IBM announced new POWER6 processor-based servers for enterprise and SMB clients and updated virtualization and systems management software designed to help clients improve performance, drive innovation, and maximize return on their IT investments in the new enterprise data center.

According to IDC, in 2Q08 IBM UNIX grew revenue 25.8% YTY. Clients are using innovative IBM solutions, services, virtualization, and the technology that produced POWER6, to manage a broad variety of business applications – from multiple servers in the large data center to standalone computers supporting the small business franchise.

IBM announced a new Power 570, which offers more energy efficiency and consolidation options with new processor cards that double the number of cores in the same system footprint. Starting at just 4 cores, the system can be upgraded to a full 32-core single system image (32-core SMP); and with hot-node add, businesses can install more server modules without having to take the system down when the time comes for growth.

IBM also announced that the Power 570/16, which supports from 2 to 16 POWER6 cores, now features faster speeds of 4.4 GHz and even 5.0 GHz – the fastest of the POWER6 processors – previously available only in the top of the line Power 595.

The Power 560 Express, a commercial computer system, is a new POWER6 server model that sits between the Power 550 and Power 570. The Power 560 features 4-, 8- and 16-core configurations and is designed to help businesses consolidate multiple UNIX, i or x86 workloads onto less footprints.

The Power 560 can save companies up to $840,000 and 83 percent in energy by consolidating 13 Sun Fire V490 servers on a single Power 560 server with PowerVM, as compared to consolidating the same number on four Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers with dynamic system domains.The Power 560 Express provides an 80-percent performance boost and 60-percent performance per watt improvement compared to a 16-core HP Integrity rx7640.

The new Power 570/32, 570/16, and 560, expanded capabilities of the Power 550 and 520 systems and the new SAN options on blades all run any combination of AIX, i, and Red Hat or Novell Linux.

Enhanced Power Systems software for AIX, i and Linux, includes:

• A beta version of PowerVM Active Memory Sharing, new virtualization software that helps clients improve memory utilization by pooling resources between partitions.
• IBM Systems Director, a new foundation for enterprise platform management, spanning multiple platforms and operating environments. Systems Director helps clients deploy, monitor, analyze, optimize and update Power server and storage physical and virtual resources running any combination of AIX, i or Linux workloads.
• A new version of Active Energy Manager, an extension to IBM Systems Director, featuring advanced energy control options designed to boost performance per watt by slowing processor clock speed or even putting processors in “nap” mode when not in use. It also allows users to set an energy cap a for a single POWER6 server, or even across a pool of POWER6-based servers.
• PowerHA for AIX, enhanced with asynchronous GLVM support that enables geographic dispersion of systems to improve business resiliency and disaster recovery.
• A new release of IBM iCluster, a solution based on logical replication, that integrates with IBM i service and fix management tools.
• A new distribution agreement with Vision Solutions for IBM to distribute Vision Cluster1, Vision’s flagship enterprise cluster management solution for IBM i.
• New and updated Rational software for the i operating environment that helps geographically-distributed software delivery teams collaborate.

In addition to IBM Systems Director, IBM recently introduced AIX Enterprise Edition to help UNIX clients discover applications and server relationships, monitor and report service status, manage workload partitions (WPARs), and enable cost analysis of server usage. Systems Director and AIX Enterprise Edition have been designed to provide a full platform management solution for UNIX servers, and to integrate with IBM Tivoli tools for enterprise service management.