IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - AIX digital edition - February/March 2009 - (Page 32)
Power Systems Perspective Weathering the Storm T he operational-management challenges facing IT professionals have grown exponentially in recent months. The painful impacts of a tough global economy are being felt inside and outside of data centers everywhere. Even before the downturn, the need for more efficient systems, application, energy and administration management was urgent. Now it’s acute. There’s tremendous pressure from CEOs and CFOs to reduce costs. It’s also clear organizations will prosper in the long r un only if they position themselves to deliver higher customer value by making their infrastructures more dynamic to support new and expanded workloads. Meeting these two requirements at the same time is a tall order. What can systems administrators do to address this dual challenge? In AIX* environments, many answers can be found in new end-to-end systems-management capabilities that offer tools needed to drive operations to higher levels of eff iciency. In a previous issue I talked about IBM Systems Director 6.1 and AIX Enterprise Edition, both introduced last October. These new capabilities were developed over a two-year span with guidance from IT professionals at more than 200 IBM customer enterprises and governmental entities, and are designed to help you simplify operations, deliver new services quickly and control costs. For i n s t a n c e , a s i n g le c on s ole i n S y s t e m s Director provides an all-inclusive view of hardware configurations, usage and performance across all IBM systems and storage, not just Power* Systems servers. Such a panoramic view makes it possible to innovate new ways to optimize systems for efficient workload performance and reduced energy consumption and associated expenses. One major U.S. bank is harnessing these capabilities to manage hundreds of AIX servers at the LPAR and virtual I/O server level. The goal is to rapidly deploy new virtual server images at a lower cost, while reining in energy consumption. The bottom-line impact of such actions can be significant and immediate. According to a recent study by the International Technology Group (ITG), organizations may be able to save more than 21 percent in systems-administration costs and almost 12 percent in server-energy costs using Systems Director 6.1 in place of stand-alone management tools. In addition, ITG noted fewer outages occur in well-managed server environments, and administrators stand a better chance of spotting and addressing problems early by employing Systems Director monitoring capabilities. New AIX Enterprise Edition equips administrators with a versatile suite of tools tailored specifically for Power Systems servers running AIX 6.1. It offers a single-screen view of workload partitions, relationships between service and application components, as well as the health, usage and availability of resources. Armed with this unified view, administrators are better equipped to manage overall costs in virtualized environments. Even before today’s heightened operational challenges came on the horizon, there was an urgent business case for more efficient management in the data center. Now, with cost pressures bearing down on every organization, the new array of powerful, integrated management tools for A IX environments offers a lifeline for ever y administrator fighting to weather the economic storm and get on course toward long-term success. Ross A. Mauri, General Manager IBM Power Systems “The new array of powerful, integrated management tools for AIX environments offers a lifeline.” —Ross A. Mauri, general manager, IBM Power Systems 32 F E B R U A R Y/ M A R C H 2 0 0 9 i b m s y s t e m s m a g.c o m/a i x
http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/aix
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - AIX digital edition - February/March 2009
IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems — AIX digital edition - February/March 2009
Table of Contents
Editor's Desk: Cooking Up a Management Solution
Trends: IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager 4.1 Evolves to Offer Improved Savings and Manageability
Case Study: Wakefern Food Corporation exchanges an aging solution…to accelerate data transfers
Cover Story: Managing It All
Features: The relationship between virtual and physical resources on Power Systems
Tips & Techniques: Using File-Backed Virtual SCSI Devices
Administrator: Managing AIX Updates
Product News
Advertiser Index
Power Systems Perspective: Weathering the Storm
IBM Systems Magazine, Power Systems - AIX digital edition - February/March 2009
http://www.ibmsystemsmagpowersystemsaixdigital.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_200912
http://www.ibmsystemsmagpowersystemsaixdigital.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_20091011
http://www.ibmsystemsmagpowersystemsaixdigital.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_20090809
http://www.ibmsystemsmagpowersystemsaixdigital.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_200906
http://www.ibmsystemsmagpowersystemsaixdigital.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_20090405
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/mspcomm/ibmsystems_power-aix_20090203
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com