X4LIVE

The IBM® Storage Configuration Manager (SCM) is a system management application that enables you to use a Web browser to manage and configure IBM BladeCenter® devices and/or System x systems. 

The changelog of version 1.10.1 contains:

Symantec has announced the next version of the Altiris Deployment Solution. Version 6.9 of this  software helps reduce the cost of deploying and managing servers, desktops, notebooks and thin clients from a centralised location in your environment with an easy-to-use, automated deployment solution that offers OS deployment, configuration, PC “personality” migration and software deployment across hardware platforms and OS types, including Microsoft Windows Vista.

The new release of Altiris Deployment Solution:

• Makes deployment more intuitive and less error prone by expanding commonalities between physical and virtual deployments
• Provides enhanced console protected visibility
• Supports Windows Server 2008, WinPE 2.1 and New VMware ESX

Source: Altiris Deployment Solution and Altiris IBM alliance

The IBM Enhanced Role Based Security snap-in ("ldap snap-in") is a tool used to manage the configuration of role based objects on an Active Directory server. These objects are subsequently used by the BladeCenter Advanced Management Module (AMM) in order to provide authentication and authorization services to users. Role objects essentially determine the various levels of permissions associated with a user that has successfully authenticated to the AMM.

Source:  IBM Support

All three Cisco Catalyst Switch Modules for BladeCenter have the standard switch-bay form-factor. All three switches have fourteen 1Gb connections to the server blades. The 3012 and 3110G have four 1 Gb uplinks, while the 3110X has a single 10Gb uplink. The 3110G and 3110X switches feature advanced Layer 3 functions (IP Services) and IPv6 functions (Advanced IP Services) via optional software keys. With Cisco Catalyst Switch Modules 3110G and 3110X for IBM BladeCenter, Cisco introduces a technology called the Virtual Blade Switch (VBS).

In the changelog of the SSCT version 1.17.1 two new servers are mentioned.

• Added support for the following components: Added System x (x3100, x3610)

These servers have been announced and are only available in China.
If you are from china you can ask your local IBM representative for additional information.

On March 11th, IBM announced the new System x3450 with Intel 1600MHz Quad-Core Harpertown and Dual-Core Wolfdale processors. This new IBM System x3450 server is specially designed for HPC application workloads. The x3450 attributes its high performance to two key features: its Intel® Xeon® quad-core and dual-core processors with 1600 MHz front-side bus to speed I/O, and 16 Fully Buffered DIMMs for large memory addressability. 

Source:  IBM PLET and IBM.com and x3450 Visual Tour

Principled Technologies has posted the vConsolidate benchmark comparison on IBM and HP quad-core multiprocessor Intel processor-based servers (full report and one-page summary). They measured power and performance with Intel’s vConsolidate OEM version 1 workload using VMware ESX Server 3.5 on two servers: HP ProLiant DL580 G5 and IBM System x3850 M2.

Source: Principled Technologies

Remote Deployment Manager update is available. Version 4.40.1 can now be obtained from http://www.serversoftwaresubscription.com/ by customers who have a license/subscription of RDM.  This website provides activation and fulfillment services for IBM Subscription Services on behalf of IBM Corporation.

Some of the changes in RDM 4.40 Update 1 are:

• Security fixes
• Usability fixes
• Hardware support refresh
• ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit update