Expert IT Blog

Ron Gordon Director of Power Systems   IBM announced, on Oct 5, 2015, the availability of three new POWER8 based servers that are supported by the Ubuntu Linux operating system, with PowerKVM as the optional virtualization support. » View this webcast:...

Ron Gordon Director of Power Systems   IBM Power Systems made several announcements of technical updates to Power Systems software including AIX, PowerVM, PowerVC, PowerKVM, and a Virtual HMC. IBM Power Systems made several announcements of technical updates to...

Three must-have capabilities for today’s warehouse environments

Are you seeing an explosion in data volume while at the same time experiencing higher demands for big data analytics? Are you now required to provide insight and agility to generate new opportunities while also attempting to contain costs and satisfy your customers? You know that big data analytics are pervasive, and that analytics benefit from performance gains. And, you might have already experienced the benefits of better decision making thru big data analytics. But what if you could make business decisions faster – 82 times faster – while reducing IT spending?¹

Linux on POWER is rapidly accelerating in acceptance and adoption due to its outstanding performance, capacity to accommodate large workloads, options for virtualizations, and a proven track record in supporting mission critical applications. Another driving force is the increased availability of applications in support of customers evolving demands. What IBM Power Linux systems provide that is unique in the industry today is the ability to run Big Endian and Little Endian applications both unilaterally or in a mix. With Little Endian support recently added to IBM Power Linux Systems, both distribution availability increases (Ubuntu and SLES 12 are only Little Endian and now support Power Linux systems) and application creation and porting has been simplified. One of the technical aspects of this, however, is that the application Endianness must match that of the Linux distribution. Sometimes you may have a choice of application Endianness or wonder should your home grown application be compiled to Big Endian or Little Endian. Let’s investigate this.

Kurt Repholz VP zSystems Sales   Connecting the Mainframe to the World Most companies, with IBM Mainframes, have a robust network to move mainframe data to other locations in their enterprise for analysis. They also have the headaches to go along with that...

There is no doubt the acceptance and growing popularity of Linux on Power is here. With POWER-based systems providing advantages over x86 systems in performance, capacity, memory and IO bandwidth, as well as reliability, and with the latest Linux distributions from RedHat, S– USE, and Ubuntu exploiting POWER8 technology, businesses are now looking at hosting mission-critical applications on Power Systems with Linux for a better customer experience at a lower TCO. And, Linux is Linux, right??….by the way, not really! But that will be the subject of a different BLOG. (I have intentionally left out the CAPI technology from this discussion as I am saving that topic for another BLOG along with the incredible capabilities it provides.)

As you begin to implement solutions on Power Systems with Linux, a key element of your planning has to be how to support the environment. There are several aspects of support, and we usually first think of “how do I get fixes and updates.” This is only part of what you need to understand and plan for. You also need to address areas such as: what can I do to insure the first installation is successful; how do I call support for issues; what level of support do I need (9×5 or 7×24); how can I get tuning support; how to keep up to date on latest information on Linux on Power; how can I communicate with the Power Linux community; and who are IBM and Business Partner resources I can call directly.

Middleware is the software that runs our business but we typically don’t ‘see’.

Whether it is ensuring messages get from A to B with Websphere MQ, routing and transforming messages with IBM Integration Bus, providing a key business service with Websphere Application Server, or even connecting your mobile users to your back-end infrastructure, it is software that is part of our core IT business.

  When IBM announced the zEnterprise Class processors in October of 2012 (zEC12), they also announced System z analytics offerings that enhanced the positioning of the industry leading System z platform for operational analytics. The delivery of integrated System...