IBM: We Will Change Economics of UNIX

Drawing on its 40 plus years of experience in mainframe computing, IBM is vowing to change the economics of UNIX computing forever. Borrowing some tricks proven in the world of mainframes, Big Blue claims that its eServer p5 systems will provide high utilization and performance, increased flexibility, and a lower total cost of ownership.

The eServer p5 product line comes equipped with Power 5 microprocessor, which is enhanced by the Micro-Partitioning technology of IBM's Virtualization Engine. BetaNews learned of IBM's strategic direction in April when it first beta tested its Virtualization Engine software.

According to IBM, there is a chasm between mainframe performance and UNIX-based systems where the former suffers from a lack of efficiency and utilizes somewhere between 10 to 20 percent processing power.

To address this discrepancy, IBM developed the Virtualization Engine's Micro-Partitioning to salvage unused processing power in a grid-like manner so that customers can acquire more bang for the buck with up to ten partition per processor. This, IBM boasts, increases system utilization up to 50 to 60 percent in its labs.

CPU partitions look like a completely independent servers to applications, but are fault-isolated and security-protected from the others.

"HP and Sun cannot do this," said IBM's Jim McGaughn, Director of eServer Strategy for IBM Systems Group, in reference to segmenting an individual processor into partitions. "There is no longer a relationship between a storage partition and processors."

Sun's soon to be released Solaris 10 update follows a similar tact in embracing virtualization, but differs from IBM in a one critical way. N1 Grid containers divide a single system into up to 4000 different partitions per copy of Solaris. Processing power is then divvied up on a machine basis.

"The containers approach is fundamentally more "lightweight" in that they run under a single copy of the operating system as opposed to the one OS-per-partition approach taken by IBM's LPARs (and Sun's own Dynamic System Domains)," commented Gordon Haff, a Senior Analyst and IT Advisor with Illuminata.

Haff continued to question Sun's model for virtualization, stating, "Sun has yet to demonstrate that Containers are effectively isolated from each other - which, after all, is the main purpose of partitions in the first place."

One real-world example provided by IBM's McGaughn of Micro-Partitioning in action is the case of a firewall not needing an entire processor allocated to it in order to function properly. McGaughh pointed out that fine tuning services like firewalls so that they work from a single CPU partition rather than a single CPU can yield up to a three fold reduction in the cost of purchasing equipment. IBM refers to this process of fine tuning as "granular matching."

IBM says that the end result may be a 30 to 40 percent lower TCO – hence its claims about changing the economics of UNIX computing.

In addition to advancing virtualization technology, IBM claims the crown for having what it deems to be the world's most powerful processor. "Power 5 is between 2-4 times faster than HP's PA-RISC, 2 times faster than Sun's UltraSPARC, and 1.5 to 2 times as fast as Intel Itanium," remarked IBM's McGaughn.

Features of the 64-bit Power 5 processor increase performance by up to 40 percent over its Power 4 predecessor due in large part to IBM's simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) - a process where each chip tackles two threads as opposed to one. As a result, each Power 5 chip appears to software applications as a four-way symmetric multiprocessing unit.

The Power 5 also incorporates IBM's dynamic power management technology. IBM's power management implementation acts as a traffic controller; directing energy where it is needed without the performance caused by yielding frequency.

Applications running on IBM's AIX 5.3 will realize the benefits that Power 5's SMT enables -- due to binary compatibility -- and require no recompilation if developed in the AIX 5.1-5.2 programming environment. However, customers can also choose to run Linux, which the eServer p5 simultaneously supports even when AIX is in use.

On the storage front, the eServer line's microprocessor virtualization and performance are buttressed by what IBM refers to as "abstract disk partitioning."

The Virtualization Engine virtualizes and centralizes storage so that business information can extend its way across heterogeneous storage devices. Applications and services stored on these devices are then assigned to processor partitions by granular matching. This component of the Virtualization Engine utilizes IBM's SAN Volume Controller and the SAN File System.

IBM provides Tivoli provisioning software to replicate images and systems rapidly.

The new eServer p5 line includes models 520, 550 and 570. The IBM eServer p5-520 system has a starting price of $12,920; the eServer p5-550 has a starting price of $22,100; and the IBM eServer p5-570 has a starting price of $25,928.

The eServer p5 series will be made available on August 31 through IBM Worldwide Sales and Distribution and IBM Business Partners. IBM is currently accepting orders and offering hands on experience at its benchmark facilities.