On Thursday 22 July 2010, IBM announced not just their latest mainframe – the zEnterprise – but also a roadmap of how data centres should be – unified, in a single box, and controlled by the best equipped platform in that box. Once code-named Gryphon (you know, the mythical creature with an eagle’s head and lion’s body), IBM’s new hybrid machine (although in the UK you might hear it referred to as a coalition!) brings together the latest mainframe technology with POWER7 and x86 IBM blade systems, giving potential users z/OS, AIX, and Linux all on the one box. And all this is controlled from the mainframe console by the new Unified Resource Manager. You might like to think of this new mainframe as a virtualization hub that manages other workloads in the data centre. Three platforms in one box.
IBM’s view is that data centres are running more than one lot of hardware, and sites are experiencing problems with space for the hardware, keeping control of these different systems, and even communicating between them – so integrating them seems like the obvious answer. And that’s what they’ve done.
But more has come out of the $1.5 billion spent on research and development. The zEnterprise 196 (IBM's name for the two-rack mainframe) includes 96 5.2GHz (up from 4.4GHz on the z10) quad processors (80 of which are used by the client, and the rest are used by the machine itself) and up to 3TB of memory (double the z10s). The new microprocessors offer 100 new mainframe machine code instructions.
In terms of performance, the zEnterprise can handle 50 billion instructions per second, providing a 40-60% performance increase over the z10 without using any more power. A water cooling option, could help reduce energy consumption by up to 12 percent by removing air heat. It also includes the first implementation of RAID memory, which is like RAID for disks, and could be used to increase uptime to beyond the 99.999 availability of current mainframe technology.
The zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) operates as a tightly-coupled extension to the mainframe through a high-performance private network. The users then add POWER7 or System x blades to four racks. IBM says that POWER7 blades will be available by the end of this year, with System x blades scheduled to ship in the first half of 2011. The new Unified Resource Manager will allow users to install, monitor, manage, optimize, diagnose, and service resources and workloads from a single console across the entire infrastructure.
The new machine includes a DB2 accelerator, called the Smart Analytics Optimzer, which is able to routes database queries either to the mainframe DB2 system or a specialist blade server optimized for smart analytics. IBM estimates that complex database queries can experience up to a ten-fold performance improvement in this environment.
Can you afford it? IBM suggests using zEnterprise will reduce cost of ownership by 55% – but didn’t disclose the actual price. They did say that its price relative to capacity would be lower than for the z10!
Showing posts with label Smart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smart. Show all posts
Friday, 23 July 2010
Sunday, 6 December 2009
IBM launches London Analytics Solution Centre
I was invited to Southbank for IBM’s launch of its London-based Analytics Solution Centre – joining six other similar centres across the globe. The morning session included an introduction by Carolyn Taylor, and presentations by Brendan Riley (IBM’s head honcho in the UK), Lord Peter Mandelson (who spoke very well), and Cambridge University’s Professor Andy Neely. After a short Q&A we were shown some very interesting demos.
So what are these Analytics Solution Centres? We were told that the centres will help IBM apply its advanced analytics expertise to the complex business challenges facing its clients. You’re perhaps no clearer after I’ve just given the official answer. So let me try to explain in another way...
They were suggesting that there are lots of little bits of information floating around that could be tied together because this bigger picture would then help organizations make better decisions. An example we saw on video was of traffic flow. How it would theoretically be possible to measure the movement made by people’s mobile phones to measure the actual flow of traffic along busy streets. Using this information, faster alternative routing information could then be sent to, perhaps, the sat navs in the cars. That way, everyone would arrive at their destinations faster.
Another example that was demo’d was about flooding in Galway Bay. Previously, the local harbour master might have decided that a particular combination of rainy weather, winds, and high tides put the town at risk of flooding. Now, sensors in buoys are linked to other information to come up with a much better picture of when flooding might occur. It also links into other systems measuring water quality. And further system links local fish restaurants with local fisherman, who can say what fish they are catching, and the restaurant can put those fish on their menu for that evening!
We also saw the ORX (Operational Riskdata eXchange Association) system – which is used to help members quantify risk exposure. It was something banks needed following the Basel II accord. The banks’ risk information is securely and anonymously exchanged, and the banks are from 18 different countries. The consequence of this initiative is that banks now have a much better understanding of their exposure to potentially damaging operational risk.
Andy Neely stressed the need for getting the organization architecture right. He suggested that getting IT right saw an 8% improvement, and getting the organization right also saw an 8% improvement. However, getting them both right at the same time led to a 34% improvement!
The motto of the presentation, if I might call it that, was “predict and act”. The suggestion was that currently organizations tended to sense something was going on and then respond.
The Analytics Solution Centre in London will comprise around 400 consultants, software specialists, and mathematicians, and will include recent graduates. This number will increase as business increases.
Other Analytics Solution Centres can be found in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, Tokyo, New York, and Washington DC.
The whole thing looks very exciting and an area destined to grow.
On a completely unrelated matter... If you’re on Facebook, why not become a fan of my company, iTech-Ed Ltd. Click on the link - http://tiny.cc/Q09yi - and click the fan button. And if you want to follow my tweets, it’s twitter.com/t_eddolls.
So what are these Analytics Solution Centres? We were told that the centres will help IBM apply its advanced analytics expertise to the complex business challenges facing its clients. You’re perhaps no clearer after I’ve just given the official answer. So let me try to explain in another way...
They were suggesting that there are lots of little bits of information floating around that could be tied together because this bigger picture would then help organizations make better decisions. An example we saw on video was of traffic flow. How it would theoretically be possible to measure the movement made by people’s mobile phones to measure the actual flow of traffic along busy streets. Using this information, faster alternative routing information could then be sent to, perhaps, the sat navs in the cars. That way, everyone would arrive at their destinations faster.
Another example that was demo’d was about flooding in Galway Bay. Previously, the local harbour master might have decided that a particular combination of rainy weather, winds, and high tides put the town at risk of flooding. Now, sensors in buoys are linked to other information to come up with a much better picture of when flooding might occur. It also links into other systems measuring water quality. And further system links local fish restaurants with local fisherman, who can say what fish they are catching, and the restaurant can put those fish on their menu for that evening!
We also saw the ORX (Operational Riskdata eXchange Association) system – which is used to help members quantify risk exposure. It was something banks needed following the Basel II accord. The banks’ risk information is securely and anonymously exchanged, and the banks are from 18 different countries. The consequence of this initiative is that banks now have a much better understanding of their exposure to potentially damaging operational risk.
Andy Neely stressed the need for getting the organization architecture right. He suggested that getting IT right saw an 8% improvement, and getting the organization right also saw an 8% improvement. However, getting them both right at the same time led to a 34% improvement!
The motto of the presentation, if I might call it that, was “predict and act”. The suggestion was that currently organizations tended to sense something was going on and then respond.
The Analytics Solution Centre in London will comprise around 400 consultants, software specialists, and mathematicians, and will include recent graduates. This number will increase as business increases.
Other Analytics Solution Centres can be found in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, Tokyo, New York, and Washington DC.
The whole thing looks very exciting and an area destined to grow.
On a completely unrelated matter... If you’re on Facebook, why not become a fan of my company, iTech-Ed Ltd. Click on the link - http://tiny.cc/Q09yi - and click the fan button. And if you want to follow my tweets, it’s twitter.com/t_eddolls.
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