IBM BCFC White Paper - Why Choose IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud

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White Paper

IBM BCFC White Paper

Why Choose IBM BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud

Printed in the United States of America
Copyright  2011 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either
expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors
resulting from its use.

All products are trademarks of their respective owners.
First Publication: November 2011
Produced by: Craig Norris, Sr Analyst; Manish Bhardwaj, Consulting Analyst; Barry Cohen,
Editor‑in‑Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 3
Objective .................................................................................................................................. 3
Audience .................................................................................................................................. 3
Contents of this White Paper ................................................................................................ 3
Characteristics of an Enterprise Data Center Foundation Suitable to
Support Cloud Computing ........................................................................................................ 4
IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud ................................................................................. 6
The Advantages of Using a Single, Trusted Systems Provider........................................ 6
Outstanding Performance ..................................................................................................... 8
 Converged Networking .................................................................................................. 9
 Bringing it All Together ................................................................................................ 10
Scalability, Agility, and Cost Efficiency ............................................................................ 10
 Built‑In Server Virtualization with VMware and Open Fabric Manager .............. 11
 Scalability Through Architecture ................................................................................ 12
.
Reliability ............................................................................................................................... 12
 Redundancy .................................................................................................................... 13
 System Attributes Supporting Reliability .................................................................. 13
.
 IBM‑Backed Quality and Support ............................................................................... 13
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 14
.

Executive Summary

Enterprise data centers today must be capable of effectively supporting new workloads
such as server virtualization and cloud services. A key challenge in building a platform
for such workloads lies in understanding how the necessary attributes map to the
technology employed in the data center, and how to implement them optimally.

With BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud, IBM has applied decades of experience and
expertise in designing and building data centers for the enterprise. The result is an ideal
“data center in a box” platform, comprised of the latest IBM BladeCenter technologies,
including servers, software, storage, network, and startup services, as well as the next
generation of intelligent processors, the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series. It brings
together the industrial‑strength performance, scalability, and reliability demanded by
the rapidly expanding workloads in use today.

BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud gives organizations a fast, low‑risk, reliable path to a
completely virtualized, unified architecture platform. It can be up and running in days
rather than weeks, and comes with the assurance of one‑call technical support, provided
by a world‑class 24x7x365 support organization.

The major hardware components are manufactured by IBM and exemplify the quality
that has made the IBM brand trusted by the world’s foremost corporations. The
components are interconnected with converged 10 Gbps networking technology with
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE) protocol processing. BladeCenter Foundation for
Cloud delivers 3.5 to 7 times greater network bandwidth throughput performance than
that demonstrated by the nearest competitors’ platforms offering virtualized cloud
support.

By building virtualized data centers on BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud,
organizations can drive down total cost of ownership (TCO) in multiple ways. These
include more effective data center management and the ability to leverage the
organization’s capital investments in IT assets. Offering the capacity to enable greater
virtual machine (VM) density, the platform can support much more efficient utilization
of physical server resources.

BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud also delivers considerable flexibility and scalability,
enabling organizations to easily add, move, or remove VMs as needed. Blade servers can
also be replaced without requiring reconfiguration, and can be added to scale up the
data center on an as‑needed basis. The solution can also extend to a cloud environment
with no need for infrastructure rip and replace.

Edison: IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud White Paper Page 1

The solution takes full advantage of the simpler, centralized management enabled by
virtualization, allowing organizations to manage a heterogeneous data center from a
single console. In contrast, some comparable virtualization platforms on the market only
allow management of proprietary components.

BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud reduces risk by providing a highly resilient and
reliable platform with no single point of failure. It features redundancy in many critical
components, as well as automated network and storage address virtualization for faster
failover recovery and greater availability. IBM’s unique Predictive Failure Analysis also
ensures availability by system component monitoring: it can notify administrators or
trigger automated preemptive action itself, to avert potential system failure.


Introduction

Objective

This paper describes the value IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud can bring to the
enterprise. As a “data center in a box,” it combines software, server, storage,
networking, and startup services, all pre‑tested to operate together as an integrated
whole, and it is supported by one of the world’s premier systems vendors.

Audience

This paper presents information that will be useful to business organizations seeking to
quickly establish a virtualized data center infrastructure in support of new workloads
such as cloud services, and will also be useful to consultants serving such customers.

