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This ESG Lab report presents the results of a mixed application performance benchmark which was designed to assess the real-world performance capabilities of a SAN-attached IBM System Storage DS5020 Express/DS3950 Express storage, IBM BladeCenter HS22 servers and VMware vSphere software deployed in a highly virtualized, consolidated data center.

Source: ESG and IBM System Storage DS5020/DS3950 Express and IBM BladeCenter HS22.

The QLogic Virtual Fabric Extension Module is another example of how IBM has been at the forefront of offering new technology to clients. IBM was among the first to deliver Fibre Channel over Ethernet across System x and BladeCenter and this new module takes this a step further by offering clients I/O convergence inside the chassis.

Clients using the BNT Virtual Fabric 10 Gb Switch Module for their LAN traffic can now combine it with this module and a Converged Network Adapter such as the QLogic 2-port 10 Gb CNA to converge their LAN and SAN on a single network. The QLogic Virtual Fabric Extension Module offers six ports of 8 Gb Fibre Channel connectivity, without the need for separate Fibre Channel expansion cards in the BladeCenter servers.

Source:  REDBOOKS: Qlogic Virtual Fabric Extension Module

IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (BOFM) is a tool for simplifying deployment, failover, and repurposing of blade servers. BOFM performs these tasks by controlling the assignment of physical Ethernet MAC and Fibre Channel WWN addresses for the integrated Ethernet interfaces and I/O expansion cards in each blade.

IBM® Systems Director Active Energy Manager is an IBM Systems Director plug-in. Use Active Energy Manager to monitor and manage the power and cooling needs of IBM servers and BladeCenter® systems. Non-IBM systems can also be monitored using metering products, such as power distribution units (PDU), sensors, and integration with facility software.

Hint on upgrading from AEM 4.1.x.x to 4.2: If you have IBM Active Energy Manager v4.1.1.1 on your IBM Systems Director Server and you upgrade the Management server to 6.1.2.1 and AEM 4.1.1.2 it will notify you that you require to install the latest release of Active Energy Manager - Note it will also provide you the link to download this release http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/management/director/plugins/actengmgr/

Source:  IBM Active Energy Manager 4.2 Features, IBM Active Energy Manager 4.2 DOWNLOAD, IBM Active Energy Manager 4.2 InfoCenter

IBM Systems Director VMControl is a cross-platform suite of products that assists you in rapidly deploying virtual appliances to create virtual servers that are configured with the operating system and software applications that you want. It also enables you to group resources into system pools, which enable you to centrally manage and control the different workloads in your environment.

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