X4LIVE

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:

• From iSCSI SANs to other iSCSI SANs
• From iSCSI SANs to FibreChannel SANs
  
• From FibreChannel SANs to iSCSI SANs

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:

• New System Support
• Windows Server 2008 32bit and 64bit Support on Machine Type 8853, 1885, 7973, 7975, 7977, 7978, 7979, 4362, 4363, 4347, 8863, 8864, 7141, 7144, 4192, 4367, 4190, 4191, 4194.

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:

• Migrate to new operating systems without upgrading or replacing legacy applications.
• Lock down corporate endpoints by running applications in user mode without locking out users.
• Minimize application conflicts and regression testing.
• Replicate your virtualized applications like any other enterprise data to maintain an instant-on fail-over plan for your applications.

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