IBM Corporation today announced a major update to its LinuxONE server hardware, with a particular focus on durability, claiming that it can reduce data center power consumption by up to 75% across multiple workloads.
The LinuxONE Server Series is an advanced enterprise Linux platform. It is designed to run Linux-based workloads in enterprise data centers, with advanced features including encryption anywhere, cloud-native application development, and 99.999% uptime.
The server is also highly flexible and capable of supporting workloads such as database consolidation, secure data servers, hybrid clouds, digital asset security, and blockchain. They also offer extensive integration with software such as Oracle Database, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Kubernetes, Hyperledger Fabric, Temenos T2, Core Banking, and Red Hat OpenShift.
IBM says the latest LinuxONE Emperor server announced today incorporates many new features to help reduce power consumption. It makes some pretty big claims, saying that a single server can consolidate the same amount of work that would normally run on four equivalent x86 servers.
Additionally, the new servers use 50% less floor space than comparable x86 configurations while reducing CO2e by more than 850 tons per year, the company claims. CO2e is the number of tons of CO2 emitted with the same global warming potential as one ton of other greenhouse gases.
IBM says it is responding to customer needs to increase the sustainability of its data center operations. He said a recent IBM IBV study found that
8% of CEOs across all sectors consider sustainability one of their top priorities over the next two to three years. However, 51% of CEOs also say that sustainability is one of their biggest challenges due to a lack of data literacy and technological barriers.
Marcel Mitran, IBM Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for Cloud Platforms, LinuxONE, says that while data centers account for a large portion of an enterprise’s energy consumption, the technology they support can also help turn sustainable ambitions into action.
“Reducing data center energy consumption is a tangible way to reduce carbon emissions,” he said. “In this context, the move to IBM LinuxONE is designed to help customers achieve their scalability and security goals, in addition to achieving sustainability goals for today’s digital business.”
LinuxONE Emperor servers are designed to run high-density workloads continuously, increasing capacity by activating unused cores without increasing power consumption or the associated carbon footprint. In addition, customers can monitor their energy usage with IBM Instana Observability, integrated with LinuxONE.
Other features of LinuxONE Emperor include “cloud-like flexibility,” with a system capable of rebalancing resources based on on-demand capacity, allowing workloads to automatically increase and downsize, one company said. Servers also benefit from quantum security, with ubiquitous encryption capable of protecting data at rest and in flight.
In addition, they support IBM Cloud Hyper Protect virtual servers, providing a public cloud environment in which the cloud tenant maintains full control over Linux-based virtual servers for the containerized workloads. sensitive data. This means that customers have full control over their encrypted data, workloads, and encryption keys, and even IBM, as a cloud service provider, can access them. IBM says LinuxONE Emperor will generally be available on September 14, with low-end and mid-range systems coming early next year.
