Power7 blades and upgraded Power servers can be used to manage demanding applications, including those in healthcare management, financial services and scientific research, that rely on processing an enormous number of concurrent transactions and data while analysing that information in real time. The systems can provide users with very high levels of server virtualisation and consolidation.
The 16-core, single-wide BladeCenter PS703 and 32-core, double-wide BladeCenter PS704 blade servers give clients an alternative to racks. The PS704 delivers 60% faster performance with twice the number of cores while using the same amount of space and energy as previous Power7 blades. The Power7 blades support extensive server consolidation with energy-efficient economics.
The Power 750 Express, for challenging analytics workloads, has a faster Power7 processor that is said to offer more than three times the performance of comparable 32-core servers, such as Oracle’s SPARC T3-2 server, and more than twice the performance of HP’s Integrity BL890c i2.
Also released is the Power 755 high-performance computing cluster node with 32 Power7 cores and a faster processor.
The Systems Director Management Console appliance allows data centre administrators to operate both Power servers and blades with a unified interface for physical and virtualised system resource management.
IBM is extending technology from the acquisition of Blade Network Technologies (BNT) across its portfolio of workload-optimised systems, including high-performance, top-of-rack BNT switches with VMready network virtualisation and BladeHarmony management software .
The BNT RackSwitch products will be closely integrated with IBM Power servers to support workloads such as cloud computing, financial services, Web 2.0, streaming video, medical and scientific research, and business analytics. The BNT switch is said to have demonstrated significant performance and energy-efficiency advantages over comparable switches.
Intelligent Cluster offerings include: platforms updated with the latest Intel Xeon processor E7 family; 10 Gb ethernet solutions that can enhance performance of HPC workloads by leveraging up to a claimed 11 times lower latency; and an InfiniBand solution that features an integrated ethernet gateway to eliminate the need for a separate ethernet switch to help optimise workloads such as high-frequency trading.
