IBM PureSystems A new era of computing

As we already wrote , in April IBM announced the PureSystems integrated software and hardware systems, which are fully ready for deployment, which use the expert knowledge accumulated by IBM specialists in the installation and maintenance of enterprise-class applications. In this article, I’ll tell you more about IBM PureSystems, which has been under development for 4 years in 37 laboratories and 17 countries. Amount of investments: $ 2 billion.
    







According to Andrei Filatov, director of hardware at IBM in Russia and the CIS, business development requires companies to implement new solutions in the field of IT construction of efficient data centers, internal clouds and the use of new business applications. But the implementation of such projects for most customers is difficult for several reasons:

1) Companies do not have enough finance, because more than 65% of the budget is spent on managing the existing IT infrastructure
2) The necessary experience is not available for the staff, which leads to an increase in the deployment and integration time for new solutions, their configuration, configuration, scaling and management


In order for companies to quickly, efficiently and with least effort to implement and use IT resources to solve their business problems, IBM releases the IBM PureSystems family of integrated systems with built-in expertise.

IBM PureSystems is the name of the entire family, which is currently represented by two systems:

• The PureFlex System infrastructure solution, the built-in examination of which allows the detection and prediction of the use of resources necessary for information processing
• The PureApplication System platform, which optimizes through integrated examination deployment and downloading third-party business applications vendors .





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At the heart of PureFlex Systems is the latest chassis with the ability to install up to 14 compute nodes and combines:

• Modular two- and four-socket servers with Intel Xeon or IBM Power * processors
• Different versions of IBM Storwize V7000 storage systems with external drive virtualization
• Network switches (models with 10 / 40Gb Ethernet, FCoE, Fiber Channel and InifiniBand ports are offered)
• PCIExpress expansion modules and disk shelves
• 4 operating systems to choose from: AIX, IBM i, Windows and RedHat and SUSE Linux
• 4 virtualization technologies: Power VM , KVM, VMWare ESX or Microsoft HyperV

* Five different models of computing nodes can be installed in the IBM Flex System: the Flex System x240 and Flex System x220 models have two sockets for Intel Xeon processors; Flex System p260 comes with two sockets for Power7; and the Flex System p460 has four sockets for the IBM Power7 processor. A p24L model with Power processors is also available, using Linux as the OS. Each of the models has about ten varieties, differing in the number of cores, types of adapters and other parameters.

One of the features of PureSystems is the IBM Flex System Manager Node, an IBM hardware and software system that maximizes the efficiency of managing IT infrastructure, using servers, storage systems, network devices and virtualization tools.

IBM PureFlex Systems is available in 3 basic configurations, which can be easily expanded based on customer requirements:

• PureFlex System Express - a system for small and medium businesses
• PureFlex System Standard - a system for supporting ordinary enterprise applications
• PureFlex System Enterprise - system for large DBMSs and highly reliable configurations, the


PureApplication System is similar to the PureFlex System. It has great computing power and built-in storage system. The PureApplication System is presented in several modifications in which from 96 to 608 cores can be installed, from 1.5 TB to 9.7 TB of RAM, as well as 6.4 TB of solid state drives and 48 TB of hard drives.

With the PureApplication System, you can use your own software templates, middleware, and virtual system resources to speed up software deployment and management.



PureSystems is based on a new software feature - “expert models”. This approach converts technological knowledge and experience into software packages that are available for download via the Internet and are reusable. “Expert models” are offered in three categories:

• IBM Patterns (Models from IBM)
• ISV Patterns (Models from independent software vendors)
• Customer Patterns (Native customer models)

In addition to significantly reducing the deployment of applications (for example, applications that took days to deploy can now be installed and ready for work in 10 minutes), “expert models” significantly simplify the operator’s work by offering huge sets of “templates” for customizing the management of the entire infrastructure and deployment cloud environments.

Another nice feature of PureSystems is the use of mechanisms to improve the reliability, availability and convenience of the service, which:

• Find the causes of possible problems
• Automatically contact IBM service if a failure is detected
• Collect data on all system malfunctions

“The new systems have enabled more than 150 customers from around the world to reduce IT maintenance costs by up to 40-50%, while at the same time providing customers with the ability to process twice as many applications without expanding the data center area.”

According to Kirill Tereshenko, business development manager for IBM System X in Russia and the CIS, all hardware and software are fully integrated and optimized already at the factory. And the system for allocating and distributing server and storage resources is optimized for workloads (including peak) determined by customer applications. IBM PureSystems is ready for use a few hours after power on and has a single interface for managing the entire system.

Additional Information:

• LP PureSystems at ibm.ru
• IBM PureSystems Redbooks