X4LIVE

Menlo Park, CA, April 7, 2009 – Arista Networks today announced a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Pass-Through Card for the IBM BladeCenter H, addressing bandwidth intensive applications while alleviating both capital and operational costs in the data center.

As opposed to traditional blade switches, the Arista 10G Pass-Through Card enables a much simplified and ultra-low latency, truly non-blocking network design. Each server’s 10G NIC is "passed-through" to a rack-top switch without being switched or blocked and without requiring any network management at the IBM Bladecenter chassis level.

The non-blocking performance improves server utilization and consequently data center power efficiency while at the same time improving network stability and reducing operational costs.

The IBM System x® ToolsCenter is collection server management tools to help manage your IBM System x and BladeServer environment. ToolsCenter makes managing your server environment less complicated, more productive and cost-effective.

Tools like ServerGuide, ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit, UpdateXpress System Pack Installer, Advanced Settings Utility and IBM Dynamic Systems Analysis are all part of this ToolsCenter.

Source:  IBM ToolsCenter Web Portal, IBM ToolsCenter InfoCenter

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) replacing legacy BIOS is System x’s new interface between operating systems and platform firmware. UEFI provides a modern, well defined environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface improvements over legacy BIOS:

The ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit is a collection of system-configuration tools and installation scripts that you can use to deploy software to your IBM eServer or xSeries server in a repeatable, predictable manner. When used with IBM ServerGuide and IBMUpdateXpress, the ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit provides a total solution for deploying IBM eServer or xSeries servers in an unattended mode.

Version 2.1.02 Added support for the following additional systems:

IBM Systems Director Transition Manager for HP Systems Insight Manager is an IBM Systems Director plug-in. Using Transition Manager, you can discover systems that are being managed by HP Systems Insight Manager and smoothly make the transition to managing the systems in IBM Systems Director. Transitioned systems can be either IBM and non-IBM hardware. After the transition is complete, you can manage the systems using IBM Systems Director which can provide superior systems-management features for IBM hardware. Additionally, you can still manage the systems using HP Systems Insight Manager.

More information can be found HERE, Download

This redpaper provides a brief introduction to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Fibre Channel over Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (FCoCEE).

Short introduction taken from the redpaper:
It is a matter of fact that Fibre Channel (FC) is the prevalent technology standard in the Storage Area Network (SAN) data center environment. This has spawned a multitude of FC based solutions that have paved the way for high performance, high availability, and the highly efficient transport and management of data. Without going into any great historical depth, the arrival of FC did solve many of the problems that existed in the data center. These problems included distance, performance, bandwidth, and overhead issues. The manner in which FC is implemented and its inherent functionality is designed to mitigate against the loss of data, against network congestion, and at the same time provide a highly available and high performing network.

Source:  Redpaper Fibre Channel over Ethernet

It gives step by step procedures to build from scratch new deployment systems with TPM for OSD 7.1 and to migrate legacy RDM 4.40.1 data.
It covers both IBM Systems Director Edition (TPM for OSD - ISDE 7.1) that integrates with Director 6.1 and the standalone version (TPM for OSD 7.1).