IBM are gradually releasing the features from the next generation of POWER7 VIOS. In short VIO servers will be able to participate in a cluster outside of a single frame (across multiple boxes). This will mean that you can present virtual disks to LPAR's from one VIO server and make them available to another server via another VIO server at the same time without using NPIV. This reduces the dependency on feature rich storage (and cooperative storage teams!) will prove useful for the scale-out clustering technologies and for partition mobility.

They are planning to build in some useful auto-provisioning, Snapshot, cloning and thin provisioning features at the VIO cluster level all controller by director. Making it much more flexible to work in a virtualised environment with multiple systems.

With IBM Recently anouncing that they are no longer offering their IBM POWER6 product range, I looked at what this meant and possible upgrade options available for upgrades and how best to maximise any machines that still have spare CPU/RAM slots that could be upgraded.
The withdrawal dates for IBM POWER6 after which you can't buy new machines (nor POWER5 to POWER6 upgrades) are as follows:...

The new rPerf document from IBM released on the 17th of Aug contains some big rperf numbers for the IBM System P POWER7 795, and due to the dramatic leap in processor core count (64 on a 595, to 256 on a 795) they have paid some thought to the way they display the rPerf figures.

POWER7 in the smaller cheaper rack mount options have been announced making the new POWER7 chipset available to the SME market as of Sept. I'm looking forward to doing some costing against x86 solutions in this zone, the prices look competitive, especially if you take OS and virtualisation software into account.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/08/17/ibm_power7_low_high/page2.html 

 Capacity on Demand (CoD) is a feature of IBM's Power Systems designed to provide an easier way to upgrade your server resources when the need arises.

"With POWER7 you get twice the performance, use half the power and four times the virtual capacity for the same price as POWER6". IBM 08 Feb 2010.

Now IBM have officially announced the IBM System P POWER7 range I thought I'd test some of IBM's bold claims for performance vs purchase price, power consumption and space savings for the new POWER7 range by comparing it with the POWER6 range. Have they really changed that much? The move from IBM System P POWER5 to IBM System P POWER6 was a great improvement in performance and brought with it some great new features, but the price was still very high and left open the door to a price contest with x86 alternatives and some challenging total cost of ownership (TCO) comparisons. I thought I'd start by taking a look at the really popular entry point in the POWER range - the 550 (4U rack mount).  First thing to note is that it is now called the 750 (finally the numbers make sense!) So how does it compare on price/performance with the POWER6?

IBM have released some notes to help people plan for future releases of POWER chips. It indicates the technologies that will be supported (i.e. I/O cards, drawers disks etc) and those that will be dropped from POWER7 onwards.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/sod2.html

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I just stumbled acoss a benchmarking paper for the IBM Power6 570 running Oracle 11i. It's a bit old, but sill relevant for a lot of people I suspect.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/05/20/ibmpower6.pdf

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The 5Ghz POWER6 processors are considerably more expensive than the 4.2/4.4Ghz alternatives and could be ruled out on grounds of cost on first inspection.  I was called upon by a customer the other day to perform a total cost of ownership study for 5 years including organic growth on a IBM Power p570 system

Included in the TCO calculation were power consumption, services, maintenance, hardware and software costs. The overall result was that the IBM p570 the 5Ghz system proved the lower cost option compared to the 4.2 or 4.4Ghz. The most significant factor was the reduced Oracle licence overhead. 

The higher performance rating of the 5.0Ghz core kept the licence count within the customers current licence entitlement that had been agreed with the POWER5 cores (0.75 licences per core compared with 1 per core for POWER6).

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Looks like the POWER chip range will remain the fastest chip for seriously scalable computing with the new release of POWER7 staying in front of Nehalem-EX

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/155178,power7-vs-nehalem-ex.aspx

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