IBM announced that SoftLayer will offer OpenPOWER-based servers as part of its portfolio of cloud-based services. With the new offering, clients will be able to select OpenPOWER-based “bare-metal” servers when configuring their cloud-based IT infrastructure from SoftLayer, an IBM company. Leveraging the OpenPOWER Foundation design concept, the servers were developed to help clients better manage data-intensive workloads on public and private clouds.
"The new OpenPOWER-based bare metal servers makes it easy for users to take advantage of one of the industry's most powerful and open server architectures," said Sonny Fulkerson, CIO at SoftLayer. "The offering allows SoftLayer to deliver a higher level of performance, predictability and dependability not always possible in virtualized cloud environments.”
OpenPOWER-based servers leverage IBM's licensable POWER processor technology and feature innovations resulting from open collaboration among OpenPOWER Foundation members, which now total more than 100 technology leaders worldwide. To develop the SoftLayer bare-metal server, IBM and SoftLayer worked closely with fellow OpenPOWER Foundation members TYAN, a provider of advanced server/workstation platforms, and Mellanox Technologies, a supplier of InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions.
Due in the second quarter, the SoftLayer bare metal servers run Linux applications and are based on the IBM POWER8 architecture, the processor technology at the heart of IBM's Power Systems line of servers. The new OpenPOWER bare metal servers will join SoftLayer’s growing stable of POWER-based systems.
For more information on IBM Cloud, go to www.ibm.com/cloud.
For more information on OpenPOWER, go to www.openpowerfoundation.org.