IBM Systems and TechnologyData Sheet

IBM Power System Pools Providing a higher level of resiliency for your most critical business applications

Highlights●● ● ●Simplified Elastic Capacity on Demand

enablement that delivers utility-like compute capacity

●● ● ●Multi-system support for high availability

●● ● ●Allocate virtual processor and memory resources based on application workload demands

●● ● ●Dramatically reduce planned and unplanned application downtime

Power Systems is redefining the meaning of performance. While speed and performance of the Power processor continues to be extremely important and something that Power Systems continues to maintain its leadership in, a new type of performance is taking shape that’s critically important to the client. This new type of performance is all about deliver-ing services faster through continuous business availability and access to information, delivering services with higher quality through a secure and compliant environment and delivering superior IT economics with an efficient and scalable infrastructure. The new IBM Power Enterprise System Pools offering goes a long way to provide that new type of performance that clients are looking for.

The Power Enterprise Systems Pools offering is a multisystem IBM Power 780 and 795 infrastructure offering designed to provide a highly resilient and f lexible IT environment in support of large-scale server consolidation and your most demanding business applications requirements. Power System Pools allows for the aggregation of compute resources, including processors and memory, across a number of Power 780 and 795 servers, in order to provide greater f lexibility to respond to critical application workload requirements as well as to enhance your application availability.

2

Data SheetIBM Systems and Technology

As part of the offering, those Power 780 and 795 servers that participate in an IBM Power System Pools environment are provided with regularly planned maintenance events (up to 8 in a calendar year) that enables clients to turn on inactive processors and memory in another participating system in the pool in the event that a system may need to be brought down for some type of maintenance occurrence. In addition, all Elastic COD processor and memory days, including those that now come standard with all new Power 780s and 795s, can be accumulated and managed at a pool level to effectively and efficiently manage and balance your application workload’s peak requirements. Power System Pools can consists of up to ten (10) Power 780s (9179-MHD), and/or Power 795 systems, with the latest firmware release (FW 7.6.0.00), to support large-scale applications, databases and infrastructure. A minimum of 50% of all the processors in the Power System Pool must be active.

Maintain application availabilityPower Enterprise System Pools, utilizing Elastic COD processor and memory days and working in conjunction with IBM® PowerVM® Live Partition Mobility, can help you maintain application availability more affordably during any planned maintenance activities on a Power System Pools sys-tem. Up to Eight (8) times per year you may request temporary enablement of inactive resources on one Power System Pools system to support planned maintenance activities on another. In essence, while virtual processor and memory resources are not being used on a system that is being maintained, their equivalent capacity may be deployed elsewhere in the interim.

Any resources activated on one Power System Pools system in support of planned maintenance on another need to be deactivated within seven days. Advanced Planning Event capacity (key) requests to the Power CoD Project Office require a minimum of two business days to ensure receipt of the activation codes for capacity prior to the start of planned maintenance activities.

3

Data SheetIBM Systems and Technology

The optimum availability solution that you can deploy is with IBM PowerHA® SystemMirror in conjunction with Power System Pools. In this environment business-critical applications are first configured in a cluster utilizing two or more Power System Pools systems. Subsequently, in the event of a signifi-cant failure to one Power 780 or 795 system, PowerHA SystemMirror could roll critical applications to another Power System Pools system and automatically enable as many Elastic (On/Off) CoD processors as needed to keep the business running with minimal loss of service.

Utility computing via Elastic (On/Off) processor and memory daysEvery new Power 780 (9179-MHB) and 795 (9119-FHB) comes shipped with an initial quantity of fifteen (15) “built-in” Elastic (On/Off) Capacity on Demand processor days and two hundred and Forty (240)GB Elastic (On/Off) Capacity on Demand memory days for every processor installed on the sys-tem, including both active and inactive cores .So for example, if you were to purchase a Power 780 (9119-MHD) with 128 cores you would receive 1,920 built-in Elastic (On/Off) COD proces-sor days and 30,720GB Elastic (On/Off) memory days. With Power System Pools, these Elastic COD processor and memory days can now be accumulated together and managed at the Pool level. These Elastic (On/Off) COD processor and memory days are enabled using the normal Capacity on Demand resource enablement process and contracts. The Elastic (On/Off) processor/memory days are credited to your account at time of purchase and upon signing of the Temporary CoD contract and the associated Power System Pools addendum, may be used at your discretion to provide utility computing for short-term projects, workload spikes—or to provide automated application

availability support via PowerHA SystemMirror. Additional Elastic (On/Off) processor days and memory days may be pur-chased and added to the pool through the normal purchasing process. All customers that participate and sign the Power System Pools contract will be eligible for “family plan billing” where all the usage charges across the pool will be aggregated together and a single bill will be presented to the client.

Prepared for future growthA Power System Pools infrastructure can deliver unprecedented availability, f lexibility and resiliency for your AIX, IBM i® and Linux applications today and into the future. The Power System Pools offering provides new options for resource sharing in support of large-scale workload consolidation and changing business and application requirements. Employing the strength and innovation of the IBM Power 780 and 795 server, complemented with PowerVM virtualization, Power HA and Capacity on Demand technology, Power System Pools can enable your organization to more affordably deploy applications across Power enterprise systems to enhance application avail-ability while at the same time dramatically reducing the impact of any system downtime. Power System Pools allows vital vir-tual processor and memory resources to be deployed precisely where you need them and when you need them—in essence, redefining performance.

Why IBM?IBM Power Systems is the only platform that allows clients to easily move both processors and memory around, on a per-manent and temporary basis, to support changing application workload demands and to enhance the overall resiliency of the client’s IT infrastructure.

For more informationTo learn more about the IBM Power System Pools, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/power

Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the IT solutions that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We’ll partner with credit-qualified clients to customize an IT financing solution to suit your busi-ness goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. IBM Global Financing is your smartest choice to fund critical IT investments and propel your business forward. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

IBM Corporation Systems Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589

Produced in the United States of America October 2012

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, PowerVM, and PowerHA are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

Please Recycle

POD03078-USEN-00