IBM wants to be HP.
Well, it wants first in x86 server revenue, a slot HP currently occupies. IBM is third. So Blue has taken a whack at “rewriting the economics of industry standard computing” by redesigning the PC server to take the PC out of it and put the enterprise in it.
It’s been three years engineering the latest generation of its so-called mainframe-borrowing X-Architecture and ahead of Intel trotting out its high-end eight-core Nehalem EX Xeon chips later this month IBM unveiled its Nehalem EX-based x86 servers at CeBit in Germany this week.
They’re designated eX5 and are supposed to offer “dramatically more scalable, workload-tuned computing on the x86 platform.”
Think of them as sort of a soup kitchen for poor memory-starved applications in virtual environments.
IBM has decoupled the memory from the processors, breaking the traditional PC architecture so the boxes can be loaded up with 600% more memory than everybody else. And it’s invented a chip that lets the eX5’s processors access the extended memory very quickly.
Users will be able to add up to 32 DIMMs.
It pitches the solution as a cure for server sprawl with its attendant power and management costs. Users won’t have to buy extra servers for memory-intensive workloads and in the process they might save themselves some of the license fees they pay to VMware by putting a lot more virtual machines on a chip – figure half the servers and half the licensing cost, IBM says, or 82% more virtual servers for the licensing costs – not to mention reduced middleware and application expenses. Clients running a Microsoft database should be able to cut their license costs by 50%.
On the other hand users should be able to virtualize 80% of their data centers by fixing the limiting memory issue.
IBM’s boxes also have new flash storage, which together with the increased RAM should produce 30 time better database performance and 99% better performance-per-watt and cut storage cost by 97%.
Forrester analyst James Staten calls it a “direct response to Oracle’s Exadata database appliance, but the IBM approach is more widely applicable.”
IBM has also invested the boxes with what it calls FlexNode widgetry that physically partitions a system into two and back again so it can be used for infrastructure applications by day and larger batch jobs at night. It borrowed the device from its Power systems.
IBM plans on releasing three eX5 models this year: a four-processor System x3850 X5, a BladeCenter HX5 and an entry-level enterprise-class two-processor System x3690 X5. It will be the first time IBM has used its X-Architecture widgetry in a blade. No pricing yet.