The result of a 3-year engineering effort to improve the economics of operating enterprise-sized, x86-based systems, IBM has introduced new eX5 servers to offer more scalable, workload-tuned computing. The systems will be officially available later this month and throughout the year.
With this introduction, IBM engineers have expanded the capabilities of the x86 platform by achieving an engineering first - decoupling memory from its traditional, tightly bound place alongside the server's processor, thereby eliminating the need to buy another server to support growing memory-intensive workloads. Today, typical x86 servers are only being utilized at 10% of capacity due to a 30-year-old architecture that locks processor and memory capacity together.
A unique IBM silicon innovation allows processors on eX5 systems to access extended memory very quickly, delivering the largest memory capacity in the industry. Independent memory scaling technology, called MAX 5, offers six times more memory than is available across the industry today, which can allow clients to run 82% more "virtual servers" for the same license costs and reduce middleware and application expenses.
IBM will introduce three eX5 systems in 2010 - the four-processor IBM System x3850 X5; the BladeCenter HX5; and the System x3690 X5, an entry-priced server capable of enterprise-class operation.
In addition to MAX5, IBM's new eX5 systems feature other innovations that can improve the performance, cost and flexibility for x86 workloads. eXFlash is a next-generation flash-storage technology that replaces an older, less reliable generation of storage and can cut storage costs up to 97% by replacing hundreds of hard-disk drives and thousands of wires and cables. FlexNode provides physical partitioning capability to change from one system to two distinct systems and back again, allowing clients to run infrastructure applications by day and larger batch jobs by night on the same system for superior asset utilization.
For more information on eX5, go here.
For more information on IBM System x, go here.