Contents of this White Paper

This white paper contains the following major sections:
 Characteristics of an Enterprise Data Center Foundation Suitable to Support
Cloud Computing — Discusses the attributes required for a data center solution
built to support new workloads such as cloud computing.
 IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud — Covers the value the IBM BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud delivers, including the advantages of using a single, trusted
systems provider: outstanding performance and reliability along with scalability,
agility, and cost efficiency.
 Conclusion — Wraps up the white paper with Edison Group’s conclusions based on
the contents of the paper.


Characteristics of an Enterprise Data Center
Foundation Suitable to Support Cloud Computing

The exciting and promising trends emerging in information technology today — such as
utility, service‑oriented, virtualized, and cloud computing — involve new workloads
that demand robust, advanced IT platforms. Such platforms can be difficult to
implement and tricky to configure, since they consist of multiple hardware and software
elements that all must operate together as an integrated whole.

One of the challenges in building a data center system capable of effectively supporting
these new workloads lies in grasping how its required attributes map to the technology.
It is not a simple matter, such as, “Throw more processing power, storage and
bandwidth at the problem,” or “We need to use a lot of data, so we’ll deploy a lot of
storage capacity.” The attributes required for a data center solution built to support new
workloads are more abstract and rely on a synthesis of technological capabilities. Those
attributes include:
 Unified Architecture — The data center solution must tie together servers,
networking, storage, virtualization, and software into an optimized, cohesive whole
that delivers functionality beyond the sum of its parts.
 Performance — The performance of the combined elements working together as a
unified architecture must meet the demanding expectations of today’s businesses.
The challenge here lies in the existence of multiple potential bottlenecks. Addressing
this requires solid expertise and thorough testing.
 Scalability — Architectures that limit scalability can result in considerable expense in
the future if, for instance, the data center solution needs to be ripped and replaced to
extend to a cloud environment. The data center solution must offer the ability to
expand flexibly and to easily accommodate growing and evolving workloads over
time. It should also offer manageability within an existing infrastructure, while
remaining flexible enough to adapt to changes.
 Reliability — A data center solution on which many operations rely cannot afford
downtime or sporadic availability. This is particularly true in a cloud solution that is
serving other cost centers or business customers, and which must comply with
service level agreements.
 Simplicity – IT administrators must support ever increasing numbers of applications
and amounts of data. The advent of infrastructures that can support cloud
computing presents new challenges involving selection, deployment, and


management of the solution, increasing potential complexity. Offerings that are easy
to order and easy to deploy will deliver more value to organizations.

Additionally, with businesses even more cost‑conscious than ever, a data center solution
must yield an acceptable return on investment and, ideally, minimize total cost of
ownership over time.


IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud

Clearly, building a data center solution demands considerable thought and planning as
well as deep technical expertise. Having provided solutions for the data center since
data centers were first conceived, IBM can be expected to design and deliver highly
reliable and efficient end‑to‑end solutions for the data center of today.

This is certainly the case with the IBM’s BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud virtualized
server platform. A comprehensive, converged platform that incorporates elements
providing network, servers, storage, and management functionality, BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud enables rapid deployment of a complete virtualized data center
solution. The entire solution can be deployed and in production in a matter of days,
rather than weeks.

The Advantages of Using a Single, Trusted Systems
Provider

A virtualized cloud foundation needs to fully integrate the several
disparate components that comprise it. Given the complexity
involved, it makes sense to rely on a single provider that
manufactures and/or offers expertise in all the key components and
architecture involved.

IBM has been building and servicing data centers for decades, with a
proven reputation for high quality and innovative technology. Its
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud is built on technologies deployed
at thousands of customer sites the world over. The BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud embodies virtualization implementation and
best practices gained from IBM’s extensive experience in helping
businesses to plan, develop, test, and optimize virtualized
computing deployments.

Organizations deploying IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud benefit from:

 Reduced risk because BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud is factory‑tested to provide
integrated operation of a “data center in a box,” ensuring interoperability of its
components. All BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud configurations have been
through rigorous performance analysis, design, and support for architectures based
on leading technology strategies. Among these are server virtualization, converged


Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) networking, and fiber channel storage. The
configurations all have centralized management, with proactive monitoring and
alerting installed.
 Reduced complexity, with incorporation of only a few separate components into a
fully integrated, ready‑to‑run solution.
 Reduced time to productivity, as well as reduced downtime attributable to
deployment and configuration. Installation can be accomplished in a matter of days.
 Unified management architecture with ability to manage the entire infrastructure.
 Enhanced reliability due to single‑point‑of‑contact technical support for the entire
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud solution, backed by IBM’s premier worldwide
24x7x365 support organization.

Table 1 below provides an overview of the components comprised in IBM BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud configurations.

