IBM unveils new Flex System technologies to go past blade computing
14 Nov 2012
To help clients increase their IT utilisation and reduce data centre operation costs, IBM today introduced new mobile, management and storage components for its PureFlex and Flex System portfolios. Key among these components is a new storage system to help improve storage utilisation as much as 30 per cent while delivering extraordinary ease of use.
The IBM Flex System goes beyond competitor's blade configurations and provides the elements for IBM PureFlex. IBM Flex Systems are built-to-order offerings for clients who want to custom build and tune configurations to their specific requirements. This allows them to select the specific compute, systems networking and optional storage and management required to support their specific workloads.
This storage system is tightly integrated with IBM Flex System Manager and uses IBM Storwize family virtualisation and unique IBM Real-time Compression technologies to help clients reduce storage requirements by up to 80 per cent. As a result, clients can run their most important workloads with no application performance degradation.
IBM also unveiled new capabilities for PureFlex and Flex Systems that will provide the management and administration tools clients need to effectively increase their datacenter utilisation.
These include: integrated end-to-end storage management; mobile access to the system for clients through a wide range of mobile devices (Android, Blackberry and iOS); and centralised control of user id's and passwords across nodes and chassis for greater system security. These features will build upon the capabilities of Flex System Manager to help organisations more efficiently create and manage their IT infrastructures.
Recent research from IDC illustrates that one of the main challenges IT organisations face today is around the deployment, management, and administration of servers – which are consuming a larger portion of the overall IT budget and consequently leaving fewer resources to spend on new projects.
