From the beginning of august 2008, IBM is shipping the BladeCenter Start Now Advisor together with the BladeCenter S.
The software (approx. 330MB) can also be downloaded seperately.
Update: A video is available @ http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3542028/9809187 to show you how it works.
Start Now Advisor Features:
VMware has always believed that virtualization needs to be ubiquitous. We want to accelerate the day that x86 servers, desktops and datacenters are fully virtualized. With the explosive growth of multi-core capacity, improvements in virtualization-aware hardware, and performance improvements in our virtualization software, we believe that no technical hurdles remain for 100% virtualization. Now we are removing any financial hurdles as well. ESXi is mature enough and easy enough to use that it can be the entry point into virtualization for those companies just taking their first steps with the technology.
The BladeCenter S can now be equiped with a second ethernet switch and if you add the 2/4 port Ethernet Expansion Card (CFFh), partnumber 44W4479, you can have up to 6 ethernet ports on each blade installed in the BladeCenter S. This means that the BladeCenter S can now be used in virtualised environments as well.
This 2/4 port Ethernet Expansion Card has been announced and will be GA at the end of this month (august 2008). The BladeCenter Interoperability Guide and BladeCenter Products and Technology Guide will be updated shortly.
Here are some examples on what is now possible:
Now with 3.5 Update 2, VMware supports the use of 10Gb Ethernet for iSCSI in a VMware Infrastructure environment.
Source: VMware Storage VMotion, Announcement VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2
IBM Dynamic System Analysis (DSA) is available as an Installable Edition and a Portable Edition and is a system information collection and analysis tool that is used by IBM xSeries(R) Service and Supportpersonnel to aid in the diagnosis of system problems.
The enhancements of version 2.11 (Build ID: FDPD17A, Revision 17) are:
DSA collects information about the following aspects of a system:
Just released for the IBM System x servers, the QLogic 2500 Series host bus adapters (HBAs) are different than other 8Gb HBAs due to their Dynamic Power Management and Cool HBA™ technologies -- two breakthrough innovations developed under the QLogic StarPower™ Green Initiative.
The QLogic 2500 includes the QLE2560 single-port (IBM #42D0501) and QLE2562 dual-port (IBM #42D0510) 8Gb HBA running at 5 GHz over a PCI Express bus. QLogic builds all its products with 4 key goals in mind - Efficiency, High Performance, Superior Scalability and Enhanced Reliability. The 2500 Series achieves these goals with the following:
We've got many requests pending on clear instructions for SMI-S provider combined with IBM Director 5.10/5.20.x.
As you expect we've sorted this out and created a procedure for succesfull monitoring of DS4700 DS3400 etc.
All DS series should be able to be monitored withing IBM Director so give it a try and share you experience with us.
Read more to see the instructions. Credits go to LSI for their excellent support.
VMware comes out with their Thinapp, but besides that an Application Virtualization comparison chart could not be found, so virtualfuture.info decided to make one. This comparison chart is an objective overview of features of the major Application Virtualization solutions. Some of the major advantages are:
Source: VirtualFuture.info and Application Virtualization comparison chart
This paper is for everyone interested in XEN® on IBM® server systems and its main focus lies on the technical details of an implementation. It is assumed that the reader interested in these details is somewhat familiar with Linux.
XEN is an open-source hypervisor available with the Linux® distributions from Red Hat® and Novell®. This document provides an overview of how XEN virtualization can be implemented on IBM System x® and BladeCenter® systems.
VMware published a whitepaper on their website with a look at some VMware Infrastructure Architectural Advantages. Yes, it is a coloured paper, but with this you can make the right choice between VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V of Xen.
What they have left out is what server to choose to run it on. We prefer a 4-socket or 8-socket server because of memory population and headroom. More on headroom in the Sizing Guide which can be found in the download section.
Source: BLOGS VMware
With IBM BladeCenter and POWER6 processor-based blades, customers can realize innovation with proven 6th generation POWER™ technology for enhanced performance, For i customers, IBM offers the i Edition Express for BladeCenter S which is an extremely attractive offering that combines a BladeCenter Chassis, a POWER blade, and IBM i at a price that is similar to an entry Power 520 server with i.
We found out in our lab that before you can ready start using this environment you HAVE-TO read the readme first. If you do not, you will spend a lot more time setting this up yourself. We have warned you !!
Source: IBM Power Systems Hardware and README First
IBM has released Virtualization Manager version 1.2.2. This latest version of VM, which is supported on IBM Director 5.20.2, Service Update 1, and Service Update 2, provides support for VMware ESX Server V3.5, and VMware VirtualCenter V2.5, as well as several important bug fixes.
Many of us have been anxiously anticipating VM support of VMware ESX Server V3.5 in order to leverage comprehensive virtualization management within their datacenter environment and compliment their overall management solution set within their IT shop.
Source: Virtualization Manager, Information Center
Nortel has announced an 1/10GB ethernet switch with 6x external 1G external uplinks AND 3x 10G ports in the standard bladecenter form factor so it fits in all BladeCenter chassis. This switch is also supported in MSIM.
Source: Blade Network Technologies, IBM Product Brief
The current FlexCache license, flex_cache, has been replaced by a new license, flexcache_nfs. The old license is supported for the Data ONTAP 7.2 release family, but is no longer supported for Data ONTAP 7.3 and later. See your sales representative Contact your IBM N series support representative to obtain and install the new flexcache_nfs license if it is not already present on your system.
Attention: If you upgrade to Data ONTAP 7.3 or later and the new license is not installed, you will not be able to access data in FlexCache volumes after the upgrade. As soon as you install the new license, the FlexCache data will become accessible.
The IBM Advanced Technical Support Team has published a document that illustrates the implementation details of the IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (BOFM).
BOFM is designed to help you manage growth and complexity by making it easy to manage I/O and network interconnects for up to 100 BladeCenter chassis - up to 1400 blade servers.
Source: IBM TechDocs
