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The IBM® Hardware PRO Pack for Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Version 1.1 provides the ability to monitor alerts for the physical host resources in a virtualized environment.

Key Features Include:

• Provides health information for the physical servers hosting virtual machines while managing Hyper-V or Virtual Server environments with SCVMM
• Monitors the health of select hardware components on IBM System x and BladeCenter x86/x64 blade servers hosting the virtual environmentSupported components include physical processors, memory, hard disks, RAID controllers, cooling fans, power supplies, temperature and voltage.
• Provides advisory PRO tips in the event of existing or predictive hardware problems that warrant VMM administrative operations New in this version: Support for IBM System x3550 M2 (7946), x3650 M2 (7947), BladeCenter HS22 (7870). Support for MegaRAID controllers on supported IBM servers (IBM ServerProven websitehttp://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/serverproven/compat/us/indexsp.html).

As of november 21st 2009 the known problems of IBM Systems Director and their solutions are posted on the web.  Find out why something is not working or how to be able to do things with SD.

Before this website became available the information was published in RETAIN.

Source:  Systems Director TECHNOTES

IBM has created an account on facebook specially for IBM Systems Director.
Their mission statement: We want IBM Systems Director to help you manage your data center...to manage with ease...to virtualize with ease. We want this fan page to be a place for you to learn, socialize, and provide tips on how IBM Systems Director is making your systems management tasks easier.

Source:  Systems Director Facebook page

What is the fastest way for your customers to get the latest news on announcements, videos, webcasts and offers?
Tell them to Follow IBM System x and BladeCenter on Twitter!

Please inform your customers and colleagues about this new medium for sharing information @ibmsysxblade.

Source:  twitter.com/ibmsysxblade

With IBM® Systems Director Active Energy Manager™, an extension of IBM Systems Director, you can monitor and manage the power usage of systems. Originally designed to support IBM BladeCenter® and System x®, Active Energy Manager now supports the power management of additional IBM systems, including System z® mainframes and POWER6® processor-based systems, as well as storage devices using an intelligent Power Distribution Unit (PDU+).

This book introduces energy management concepts and technologies, and then provides a step-by-step guide to implementing and using Active Energy Manager version 4.1.1.

Source:  Implementing Active Energy Manager 4.1.1

The ServeRAID M5015 and ServeRAID M5014 SAS/SATA Controllers for IBM System x are the next-generation 6 Gbps SAS 2.0 RAID controllers. The adapters have two internal mini-SAS connectors to control up to 32 devices and support global and dedicated hot-spare drives.

The ServeRAID M5014 controller delivers a full RAID 6 Gbps SAS 2.0 solution, while the ServeRAID M5015 provides additional performance advantages of an extended cache and a standard battery backup unit. With the attachment of the ServeRAID M5000 Advanced Feature Key, the ServeRAID M1015 offers the option of RAID 6, RAID 60, and SED Encryption Key management.

Source:  ServeRAID M5014 and M5015 at-a-glance guide, ServeRAID Adapter Quick Reference Guide

IBM® Systems Director Network Control V1.1 software, a priced IBM Systems Director plug-in that provides network management integrated into the server and storage management capabilities of IBM Systems Director, is designed to help reduce the cost of managing physical and virtualized environments by using a single integrated management product.

The main features are:

• Converged Ethernet network device support (FCoCEE) via native support and vendor tools
• Integrated single sign-on launch of vendor-based device management tools
• Basic life cycle management of network switches

Processors have evolved to improve performance for virtualized environments, but what about I/O aspects? Discover one such I/O performance enhancement called device (or PCI) passthrough. This innovation improves performance of PCI devices using hardware support from Intel (VT-d) or AMD (IOMMU).

Source: IBM Developerworks