Smarter Computing: the IBM i Cloud Video

During the first half of this year, IBM has released two videos that help explain how IBM i fits in the Smarter Computing message within IBM’s overall Smarter Planet strategy. I talked about the first video in “Designed for Data – IBM i Video” and the second was introduced by Alison Butterill in her guest blog titled “Smarter Computing and Workload Optimized Infrastructure for IBM i.” Today, I introduce the final video in the three-video series.

Why three? Well, as you have likely noticed over the past four years, IBM has been talking about the Smarter Planet strategy. Supporting this strategy, the focus of our part of IBM has been to enable Smarter Computing, and the three aspects of Smarter Computing are:

• Designed for Data
• Optimized Systems
• Managed in the Cloud

With the release of Live Partition Mobility for IBM i, in 7.1 TR4, IBM i is now an operating system that is fully capable of PowerVM-based cloud hosting. PowerVM is its underlying virtualization layer, and HMC and Systems Director components manage the cloud instances. This, then, is the perfect time for you to see the final video in the series. Here is the URL – bit.ly/IBMiCloud and here is the video:

Once again, I am proud to be part of this video. As I mentioned in some LinkedIn discussions after the prior videos were released, these videos are intended to be conversation starters. They position a technology you already know about – IBM i – within the overall strategy of Smarter Computing. They can also be valuable to show someone who has heard about IBM’s Smarter Planet message, but who hasn’t heard about how IBM i fits into that strategy.  Much like the “Why IBM i?” presentation I talked about last week, the video allows us as IBM and you as IBM i professionals to have material we can all use to explain the value and vitality of the platform.

This past two months or so have been very busy for many of us within the IBM i community, as we’ve had several conferences, advisory councils and customer briefings. It seems I am giving my “IBM i Trends & Directions “ presentation two or three times a week. One key section of that presentation talks about Smarter Planet and explains how IBM i has been supporting that strategy for some time, and it’s only now becoming clearer to the world at large. These videos may not tell the whole story – no single series of short videos could – but they help us start the conversation. They help us encourage people to learn about IBM i, or to learn more about this server that has always been designed for data, that takes the expertise of the IBM i development team and optimizes systems for business use, and that now offers cloud capabilities both in the virtualization which has existed for decades, as well as hypervisor-based virtualization which matches any in the Power Systems family.

We hope you like the videos and find them useful in explaining what value your business gets from the platform: Power Systems + IBM i.

 

 

 

 

Twitter: #ibmi, #PowerVM #powersystems @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Live Partition Mobility, TR4 and more - IBM i 7.1

Today is announce day for several items that might be of interest to many of you, and one thing that will certainly affect almost all of you at some point.

Today, IBM is announcing the content of Technology Refresh 4 for IBM i 7.1. (That’s the “one thing.” You’ll all be on 7.1 soon, right? And when you are, you will want the latest TR, so you’ll get TR4.)

Many clients have been waiting for this announcement, anticipating the delivery of one major function enabled by TR4; the one known as “Live Partition Mobility” (LPM).

I actually referred to this function obliquely back in October. I included a roadmap for function that was required in IBM i so that it can be used to provide a PowerVM-based cloud. In October, there was one final step to be completed. It is now complete.

For those of you who might be a little unclear about the concept of Live Partition Mobility, it is simply this: You have a partition running on system A; you tell it to move to system B; it moves – while it's still running! It might take a minute, and often only a few seconds, to move from A to B, but it will move, and there will be no disruption in the running workloads. A few seconds pause to users who are interacting with it, but nothing more. IBM i and PowerVM just pause the work taking place on one system, move it to another, and start it up again.

Customers will use this function in many ways. They can balance work among servers to get the most efficient use of their resources. Or perhaps they need to take one machine down for maintenance – they can move the workload that's running on it to another system for a while, then move it back when the system is ready to go again. And very importantly, clients who want to implement clouds of Power Systems in their organizations will be able to do so, with IBM i participating fully in those clouds.

This is all made possible when you use the Virtual I/O Server to host the I/O for your IBM i partition. There are other technical requirements - POWER7, 7.1 TR4 or beyond, and more, you can find details here www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/hw/ilpm. 

Oh, and if you are an ISV, and would like to test your solution in an environment with LPM, the IBM Innovation Centers are available for you.

Still, while the most anticipated feature of the announcement might be LPM, there is much more in the announcement. Java 7 is now available on IBM i 7.1. This has actually been available for a while now, but today’s announcement highlights it, so if you want to ensure you have the PTFs which enable Java 7, go to the developerWorks page for “Java on IBM i” and click either the “News” link or the PTF Groups link. There are also several key DB2 enhancements, as well as a Technology Preview of a new member of the IBM i Access products, which removes the dependence on preinstalled code.

This brings me to a couple of other points I want to mention today.

First, I need to re-emphasize how important it is for the IBM i community to make use of developerWorks (dW) on a regular basis. It is on these dW pages we put details about the newest enhancements and how to get them. You can start at the dW IBM i home page -- https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/ -- and browse for great information. Or you can go to specific pages, such as the Java pages linked above, and subscribe to them so that you get an e-mail each time they are updated.

