IBM expanded its CloudBurst family of pre-integrated cloud service delivery platforms with a POWER7-based hardware appliance, as well as separately offering the software to run on currently installed IBM and non-IBM systems.
Based on IBM's own corporate cloud installations and hosting engagements with thousands of clients, IBM CloudBurst appliances are workload-optimized solutions that integrate hardware, storage, networking, virtualization and its service management software to create a private cloud environment. IBM says CloudBurst can cut the IT staff labor in integrating systems, provisioning and managing storage up to 95%. "Automating IT resources to support new applications is critical because at most companies, a business user typically must wait weeks to get access to new IT resources due to the manual processes required to set up resources," says Lauren States, vice president of Tivoli Cloud Computing for IBM.
At the core of the new cloud offerings is IBM's latest autonomic computing offering, the new IBM Service Delivery Manager, which automates the deployment, monitoring and management of cloud computing services for the IT staff.
A new appliance, IBM CloudBurst 2.1 on POWER Systems, is based on IBM Power 750 servers. The appliance can support from 160 up to 2,900 virtual machines while delivering greater security to keep the data in those applications separate. IBM estimates that private clouds built on Power systems can be up to 70% less expensive than stand alone x86 servers. The appliance will be available starting December 17, 2010
The software offering, IBM Service Delivery Manager, is based on a pre-integrated, software-only stack for x86 and Power systems. The software can be ordered separate from the hardware thus providing companies the flexibility of using their current IBM or non-IBM hardware investments to deploy a cloud computing solution. The software is deployed as a set of virtual images that automate the IT service deployment and provide resource monitoring, cost management and provisioning of services in the cloud. IBM Service Delivery Manager for x86 systems is available today and IBM Service Delivery Manager for Power systems will be available starting December 17, 2010.
A new version of the IBM CloudBurst 2.1 on System x is also available, based on IBM HS22V blades equipped with 50% more memory and double the fibre channel bandwidth. IBM says the appliance has the ability to run 30 or more virtual machines per blade.
For more information on CloudBurst, go here.
For more information on Service Delivery Manager, go here.