IBM looks to Cut back Maintenance Costs and Up Reliability with Power9 Servers
IBM has taken a new leap in the market of compute-intensive processes with the introduction of two scales up Power9 servers. The company is looking to attract high-end customers who have an increasing need for computing resources to run deep learning, analytics, and in-memory databases.
The new E950 and E980 servers come with some software and hardware improvements coupled with increased memory capacity and speed. The new upgrades make the server more secure and reliable for cloud computing and also reduces the software and hardware maintenance costs.
IBM’s Bet on Crypto-Engines to Power Things Up
IBM has employed 24 crypto-engines as a part of its hardware upgrade that will enhance the uptime and security of the servers. The number of crypto-engines is more than double compared to the Power8 systems and comes with regulated power supply, intelligent storage controllers, and distributed system clocks that get activated if the main system clock malfunctions for some reason.
The combination of new upgrades enables the IBM Power9 series to achieve uptime of 99.9996%. The high uptime is crucial for processes and IT companies that carry out important activities of their business in the cloud, according to IBM officials.
The Focus on Cloud
President of Communications Network Architects, Frank Dzubeck, said that in the past IBM’s servers were not able to perform reliably in the cloud or internet environment and that was the reason many customers shifted from IBM. But now with the new servers, the cloud environment would not suffer anymore.
IBM also expressed the cost saving that their new hardware will be able to achieve. The E950, which is the lower-end model will produce savings to the amount of $200,000 over a period of three years. For the higher-end E980, savings could go up to $600,000 for the same period. IBM seems to be confident about its claim and is looking forward to bundling the maintenance charges of E950 and offer a much lower maintenance cost for the high-end E980 model.
IBM has also provided a range of software so that users find it easy to install and manage the cloud environment. The software offerings include Linux and IBM I partitions, a virtual server which can virtualize AIX’s I/O resources, VMware’s vRealize orchestration and management software, PowerVC Manager based on OpenStack to manage virtual images and provision workloads and Cloud Private range of development tools.
Principal analyst and president of Pund-IT, Charles King, said that it is important for users to be able to scale and have ease of management as they deliver profitability through the process. He added than IBM is looking forward to realize the value of cloud within the scope of their data centres. The new range of servers points to that direction only, according to King.
The high-end E980 comes with a 5U form factor while the lower-end E950 is a 4U form factor. Users will be able to choose from different configurations of the E950. The lower end of the series supports 32 cores while the higher end models go up to 48 cores. There are multiple configurations for the E980 too and can support 192 cores at the highest. The E980 comes with a memory capacity of 64 TB while the E950 can support up to 16 TB. Both the servers are compatible with IBM iOS, AIX and Linux. Existing users who have AIX licenses will be able to migrate to new systems without any charges.
IBM is trying to cut down on costs while improving productivity for its users, and the Power9 Servers is the right step in this regard.