Second, I want to make sure you understand that some of the enhancements announced at the same time as a Technology Refresh are not actually delivered as part of the TR PTF Group. This is the case with Java, and it’s the case with all of the DB2 enhancements as well. Technology Refreshes, at their most accurate and basic level, are only used to provide function entirely below the Machine Interface, and almost always implement changes in Virtualization (such as LPM), I/O (such as new DASD options) or Processor/Firmware capabilities. When the first TR was shipped, my guest bloggers described TRs in detail, so you might want to re-read the TR Introduction blog. Perhaps even better, the main IBM i Technology Refresh page is very helpful. And if you want to see the content of each of the TRs that have been announced, there is a dW page that links you to that information.

This entry is getting a bit long, so let me give you some pointers to other important places with information about things announced today:

• Dawn May’s “i Can” blog talks about the details of implementing LPM. http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/i_can/2012/04/move-my-i.html 
• The DB2 for i enhancements are too numerous to enumerate, but include XMLTABLE support and extensions to three-part name support. Suffice it to say that there should be something of interest to all you database fans out there. Go here for the scoop: www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/techupdates/db2
• Speaking of DB2, Mike Cain writes a blog called “DB2 for i” and his blog will have some interesting tidbits about today’s announced function, too. http://db2fori.blogspot.com/
• IBM Software Group support for pricing based on Workload Groups is part of today’s IBM i announcement, but I described it back in February.
• A new product is available from Rational, called the Application Management Toolset for i (AMTS), which contains limited versions of two of the most basic tools – PDM and SEU. The description of this new product is in the Rational Announcement letters. I’ll try to post a link in the comments section when I get it.
• Finally, for those of you who are implementing Linux in your environments, IBM Power Linux has a big announcement today, and you will definitely want to check it out before deciding to buy any other hardware platform for Linux workloads. (Again, look in the comments section. If someone finds the link before I do, feel free to post it! I’ll be on webcasts and planes quite a bit over the next couple of days.)

All told, today’s announcements include significant enhancements to your IBM i installations. I hope you will be able to take the time to read about the new ways we are delivering value on this integrated operating environment on Power Systems.

 

 

Twitter: #ibmi, @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Image Management for IBM i

One of the many announcements IBM made last week might have slipped past you but is a key step on the roadmap to “Cloud” capabilities for IBM i. It is called “Image Management” in the announcements (it's buried a bit but you can find it on page 9), but also might be thought of as “Virtual Machine Deployment.”

A little education is necessary, I think.

Suppose you have an application, and you want to provide that application on several partitions. The traditional method of accomplishing this is to install every piece of software you need, from the operating system on up through the application, on each of the partitions.

When the functions announced last week become generally available, there will be another option.

PowerVM has a component called VMControl. “VM” can stand for a number of things, but in this blog, let’s use it to mean “Virtual Machine.” You can think of a virtual machine as the partition, and it needs to be loaded with software to make it useful.

As seen in the first figure, an “image” is the set of software needed to run a specific environment, for example, an application. It includes the application itself, as well as any other software required for the application to run. I call this the “application platform.”

As I already implied, though, that bottom rectangle comprises several pieces of software. Without getting too granular, the second figure is one way to think of the “Application Platform.” It includes the operating system, the fixes for the OS and the middleware required.

The basic concept for “Image Management” is this: Install one base partition with everything you need, then use VMControl to create a “base image.” When you want to roll out another partition with that same application, just create the partition based on the base image.

In the third figure, I have used the base image to create three partitions.

Notice that, using the image management software, I was able to create these environments without having to install the software in the image on each subsequent partition. This is much more efficient, and less error-prone, than having to install each of the pieces of software on each partition.

There are a few things to customize for each partition, of course. The VMControl support allows the operating system to do that customization as part of starting the new image on the partition, and that’s why we needed to add support to IBM i 7.1, in Technology Refresh 3, to enable PowerVM’s functions to work with IBM i.

I am particularly excited about this feature, because it is one of the last “basic cloud” capabilities that an operating system needs to have if it is going to be used to implement pure cloud solutions. I use the following chart in many of my presentations to explain that IBM i has been working for quite a while on “cloud enablement” technology. As you can see, this capability, requiring POWER7, IBM i 7.1 TR 3, and the new PowerVM capability, brings us very close to the end of that base roadmap.

Now, image management can be used, as I’ve described it, to create many partitions with the same base application image. But there are other uses for it, too. You could create a master image with only the OS and a set of fixes, then create a new partition easily whenever you wanted. A simple test of a new piece of software would be much easier if getting a new partition up and running did not require a complete installation of the OS, because the base image could be deployed in minutes. Checkpoints could be created. Quality Assurance partitions can be rolled out quickly. The flexibility of this sort of technology is impressive and gets more impressive with advancements we’ll make over the next couple of years.