Table 1: IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud Standard Configuration Details

Component Description
IBM BladeCenter H Chassis and HS22V blades with
Virtualization Management
Intel Xeon 5659 2.53 GHz 6‑core processors and 96 GB
and Compute Nodes
memory
IBM System x 3550 M3 1U server with dual‑socket
Server Management Node
Intel Xeon 5620 2.4 GHz 4‑core processors
IBM BNT 10 Gb Ethernet Virtual Fabric Switch
Ethernet Switches module for normal operations and 1 Gb Ethernet
switches for out‑of‑band management
Dual‑channel 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapter with
Ethernet Adapter
FcoE capability on each blade
IBM BNT switch module with QLogic Virtual Fabric
Fibre Channel SAN switch
Extension Module for SAN connectivity
Storage Servers IBM System Storage DS3524
Storage Expansion IBM EXP3000 storage expansion units
Blade Operating System VMware vSphere 4.1 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition 64‑bit; IBM
Server Management Node
Systems Director including Active Energy Manager;
Software
BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager


Component Description
Virtualization Management VMware vCenter Server 4.1
Node Software
Rack Cabinet IBM e1350 42U Rack Cabinet
Examples of Predefined Configurations
Four compute blades, redundant 10G FCoE
Small networking, direct connections to LAN/SAN, 7.2 TB
storage, VMware Enterprise and vCenter Licensing
Fourteen HS22V compute blades, redundant 10 G
Medium FCoE networking, direct connections to LAN/SAN, 29
TB storage, VMware Enterprise and vCenter Licensing
Twenty‑eight compute blades, redundant 10G FCoE
Large networking, direct connections to LAN/SAN, 58 TB
storage VMware Enterprise and vCenter Licensing
Additional compute nodes can be added after
Expansion nodes
installation

Outstanding Performance

Products built with IBM’s innovative technology have consistently outperformed
comparable products from competitors. The products incorporated as components of the
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud are no exception.

One example is the IBM BladeCenter HS22V blade servers that form the heart of the
virtualized data center environment. These servers provide superior performance, with
support for the latest Intel Xeon processors, maximum memory capacity, fast memory
throughput, and high‑speed I/O. The same holds true for the IBM System x3550 M3
server, which is used to manage the entire system.

Used in both the BladeCenter HS22V blade servers and the System x3550 M3 server, the
Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series delivers up to 15x1 performance per server over 2‑
socket single‑core servers. 1 Representing the next generation of intelligent processors,

1 Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on
Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific
computer systems, components, software, operations, and functions. Any change to any of those factors
may cause the results to vary.


they increase efficiency by intelligently adjusting server performance according to the
data center’s workload needs.

IBM’s BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud offers higher performance and more scalable
networking than competing solutions. The result is 3.5‑ to 7‑times greater network
bandwidth, with 200 Gbps aggregate uplink bandwidth per chassis and 14.3 Gbps
bandwidth per blade.

The higher performance of the IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud translates into
highly efficient and better performing applications. For example, due to the above‑
mentioned bandwidth, migration of virtual machines is 10‑18 times faster than with
other solutions.

Intelligent VMready® VM‑aware network switches provide visibility into the
virtualized environment. This enables management of both physical and virtual
switches from a single console, and centralized management of VM groups across data
centers. Virtual Fabric breaks the I/O bottleneck and simplifies deployment by boosting
switching performance.

Converged Networking
In a unified architecture, best‑of‑breed excellence in individual components is only part
of the story. The networking technology tying those components together also must
deliver top‑notch performance. The converged networking technology used in
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud boosts system performance with 10 Gbps speed, and
full hardware offload with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol processing.
Advanced 10 Gbps bandwidth can eliminate performance bottlenecks in the I/O path
with a tenfold data rate improvement over older 1 Gbps Ethernet solutions.
Additionally, full hardware offload for FCoE processing reduces system CPU utilization
for I/O operations, delivering faster application performance and higher levels of
consolidation in virtualized systems.

The IBM approach to a converged network environment is unique, because all the
converged I/O traffic is contained within the chassis. The solution is pre‑wired to
provide seamless integration, without any management overhead of converged
technologies. Therefore, there is no need to rip and replace existing investments in the
fiber channel infrastructure.

The converged I/O traffic is segregated into pure IP and SAN traffic at the IBM
BladeCenter chassis boundary. This approach ensures that data centers can readily
integrate FCoE into existing environments, lowering TCO immediately without having


to actively manage individual FCoE components within the chassis. It also reduces costs
and management complexity, by requiring fewer components than traditional Local
Area and Storage Area Network (LAN/SAN) setups.

