IBM Server Consolidation Options
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Wed, Sep 01, 2010 @ 07:21 AM
Server consolidation is useful in any economy, but in today’s recovering economy it’s a must. IBM System X and BladeCenter are two wonderful technologies that will allow you to increase the efficiency of your IT department and offer more reliable levels of service all while reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO).
In a nutshell, here are some of the benefits your organization can gain from consolidating servers with IBM solutions:
• Because of the broad range of available systems, you can pick the solution that best fits your business needs and your particular IT environment. There are plenty of choices between tower, rack mounted, blade servers and enterprise systems.
• IBM’s planning tools are some of the best in the industry. They will allow you to collect the necessary data, choose sizing options. plan capacity and develop custom tools.
• You have the choice between scaling up and scaling out with both System x and IBM BladeCenter.
• Both BladeCenter and System x are designed around concepts of consolidation and virtualization. That means you’re looking at industry leading energy efficiency, reliability and manageability.
It’s worth taking a look at some of the specific IBM server consolidation options. Essentially, you’re choosing between IBM BladeCenter, IBM System x rack-mount servers and IBM System x enterprise servers.
IBM BladeCenter servers are a great way to replace a number of one-way and two-way rack servers. They let you increase your server density while decreasing your power needs as well as your TCO. You can consolidate Linus, Unix/AIX, IBM I and even Windows servers into a single server architecture. This reduces your space, chassis, switch, cable, rack and power supply needs.
If you don’t have an environment that would benefit from a BladeCenter, or if it might be overkill for your small or medium business, IBM System x rack-mount servers are a good option.
These servers let you virtualize multiple workloads onto high-performance, low-footprint servers. By consolidating servers you can save on power while offering your users unprecedented performance and reliability.
Finally, IBM System x enterprise servers give you a way to consolidate multiple servers onto an x86-based system. These servers are scalable, and come in both rack-mount and blade systems. They’ll let you reduce your costs while simplifying your IT development processes and reducing your IT management workload.
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