As Information Technology management face today’s challenges of exponential capacity growth, security breaches, and escalating costs, they fervently search for a better server solution. IBM has the solution in the LinuxONE server family.
The LinuxONE only runs Linux applications. This server is ideal for open source applications and vendor software, such as Oracle on Linux. KVM, Postgres, MariaDB, Docker, Kubernetes and hundreds of other applicaitons run on it, as well. It’s better, faster, and more secure than any other server in the industry. And, the total cost of ownership (TCO) beats competitive servers.
Why would a business buy the LInuxONE server? Because it solves the problems that keep them awake at night. Let’s dive in deeper.
Hardware Reliability – Proven Record
The LinuxONE hardware is based on the IBM Z. After decades of perfecting a hardware platform, IBM has repurposed it for the Open Source community. And, why not! This server has a proven record for resiliency of 100% availability, measuring five decades to Mean-Time-to-Failure (MTF).
With these qualities of service – reliability, availability and scalability, the LinuxONE hardware alone provides attributes not available with other technologies. A few of these attributues are spare cores for transparent failover, RAIM subsystem to eliminate failures or built-in bottom to top security.
The LinuxONE is particularly well suited for I/O intensive applications. I/O is offloaded from the customer’s purchased chips to hundreds of dedicated built-in IBM Power cores, engineered for fast servicing of I/O requests.
Workload Consolidation – Millions of Docker Containers
The performance and scalability of the system are the key differentiators. Envision this… 2 million Docker containers scaling on the larger LinuxONE (Emperor II) server or 330,000 Docker containers on the smaller LinuxONE (Rockhopper II) server! No other platform compares to this. The Emperor II supports 17 TB MongoDB databases, while the Rockhopper II supports up to 7 TB.
This huge virtual server density leads to simplified physical network set up and maintenance. And, open source software, running in a container, is administered identically on the LInuxONE server as other platforms. No training needed. No steep learning curve. Linux is Linux.
Unmatched Security – End to End Pervasive Encryption
LinuxONE technology provides exceptional isolation achieving EAL 5+ security certification on its physical partitions. This hardware server enables partitioning to run different workloads, with different operating systems, all co-located in a single frame.
The crypto processors provide faster data encryption on all data, with no application changes, as well as low impact on SLAs and core consumption because the data encryption is offloaded to a unique core called Central Processor Assist for Cryptographic Functions (CPACF). FIPS 140-2 Level 4 Certifications is provided on the Crypto Express6S encryption key feature. IBM Pervasive Encryption provides policy-based encryption on the data. Then, security is locked down, even from administrator tampering, with the Secure Server Container (SSC).
Putting this all together… this server is engineered to solve security, easily, without enormous administrative time. That is why IBM has chosen the LinuxONE server to house their IBM Blockchain Cloud offering.
Economic Savings
The consolidated workload, along with high reliability, implies fewer support staff per unit of work, which contributes to the better TCO. In addition, the economic benefits span the administration savings, operational efficiency, and software license savings, as well as floor space and energy savings.
These economies of scale can result in 90% reduction in core software licensing, 85% reduction in data center space and 80% reduction in energy consumption. Overall the LinuxONE server cuts IT infrastructure costs dramatically.
So why run your open source on this platform?
Because the Total Cost of Ownership proves the value of this platform.
Infrastructure Management
Cloud products run here. IBM Cloud Private will spin up containers on Z. SUSE OpenStack will spin up virtual machines on Z. IBM GUI facility called Dynamic Partition Manager enables administrators to easily create logical partitions.
Next Steps
The LinuxONE server is ideal for both open source and proprietary software because it saves you money. Find out for yourself whether the business case works for your organization.
Please contact your Mainline Account Executive directly, or click here to contact us with any questions.
More Information
1. Mainline VLOG for the Business Case for Linux on IBM System Z
2. Getting started with Docker on IBM System Z
3. IBM Leverages IFLs and Secure Service Container (SSC) for Analytics Platform