 

 

Twitter: #ibmi #powervm @Steve_Will_IBMi 

 

Advisory Councils – Requirements and Strategy

I’ve been a bit silent on this blog for a while. Why? Conferences and Advisory Councils. (And a toothache, but let’s leave that out of the discussion for now…)

In the span of six weeks, I will have had the following opportunities to talk with, and present to, many parts of the IBM i community:

• April 29-30: COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC)
• May  –4: COMMON Conference
• May 17–18: IBM i ISV Advisory Council (ISVAC)
• May 22–24: COMMON Europe
• May 25-26: COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC)
• June 5–10: IBM i Large User Group

Yes, this has been “conference season.” I've had a chance to give presentations on the latest releases of IBM i, on the reasons IBM i is unique in the IT industry, on the future of IBM i, and on the Software as a Service and Cloud capabilities of IBM i. Equally importantly, I've had the chance to talk about future requirements and potential strategy with several user groups.

I can’t stress enough how important submitting requirements through these user groups can be. We listen carefully to the kinds of enhancements our customers and ISVs want, and many times it's the passionate explanation of business opportunity from these groups that help us justify new investments.

In addition to requirements, though, I solicit input from these Advisory Councils on potential new strategies. Because the ideas are “potential” they don’t always come to fruition, but getting input helps us make the decisions and often allows us to make modifications before we actually implement those that do make it to the market.

An example of this sort of strategic input, which we can talk about now that we have delivered it, is the Technology Refresh (TR) concept. We exposed the idea to our Advisory Councils about 18-24 months before we shipped the 7.1 release, which was six months before the first TR. We took input, made some changes, and the entire deliverable was better for it.

At the most recent set of Advisory Councils, I've been asking for input on several other new concepts. Some may not happen – in fact, based on the feedback from CAAC and CEAC, I’m sure one will not. Some will eventually appear, but will take a while and will likely evolve, but getting feedback now is important.

I’ll be back soon with some good stories about Innovation Award winners and how they are using IBM i.

 

Twitter: #ibmi @Steve_Will_IBMi #COMMONUG

 

Focus Areas in 2011-2013 for IBM i

One of the presentations I’ve been giving lately goes by two different titles. The first is “IBM i Trends & Directions.” This is a fairly common title – there are “Trends & Directions” presentations on most technologies and industries. You know what to expect when something has the “T&D” title.

The title I prefer, though, is “IBM i: Today, Tomorrow & Beyond.” And I don’t just prefer it – I structured the presentation around those timeframes.

While a blog is no place to present all of the ideas that take 60-90 minutes to present live, one of the key charts in that presentation lists the focus areas the IBM i development team has for the next few years, and it gives you an idea what our IBM i platform will be doing “Tomorrow and Beyond.” 

The four major categories are these:

Solutions Enablement

• Deliver high priority requirements for ISV solution integration
• Invest in language and database requirements

Resilient Systems  

• Simplify administration of PowerHA for mid-sized companies
• Continue storage-area network integration

Simplified Management

• Integrate IBM i management tools end-to-end with virtual I/O server
• Automation

Cloud Computing

• Provide virtual machine image management, mobility and automation
• Extend storage virtualization features, such as thin provisioning

I can’t give away any secrets, of course, but I can talk briefly about some of these. First, let’s talk about Solutions Enablement.  As you’re probably aware, a key tenet of the IBM i value proposition is we know customers buy solutions--applications--because it’s the application that caters to their business. For this reason, we’re constantly determining ways in which our solution providers are going to be using their underlying systems and providing new capabilities for them. A great example of this from the recent past is the delivery of XML within DB2 for i. A typical customer may not know this is a requirement, but many ISVs need this capability to integrate better with the Internet-centric world of applications.

Now let’s jump down to cloud computing. Of course, many of our smaller clients don’t see an immediate need to do “cloud” with their IBM i platform. That’s fair. However, there are pieces of cloud enablement that may be useful even to clients with just one or two Power Systems running IBM i. IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 2, for example, delivers the capability to suspend an active IBM i partition and then later resume that partition exactly where it left off, with no IPL. This is a key requirement if you’re going to use IBM i to build a cloud, but it also may be useful in a general customer situation (e.g., if you have a development partition that can be taken down each night, freeing up resources for a production partition).

Furthermore, there’s significant opportunity for IBM i solutions to compete with the competition if a cloud environment can host those i solutions. While many of our ISVs already do great business with a “Software as a Service” model, they could be more efficient and reach more clients with new cloud-enabling technology. There are some ISVs who may be able to compete much better against an x86 solution if they could simply sell a cloud-based IBM i solution on a monthly-fee basis, rather than asking a customer to buy a Power System.

I’ve only briefly covered two of the four aforementioned items, but I hope you get the idea. We’re looking at what our current customers and solution providers need, but we are also planning for a future that’s quite different from the market in which IBM i’s predecessors initially thrived. It’s all about making sure that you and IBM i will have a long future, today, tomorrow and beyond.

Twitter: #ibmi @Steve_Will_IBMi #COMMONUG