IBM Enhances Powervm to Boost the Flexibility and Security of Your IBM Power Systems Servers
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IBM Canada Ltd. Software Announcement A08-1506, dated October 7, 2008 IBM enhances PowerVM to boost the flexibility and security of your IBM Power Systems servers Table of contents 2 Key prerequisites 5 Offering Information 2 Planned availability date 5 Publications 2 Description 5 Technical information 4 Statement of direction 6 Ordering information 4 Reference information 7 Terms and conditions 4 Program number 8 Prices 5 IBM System Planning Tool 9 Order now At a glance tm IBM® PowerVM technology offerings can boost overall system flexibility through virtualization technologies that can reallocate system resources to where they are needed and tap into additional resources on demand. Power Systems servers running PowerVM technology offerings can help clients: • Consolidate servers • Reduce server sprawl • Simplify systems management • Improve business resiliency • Potentially reduce total cost of ownership (TOC) • Enhance performance by automatically reacting to anticipated and unanticipated spikes in server demand • Potentially reduce energy consumption • Increase business flexibility Overview IBM PowerVM technology offerings deliver industrial-strength virtualization for AIX, IBM i, tm and Linux® environments on IBM POWER processor-based systems. Power Systems servers coupled with PowerVM technology are designed to help consolidate and simplify IT environments. Key capabilities include: • Improved server utilization and shared I/O resources to help reduce total cost of ownership and make better use of IT assets • Improved business responsiveness and operational speed by dynamically reallocating resources to applications as needed to better match changing business cycles or handle unexpected surge in demand • Simplified IT infrastructure management by making workloads independent of hardware resources, thereby enabling clients to make business-driven policies to deliver resources based on time, cost, and service-level requirements PowerVM technology is enhanced with support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), virtual tape, enhancements to Live Partition Mobility support, and enhancements to PowerVM Lx86. IBM Canada Ltd. Software Announcement IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 1 A08-1506 Key prerequisites tm tm PowerVM Editions require a Power Systems server with an IBM POWER5 or POWER6 processor running an AIX®, IBM i, or Linux operating system. Live Partition Mobility requires systems with a POWER6 processor running AIX or Linux operating systems and PowerVM Enterprise Edition. Planned availability date • October 17, 2008, for AME SPO feature 2209 • October 31, 2008, for PowerVM Lx86 • November 14, 2008, for PowerVM enhancements Description N Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) provides direct access to Fiber Channel adapters from multiple client partitions, simplifying the management of Fibre Channel SAN environments. NPIV support is included with PowerVM Express, Standard, and Enterprise Edition and supports AIX 5.3 and AIX 6.1 partitions on selected POWER6 processor-based servers Power 520, 550, 560, and 570, with an 8 GB Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA). NPIV is a standardized method for virtualizing a physical Fibre Channel port. An NPIV-capable Fibre Channel HBA can have multiple N_Ports, each with a unique identity. NPIV coupled with the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) adapter sharing capabilities allow a physical Fibre Channel HBA to be shared across multiple guest operating systems. The PowerVM NPIV implementation enables logical partitions (LPARs) to have virtual Fibre Channel HBAs, each with a dedicated worldwide port name. Each virtual Fibre Channel HBA has a unique SAN identity similar to that of a dedicated physical HBA. NPIV offers many benefits: • Ease-of-use allowing storage administrators to use existing tools for storage management (including SAN managers, copy services, and backup and restore) • Simplified storage provisioning using standard zoning and LUN masking techniques • Physical and virtual device compatibility • Access to SAN devices including tape libraries • Distributed solutions that depend on SCSI heuristics SCSI-2 (Reserve/Release and SCSI3 Persistent Reserve) PowerVM partitions support both physical and virtual I/O enabling dynamic heterogeneous multiple path I/O. With this support, partitions can have paths to a storage device that includes both physical (that is, dedicated FC adapters) and virtual (that is, NPIV) adapters. This multiple path support is a key enhancement for Live Partition Mobility, which requires that a partition use virtual I/O resources exclusively. With this enhancement, a partition can be dynamically changed from using physical adapters to using only virtual (that is, NPIV) resources, leaving the partition ready for Live Partition Mobility without an outage. Another benefit of this multiple path support is efficient redundancy using shared resources. Typically, redundancy has been achieved with dedicated physical I/O resources in each partition (that is, two or more HBAs, cables, or switch ports). Although NPIV is functionally comparable to a physical Fibre Channel HBAs, some may prefer to use physical paths as the primary access to storage. Multiple path support allows a configuration to use dedicated resources as the primary paths, and virtual (that is, NPIV) paths as the failover paths. The failover paths can be sharing adapter/ cable/switch ports with other failover paths for other partitions . Multiple path I/O is supported with Live Partition Mobility environments with AIX 5.3 and AIX 6.1 partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers. IBM Canada Ltd. Software Announcement IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 2 A08-1506 PowerVM Live Partition Mobility is supported in environments with two Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs) supporting larger and more flexible configurations. Partitions may be migrated between systems that are managed by two different HMCs. This support is provided for AIX 5.3, AIX 6.1, and Linux partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers. PowerVM has two virtualization methods for using tape devices on POWER6 processor- based servers, simplifying backup and restore operations. Both methods are supported with PowerVM Express, Standard, or Enterprise Edition and supports AIX 5.3 and AIX 6.1 partitions on POWER6 processor-based servers. • NPIV enables PowerVM LPARs to access SAN tape libraries using shared physical HBA resources. • Virtual tape support allows serial sharing of selected SAS tape devices PowerVM VIOS monitoring has been enhanced with new function: • topasrec tool: A new tool named topasrec is introduced to do topas or nmon style recordings. This tool supersedes the functionality of xmwlm. • LVM / volume group monitoring monitors Logical Volume and Volume Group statistics. • Disk / multipath I/O monitoring monitors Disk Service Time metrics along with its Path statistics in a single screen. • Adapter statistics monitors an adapter's throughput statistics and also displays associated disk service time metrics. • VIOS Server / Client I/O throughput monitoring provides screen panels to view VIOS Server / Client throughput summary and also Server / Client association and also provides screen panels to view Host Adapter / Target Device / Client Device statistics with its association. • Detailed network adapter monitoring provides detailed network statistics and Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) statistics along with the association of physical network adapters. For more information, visit http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/virtualization/ index.html The new PowerVM Lx86 V1.3 offers the potential to improve the performance of certain 1 32-bit x86 Linux applications enabled with PowerVM Lx86 compared to prior versions, particularly on POWER6 processor-based systems. With additional POWER6 server support, PowerVM Lx86 V1.3 is now designed to support the installation and running of most 32- bit x86 Linux applications on IBM Power 520, 550, 560, 570, and 595 server platforms, and tm IBM BladeCenter® JS21, JS22, JS12, and System p servers with POWER6, POWER5+ , or POWER5 processors. With new operating system support, PowerVM Lx86 V1.3 now supports SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 Service Pack 4 for POWER, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2 for POWER, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 7 for POWER. PowerVM Lx86 V1.3 offers the following additional enhancements: • Enhanced PowerVM Lx86 installer supports archiving the previously installed environment for backup or migration to other systems. • Automate installation for non-interactive installation. • Automate installation from an archive. • Support installation using the IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux. • SELinux is supported by PowerVM Lx86 when running on RHEL. • Enhancements to GDB for improved debugging of x86 applications. The IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux provides a set of tools that greatly simplifies the installation and management of Linux on IBM POWER processor-based servers. The IBM Installation Toolkit for Linux, V3.1 has been enhanced to include the installation of PowerVM Lx86 V1.3. IBM Canada Ltd. Software Announcement IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation 3 A08-1506 The x86 command line debugging tools gdb, strace, and ltrace are supported within a VxE. It is possible to debug an x86 application from within a translated x86 gdb session. It is also possible to attach a translated x86 gdb to a running x86 process. PowerVM Lx86 is offered