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A PDF file of the Performance Tuning and Scaling Guide for IBM Systems Director 6.2 and an HTML file that will link you to a sizing plug-in for the IBM Systems Workload Estimator has been made available on the IBM Support pages.

Source:     Performance Tuning and Scaling Guide for IBM Systems Director 6.2, IBM Systems Workload Estimator

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and describe key features of the IBM® System x® Server Firmware. The following IBM System x and BladeCenter® servers are the IBM x86 servers that include native UEFI support (as well as BIOS compatibility), as of the date of this document:

• IBM iDataPlex™ dx360 M2
• IBM BladeCenter HS22/HS22v
• IBM System x3200/3250 M3
• IBM System x3400/3500 M2-M3
• IBM System x3550/3650 M2-M3
• IBM System x3850 X5

IBM System x Server Firmware replaces the BIOS of previous-generation servers while maintaining full backward compatibility.

Source:  IBM Support - introducing UEFI-Compliant Firmware

IBM® Systems Director 6.2 is a platform-management foundation that streamlines the way you manage physical and virtual systems across a heterogeneous environment. By using industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies across IBM and non-IBM x86 platforms.

Through a single user interface, IBM Systems Director provides consistent views for viewing managed systems, determining how these systems relate to one another, and identifying their statuses, thus helping to correlate technical resources with business needs. A set of common tasks included with IBM Systems Director provides many of the core capabilities required for basic management, which means instant out-of-the-box business value. These common tasks include discovery, inventory, configuration, system health, monitoring, updates, event notification and automation across managed systems.

This document provides information on how to install and set up IBM Systems Director in a Windows environment. It shows how to use the install script, and also offers an example of a manual installation. There are step-by-step instructions with screen captures showing how to install IBM Systems Director 6.1.0 and how to update to the latest version.

Source:  Redbooks Wiki - SD Cookbook

VMware published the first results of hardware using the Intel 7500 processor.

With a score of 71.85 @ 49 tiles using VMmark v1.1.1 on a x3850 X5 with 4 sockets 32 total cores and 64 total threads this system way outperforms all other systems.

Pre-Sales Advisor is an enablement tool created for IBM Business Partners. Pre-Sales Advisor will help you produce quotations for a range of Servers, Storage and BladeCenters to send to your customers and your IBM Distributor.

Using Pre-Sales Advisor, you will be able to check the availability of stock and pricing in the Distribution Channel of the products you need.

Source:  IBM Partnerworld, Training Pre-Sales Advisor, Pre-Sales Advisor

Beginning this month new IBM servers have announced and they will feature Integrated Emulex 10GbE technology!
This technology will be integrated into models of eight enterprise-class and high-volume IBM server platforms, including the System x3650 M3, x3550 M3 and two IBM BladeCenter server platforms—including the HS22 and HS22V—as well as four new X5 systems.

The announced Emulex Integrated Virtual Fabric Adapters for IBM System x and IBM BladeCenter servers have a 2-port 10GB ethernet and comes in three formats: