IBM Power Systems working with VMWare!

Being a supporter of RISC based systems, lately POWER8, I am kind of use to the fact that there are two worlds, that of Intel X86/64 and the "other" systems. 

Usually the "other" systems  are made up of a variety of platforms, from Mainframes, (yes they are still about, and new models are still released - see LinuxONE from IBM), to a variety of Unix platforms.  Lately there really appears to be only two options, one of which can only run one operating system, and the other is IBM POWER8.

POWER8 has it's own hyper visor built into the firmware, it is called POWER VM, but you have the choice of the Open Source KVM hyper visor if you want to live 100% in the Linux world - POWER KVM.  

POWER8 can run AIX, Linux (RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu, etc) as well as System I, all on the same server.   The POWER8 platform offers 2x the performance of an equivalent Intel platform, and 4x the memory bandwidth. 

So for customers that need to run mixed workloads, with Unix and/or Linux and still want the RAS features of those class of systems and save money on software licences (especially Oracle) then POWER8 offers some real benefits.

However, often we hear "but I want a single management plane - and we use VMWare", so they deploy Linux on X86 with VMWare.  This is a great solution still however they then miss out on the benefits of POWER8.

IBM has been working away in the Open Source community, they've open sourced the POWER8 chip, supported 3rd party vendors who make servers based on the POWER platform, and have started an Open Power foundation which lots of vendors have joined.  

So what has all this to do with VMWare?

At the recent VMWorld, IBM had a stand, and were showing how VMware vReaslise  Automation can deploy and manage VM's on the POWER8 platform as well as on Intel (and for what it is worth, on the Mainframe too - System Z). Customers can deploy AIX, Linux (and soon System I) based workloads on Power.

So customers who want a hybrid cloud can now have complete freedom to choose the Infrastructure That Matters for their business applications, whilst having a common management framework across the lot.

SAP and IBM have recently announced that the POWER platform is a great choice for HANA, especially given the significant memory bandwidth advantage that IBM have - 4x that of Intel.  So there is a decent business application that is relevant, and can be deployed on the best infrastructure but still managed under VMWare control.

So, if you want to know more about how IBM, POWER8 and VMWare can help your business or customers drop me a line, or contact your friendly IBM Power reseller.

Here are some links to blogs discussing this in more detail:

VMWare Blog Managing IBM Power and Z Systems via vRealize Automation

IBM Blog - Opening up new options for the hybrid cloud