Bringing it All Together
Perhaps most important to performance, however, is the expertise applied to selecting
the components and infrastructure elements, assessing their compatibility, testing their
interoperation as a unified system, and diagnosing and addressing any performance
bottlenecks. This is the unseen ingredient that helps ensure rapid, low‑risk, and trouble‑
free deployment of BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud.

Scalability, Agility, Simplicity, and Cost Efficiency

An increasingly popular approach to improving data center efficiencies is consolidation
through server virtualization – specialized software allowing multiple servers running
as virtual machines (VMs) to operate on a single physical server. By virtualizing and
consolidating servers, data centers can increase the utilization of hardware and decrease
the number of physical assets requiring deployment, maintenance, and management.

Virtualization allows applications to be consolidated into a more efficient
implementation, such as IBM has designed with BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud.
Virtualization simplifies IT while cutting costs for equipment, energy, physical space,
and management. Organizations that build virtualized data centers upon BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud can drive down their total cost of ownership in multiple ways,
including enabling more effective management and leveraging the organization’s capital
investments in IT assets.

The Intel Xeon 5600 Series processors used in the solution automatically regulate power
consumption and intelligently adjust server performance according to the data center’s
application needs, maximizing both energy efficiency and performance. This powerful
combination results from the new Intel 32nm microarchitecture. Featuring Intel
Intelligent Power Technology, it reduces energy costs over single‑core servers by
automatically shifting the CPU and memory into the lowest available power state that
can still deliver the needed performance. These processors can help reduce energy costs
by up to 95 percent.2

2 Performance and power comparisons are based on estimated server‑side Java benchmark results (Intel
Corporation Jan 2010). Platform power was estimated during the steady state window of the benchmark run
and at idle. Performance gain compared to baseline was 15x.


IBM System Networking’s unique VMready software runs on the IBM BNT switch that
is part of the BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud solution, eliminating use of CPU cycles
for its operation. It makes the entire network VM‑aware, automatically discovering and
identifying virtual machines in the data center. The network can be configured and
managed for thousands of virtual ports without manual intervention. VMready
automatically tracks migrating VMs, enabling organizations to manage VMs as they are
added, moved, or removed while retaining the same ACLs, QoS, and VLAN attributes.
It can simplify management by grouping similar VMs together. VMready works with all
major virtualization offerings, including VMware, Microsoft’s Hyper‑V, Xen, and KVM,
and provides “single pane of glass” management for both VMready switches and ESX
vSwitches. It also delivers a rich repository of VM information, such as IP addresses, VM
name, and ESX server location via both visual displays and reporting.

Built‑In Server Virtualization with VMware and Open Fabric Manager
IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud uses industry‑leading server virtualization
technology from VMware, as well as BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (BOFM), as the
heart of its virtualization platform. The VMware software provides the server
virtualization capability, while BOFM virtualizes LAN/SAN configurations, providing a
single point of I/O address management that can be deployed across as many as 256
chassis. It allows for replacement of blades with no reconfiguration required.

In addition to scalability and flexible agility, the virtualization capabilities of
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud reduce TCO due to factors that include:
 Efficient utilization of CPU resources – Non‑virtualized hardware servers typically
operate at as little as 10 percent utilization levels. Virtualized servers can typically
utilize as much as 80 percent of physical server resources, depending upon VM
density. Combined with the advantages provided by the Intel Intelligent Power
Technology in the Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series, this strategy delivers the highest
cost efficiency in processor usage.
 Ease of centralized management – Virtualized servers enable more efficient,
centralized management, and IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud fully leverages
this capability. With a high‑performance IBM x3550 M3 as the engine driving
enterprise management software, including IBM Director, organizations can manage
a heterogeneous data center from a single console.
 Efficient utilization of power – An energy‑smart design as well as integrated power
management capabilities help drive optimal utilization of valuable power and
cooling resources. The single console provided by IBM Director on the x3550 M3 can
be used to monitor and manage key energy metrics, such as power, cooling,
temperature, and airflow, to ensure optimal efficiency and minimize energy costs.


 Consolidated networking – 10Gb Converged Network Adapters (CNA) combined
with the top‑of‑rack FCoE switches mentioned earlier, can improve TCO. By
consolidating Fibre Channel and Ethernet traffic, this technology helps organizations
significantly reduce power, cooling, and cabling costs by using a single adapter for
TCP/IP and Fibre Channel traffic.
 Less maintenance – Consolidation of servers through virtualization means that there
are fewer physical assets to maintain and service, driving down both capital
expenses and time spent by technical support staff.
 Efficient utilization of data center floor space – Consolidating many hardware
servers into few considerably reduces a data center’s requirements for expensive
commercial real estate space.

