IBM PowerVM Express Edition and IBM Management Edition for AIX offerings help allocate systems resources to where they are needed Description .................................................3 At a glance Product positioning .................................... 5 Statement of direction ................................5 IBM PowerVM Express and IBM System p servers can help clients: Reference information ............................... 5 Offering Information ...................................6 • Consolidate servers Publications ............................................... 6 • Reduce server sprawl Technical information .................................6 • Simplify systems management Ordering information ..................................7 Improve business resiliency Terms and conditions .............................. 10 • Prices .......................................................11 • Potentially reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) • Enhance performance by automatically reacting to anticipated and unanticipated spikes in server demand • Reduce energy consumption • Increase business flexibility IBM Management Edition for AIX will provide the capability to: • Monitor and manage critical IT services and resources in a System p environment • Improve understanding of the System p configurations and their relationships to applications and business services • Collect and report on usage data on your System p platform Overview Virtualization can be found in a number of different forms on System p™ servers. All System p servers can utilize standard virtualization functions or logical partitioning technology by using either the Hardware Management Console (HMC) or the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM). Logical partitions (LPARs) allow clients to run separate workloads in different partitions on the same server, potentially lowering costs and improving energy efficiency. Partitions on POWER™ servers are designed to be shielded from each other to provide a high level of data security and increased application availability. Dynamic LPAR allows clients to dynamically allocate many system resources to application partitions without rebooting, simplifying overall systems administration and workload balancing, and enhancing availability. What's new • PowerVM Express Edition (PowerVM Express) is offered exclusively on the System p 550 and System p 520 Express servers and is designed for users looking for an introduction to more advanced virtualization features at a highly affordable price. With PowerVM Express, users can create up to three partitions on the server, leverage virtualized disk and optical devices, and even try out the IBM United States Announcement 208-011 IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 1 Shared Processor Pool. Also included with PowerVM Express Edition at no additional charge is the PowerVM Lx86 feature, which allows many 32-bit x86 Linux™ applications to easily install and run on System p and BladeCenter® JS21 or JS22. • IBM Management Edition for AIX® is an integrated systems management offering created specifically for the System p platform that provides these primary functions: – Monitoring of the health and availability of the System p platform. IBM Management Edition for AIX monitors the health and availability of System p servers, providing rich graphical views of the AIX, LPAR, central electronics complex (CEC), HMC, and VIOS resources in a single console, delivering robust monitoring and quick time to value. Management Edition for AIX includes out-of-the-box best practice solutions created by AIX and VIOS developers. These best practice solutions include predefined thresholds for alerting on key metrics, Expert Advice that provides an explanation of the alert and recommends potential actions to take to resolve the issue, and the ability to take resolution actions directly from the Tivoli® Enterprise Portal or set up automated actions. In addition, users have the ability to visualize the monitoring data in the Tivoli Enterprise™ Portal to determine the current state of the AIX, LPAR, CEC, HMC, and VIOS resources. – Discovery of configurations and relationships between System p service or application components. Management Edition for AIX provides details on what is in the environment from an operating system to the application topology — how those systems are configured and changing — and provides the ability to monitor configuration compliance. For the System p environment, it provides operating system configuration, physical relationships between operating systems and network switches, and logical relationships between application components. This information is created and maintained using an agentless approach and visualized through an intuitive GUI. The application maps are comprehensive and include complete run-time dependencies, deep configuration values, and accurate change history. – Usage accounting of System p IT resources. Management Edition for AIX facilitates the process of collecting usage information on System p servers to determine the business units, departments, or even individual users consuming these System p resources. In addition, the Management Edition for AIX provides "out-of-the-box" collection of usage information for System p virtualized environments. This allows you to quickly and easily report resource usage for any System p server. Key prerequisites PowerVM Express requires a System p 550 or System p 520 server as well as AIX 5.3, or later, or Linux on POWER. PowerVM Lx86 feature is supported on the following Linux operating systems: • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for POWER • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 for POWER • Red Hat Enterprise 4 for POWER It is not supported on the RHEL 5 for Red Hat Enterprise 5. Management Edition for AIX: • AIX 5.3 on System p (POWER5™ and POWER6™) • Windows® Server 2000 or 2003 • Either Crystal Reports XI Developer (or Server Edition) or Microsoft® Reporting Services 2000 or 2005 (These products are not available from IBM.) • Reporting database (one of the following): – Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or 2005 – Oracle 9 or 10 • IIS for Web reporting • Internet Explorer All statements regarding IBM's plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal IBM United States Announcement 208-011 IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 2 without notice. Planned availability dates • February 8, 2008, for PowerVM Express • February 29, 2008, for Management Edition for AIX Description Primary features and benefits of Management Edition for AIX include: • Monitoring of the health and status of the System p platform • Discovery of configurations and relationships between System p service or application components • Usage accounting of System p IT resources Monitoring of the health and status of the System p platform Management Edition for AIX monitoring is the foundation for managing business-critical hardware and software, including operating systems, databases, and applications. Management Edition for AIX monitoring capabilities put complex customization of powerful monitoring tools into the hands of more operators, requiring significantly less programmer-like skills and training to successfully deploy the product. • Feature/function: View your entire System p enterprise from one screen. Benefit: Management Edition for AIX Monitoring solutions are intended to show you at a glance, with the Tivoli Enterprise Portal component, how well your entire System p enterprise is performing as a whole, presenting the data that's important to you in an easy-to-use, customizable browser-based interface. Compile and analyze information from disparate applications and other underlying resources on which the applications depend so you can make management decisions more quickly, efficiently, and proactively. • Feature/function: Prioritize using complex alerts. Benefit: Alerts help you to automatically track the status of what matters most and to help efficiently manage an increasingly complex IT environment. Receive alerts only when there is a problem, via e-mail, pager, cell phone, or PDA. • Feature/Function: Isolate and resolve faults quickly. Benefit: Management Edition for AIX Monitoring solutions detect runaway processes; resource consumption by workload, network, and disk information; and system logs — all in real time. Take Action resolves recurring problems by running existing scripts or scripts created from provided templates, helping you to focus on other critical areas. • Feature/function: Customize your monitoring functions. Benefit: Alerts go beyond setting a simple threshold. The built-in situation editor lets you create complex thresholds, situations, and alerts without writing a single line of code. The capability allows you to graphically combine numerous metrics to eliminate false alerts, allowing you to more intelligently manage your distributed environment. Workspaces can be customized with dynamic graphical charts and tables that help to instantly place the situation in perspective. • Feature/function: Get an expert opinion. Benefit: Expert Advice offers suggestions on how to resolve problems when they occur. In addition to the product-provided situations, you can edit Expert Advice to include solutions specific to your environment and preserve that knowledge for the entire staff. • Feature/function: Integrate all systems and applications in the complex System p IT environment. Benefit: Management
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