iNN - PowerInfo - SSS-Tools für Power System i Syntax System ...

2.3 Choose Your Blade - Which BladeCenter solution is right for
you?
by Kyle Wurgler
Which BladeCenter solution is right for you?
It’s been an exciting year for the IBM i community, and one major contributing
factor is the flood of IBM BladeCenter* announcements. Running i on a POWER6*
processor-based blade inside an IBM BladeCenter chassis broadens the choices for i
customers. You now can choose how and on what type of server platform to deploy the
operating system you know and love along with your x86 applications.
In this article, I intend to provide a high-level description of the three solutions where
IBM i and BladeCenter technology come together and give some decision factors for
why you’d choose one solution over another.
Three Solutions
IBM i integration with BladeCenter technology—This is IBM’s most integrated
solution, where you can run i on a traditional rack or tower POWER6 processor-based
system and the operating system provides all of the storage for the x86 blades in
a BladeCenter H, E or S chassis. Various network operating systems (Windows*,
VMware and x86 Linux*) run on the x86 servers and i provides storage-area network
(SAN) functionality for these blades using the iSCSI technology. This solution has many
benefits, such as simple storage management, single point of backup and recovery,
enhanced availability and more. See “A Window of Opportunity” for a more in-depth look.
IBM i on a POWER6 processor-based blade in BladeCenter H chassis—Announced
in January, this solution is a BladeCenter H chassis with one
or more POWER6 processor-based blades mixed with other x86 blades, up to a total of
14 blades. IBM i runs on the POWER6 processor-based blade. The network operating
systems run on the x86 blades. A SAN provides the storage for this solution. The SANs
currently supported for IBM i are the DS4700, DS4800, DS8100 and DS8300. The
SAN requirement means this solution is typically for mid-sized customers. It has the
advantages of having all of the servers in a single chassis and using the same SAN as
the x86 servers.
IBM i on a POWER6 processor-based blade in BladeCenter S chassis—Announced
in April, this solution is a BladeCenter S chassis containing
one or more POWER6 processor-based blades mixed with x86 blades, up to a total
of six blades. IBM i runs on the POWER6 processor-based blade and the network
operating systems run on the x86 blades. The BladeCenter S chassis provides its
own storage for this solution with up to 12 drives totaling more than 3 TB when using
the 300 GB drives. The x86 blades can use the local drives on the blade for storage
www.inn-online.de < Seite > Seite: 30