Scalability Through Architecture
BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud brings a high degree of flexibility to the data center,
allowing organizations to deploy immediately, then scale as their business requirements
evolve. Standard configurations are available that support approximately 150 VMs, up
to 500 VMs, and up to over 1,000 VMs. However, BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud
enables additional granular scalability using a number of approaches:
 More memory can be added per blade.
 Additional physical servers can be added as required, up to the maximum number
of available blade slots per system.
 The IBM System Storage DS3500 fibre channel storage unit used in BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud scales from 7.2 TB to 58 TB.
 The platform can extend to a cloud environment simply through additional software
functionality (IBM Service Delivery Manager). No infrastructure rip‑and‑replace,
with its attendant disruption to business continuity, is required.

Reliability

In a virtualized data center capable of consolidating considerable IT resources, reliability
and resilience become even more critical than on a traditional platform. Organizations
need assurance that placing more resources on fewer physical servers will not risk major
resource unavailability. BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud provides that assurance by
delivering a highly resilient and reliable environment with no single point of failure.


Redundancy
Redundancy in the BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud is built‑in at the component level.
The IBM BladeCenter HS22V blade servers are equipped with redundant 2980W power
supplies, redundant Advanced Management Modules, two 10 Gbps virtual fabric
switches, and two virtual fabric extension modules. The BladeCenter H chassis also
offers redundant connectors from the blade to the mid‑place for power and I/O, two
N+N power domains, and two AC and DC chassis power buses. The high‑performance
DS3500 fibre channel storage unit, too, has dual controllers built in.

System Attributes Supporting Reliability
IBM designs systems with reliability uppermost in mind, and much of the functionality
of features within the BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud environment – even where
those features have other primary goals – is intended to enhance overall reliability. Some
of the more notable factors supporting reliability include:
 BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager enhances resiliency by automating network and
storage address virtualization; this facilitates faster failover recovery and less
disruptive expansion.
 The ability of IBM VMready to track migrating VMs assists in rapidly moving VMs
to other blades, minimizing downtime for maintenance or replacement of hardware.
 Predictive Failure Analysis, a management tool only available on IBM systems,
monitors vital system components for maximum availability. It can notify
administrators in advance of possibly impending hardware failures, and can be used
in BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud to trigger preemptive action, automatically
averting problems that might impact availability before they occur.

IBM‑Backed Quality and Support
Backing up the quality of products and technology for which it is known, IBM puts an
extensive and highly available support organization behind its installations. The vendor
helps organizations optimize their investments in technology by offering a single point
of serviceability, backed by experience, education, support, and training. This coverage
also extends to third‑party components incorporated into BladeCenter Foundation for
Cloud, enabling compatibility among a variety of IBM and partner products. For
example, Emulex 10 GbE Virtual Fabric Adapters and QLogic Virtual Fabric Extension
Modules are part of the IBM ServerProven program. This is important to avoid the
vendor finger pointing that, in unified architectures consisting of multiple products, can
so often result in costly, drawn‑out downtime.


Conclusion

The IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud sets the standard for highly efficient and
reliable virtualized server platforms that provide a unified architecture in a matter of
days, with minimal risk. Aside from impressive quality and intelligent design
throughout, the platform offers features and/or functionality that set it apart from any
comparable virtualization platforms available.

Noteworthy factors to be aware of include:
 BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud simplifies management by enabling single‑
console management of a heterogeneous data center, including non‑IBM network
devices and network storage from other vendors.
 BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud reduces operating expenses and maximizes
reliability by enabling organizations to set up automated event action plans,
allowing for the definition of tasks based on hardware alerts, and to automate
custom scheduled tasks.
 Aside from built‑in server virtualization using VMware technology, BladeCenter
Foundation for Cloud can use any major virtualization solutions, including Xen,
KVM, or Hyper‑V.
 BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud offers Virtual Machine Image Management,
which greatly expedites VM management.

IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud provides rapid return on investment and drives
down total cost of ownership in a multitude of ways. It has no single point of failure,
and IBM’s excellent and highly responsive technical support organization ensures
reliability even further. All of which makes BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud a
solution that no organization currently providing or planning to implement cloud‑based
services can afford to overlook.

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IBM BCFC White Paper - Why Choose IBM BladeCenter Foundation for Cloud

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