IBM Power Hardware

Hi again :)

I am currently doing architecture related work on a solution that is based on IBM Power hardware and IBM software.

In order to shed some light on the situation, I was thinking to post a few lines on the advantages/disadvantages of IBM Power based hardware versus x86 hardware in general.

There are only three processors left in the market for mission-critical applications. The Intel x86 processor dominates mid-range and small servers, desktops, laptops and notebooks. The IBM mainframe zEC12 processor still dominates extreme workloads for data processing. And the IBM Power processor, which has taken over Unix workloads previously dominated by Sun, HP and other fallen Unix leaders.

For the general market, small business and departmental applications, the choice boils down to Intel x86 or Power.

Comparing the two using enterprise workloads will demonstrate a significant advantage for Power in data workloads such as databases, data warehouses, data transaction processing, data encryption/compression, and certainly in high-performance computing, which most in business think of as analytics.

The IBM Power hardware has an open architecture, while employing RISC based processors.  With Capacity on Demand, Hot-Node Add and Active Memory Expansion—Power Systems enterprise servers ensure you can keep your most important applications available, even as you add capacity to handle new business demands.  Power Systems are also optimized with the ability to securely run multiple applications on AIX, IBM i and Linux operating systems on a single server—so you can manage fewer systems with lower cost and higher utilization.

They are made for running Cloud workloads - the ideal Cloud infrastructure.  A couple of the most advantages delivered by Power systems:
- Exceptional reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) – and performance. In Power Systems mid-range and high-end systems, we see mean time between failures in the range of 70 to 100 years. This equates to 99.997 percent availability. Power Systems also have features to help manage virtual machine availability and elasticity such as Live Partition Mobility and dynamic resource allocation.
- Leadership virtualization. Power Systems with PowerVM have one of the industries most resilient and flexible hypervisors, supporting virtual machines (VMs) running in as small as one-twentieth of a core or up to 256 cores. PowerVM provides exceptional VM isolation. With the statistical multiplexing on the high-end systems, Power is optimized to run a large number of workloads per server with system utilization in the 70 to 80 percent range.

So what kind of clients are they aimed to?   The power systems are aimed at large enterprises, with stringent needs for reliability, uptime, processing and others.  Although in recent past, they have been also aimed to midsize clients.

In conclusion one could say that while the IBM Power systems are significantly more expensive than x86 based hardware, in the long run, the operational cost savings, as well as superior reliability, serviceability and reliability make them a great choice for enterprises.