© 2009 IBM Corporation Virtualization Comparative Review: IBM PowerVM and VMware vSphere 4 IBM Power Systems June 2009

© 2009 IBM Corporation

Virtualization Comparative Review:IBM PowerVM and VMware vSphere 4

IBM Power SystemsJune 2009


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Business and IT challenges

Enterprise customer vision: Deploy virtualization to build a dynamic infrastructure

Why PowerVM leads VMware in implementing this customer vision

Resources to help deliver a PowerVM virtualization solution

Topics for Discussion


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Proliferation of servers and networking devices Excessive energy usage and heating problems Inadequate power and cooling infrastructure Data silos and data synchronization Expectations that “everything” is connected Linear staffing costs Skyrocketing software costs Unexplained outages

Meanwhile, customer expectations, competitive pressures, regulatory requirements and fiscal pressures are increasing.

Globally, systems and infrastructure are reaching a breaking point


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A dynamic infrastructure addresses today’s challenges…and tomorrow’s opportunities

Not only ensuring high availability and quality of existing services, but also meeting customer expectations for real-time, dynamic access to innovative new services.

Not just containing operational cost and complexity, but achieving breakthrough productivity gains through virtualization, optimization, energy stewardship, and flexible sourcing.

REDUCE COST

IMPROVE SERVICE

MANAGE RISK

Not only addressing today’s security, resiliency, and compliance challenges, but also preparing for the new risks posed by an even more connected and collaborative world.


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A dynamic infrastructure…

• Automates business and IT assets • Delivers higher value services• Achieves more with less• Addresses the information challenge • Exploits flexible sourcing• Manages and mitigates risks

.…delivers superior business and IT services with agility and speed


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The New Power Equation delivers value for Dynamic Infrastructure

Virtualization

Reducing risk and weekend overtime

Business Resiliency

Reducing data center energy costs

Energy EfficiencyExploiting cost savings from consolidation

Improving service and data center management

Management


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Reduce Cost

PowerVM delivers superior scalability of virtualized workloads, systems and datacenters, driving cost savings through enterprise-wide consolidation

Improve Service

PowerVM provides greater utility by dynamically optimizing IT resources such as CPUs, memory and I/O across workloads, systems and entire datacenters to improve service levels

Manage Risk

Power offers unrivaled flexibility by supporting a diverse range of enterprise workloads and enabling rapid responses to business change, thereby minimizing risk

PowerVM delivers a superior virtualization solution than competitors – including VMware

IBM PowerVM maintains a clear lead over virtualization competitors because it delivers better customer value in these three key areas


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VMware vSphere 4 – the latest iteration of x86-based virtualization

VMware vSphere 4 includes the fourth major release of the underlying ESX hypervisor, which dominates the x86 virtualization market

New positioning emphasizes the ‘stack’ above the hypervisor and redefines offering as a ‘cloud operating system’

Capabilities also being described by VMware as a ‘software mainframe’

Focus on outflanking x86 hypervisor competitors, including Microsoft and Xen

New VMware ‘cloud OS’ positioning leads with technology, rather than emphasis on how vSphere might help customers to:

– Reduce cost– Improve service– Manage risk


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IBM develops hypervisor that would become VM on the mainframe

IBM announces first machines to do physical partitioning

IBM announces LPAR on the mainframe

IBM announces LPAR on POWER™

19671967 19731973 19871987

IBM intro’s POWER Hypervisor™ for System p™ and System i™

IBM announces PowerVM

200720072004200419991999 20082008

IBM announces POWER6™, the first UNIX® servers with Live Partition Mobility

IBM’s history of virtualization leadership

A 40-year tradition continues with PowerVM™

While VMware’s breakthrough achievement was creating a virtualization solution for the x86 architecture in the mid-1990s, that project was inspired by pioneering work performed decades earlier by IBM. Virtualization first emerged on the System z mainframe platform and was later implemented on Power Systems, which benefited from decades of skills and expertise. IBM continues to perfect its virtualization solutions across all platforms.


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Reduce cost: Why is scalability important?

The #1 reason IT managers deploy virtualization solutions is workload consolidation

– Put simply, the more workloads that can be encapsulated within VMs and combined onto a single server, the higher the consolidation ratio and greater the cost reduction

– The integrated combination of POWER architecture and PowerVM makes possible far higher consolidation ratios than the x86 architecture and VMware vSphere


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Scalability Factors VMware ESX 3.5(in VMware Infrastructure 3)

VMware ESX 4.0(in VMware vSphere 4)

PowerVM

Virtual CPUs per VM 4 8 64

Memory per VM 64 GB 256 GB 4096 GB

Virtual NICs per VM 4 10 256

CPUs per physical server 32 64 64

Memory per physical server 256 GB 512 GB 4096 GB

Virtual CPUs per physical server 192 512 640

Reduce cost: PowerVM delivers superior scalability to maximize consolidation and drive down IT costs


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Reduce cost: Scalability of virtual CPUs

VMware vSphere 4– No more than 8 virtual CPUs can be assigned to a single VM (up from 4 in prior version)– The 8 virtual CPUs option is only available in the high-end Enterprise Plus edition– This constraint limits the type of high-end workloads that can be virtualized– Note: It does not matter if more than 8 CPU cores are available on the physical host

(Example: a four-socket Nehalem EX x86 system will have 32 total cores, but a single VM cannot be configured to use all 32 of those cores)

PowerVM– Can assign as many CPU cores as are available on the physical host

(Example: a VM (LPAR) can use all 64 cores on a Power Model 595)– Each virtual CPU can run two threads, resulting in a maximum of 128 threads per VM

– Result: A more effective solution for CPU-intensive workloads


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Reduce cost: Scalability of memory within VMs

VMware vSphere 4– No more than 256G can be assigned to a single VM (up from 64G in prior version)– Even if the physical host has more memory (such as 512G), a single VM cannot use it all

PowerVM– Maximum of 4096G (4 terabytes) of memory can be assigned to a single VM– A single VM can use all of the memory installed on the physical host

– Result: a more effective solution for memory-intensive workloads


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Reduce cost: Scalability of virtual NICs

Virtual NIC: virtualized implementation of network interface card (NIC)

VMware vSphere 4– No more than 10 virtual NICs can be assigned to a single VM (up from 4 in prior version)– Even if the physical host has more NICs available, a single VM cannot use them all

PowerVM– Maximum of 256 virtual NICs can be assigned to a single VM– Multiple physical NICs can be combined as a single virtual NIC with increased bandwidth

– Result: A more effective solution for network-intensive workloads


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Reduce cost: Administration of virtual workloads

VMware vSphere 4– Management via vCenter (formerly VirtualCenter) limited to virtualized x86 workloads– No capability to manage other platforms – maintains “islands of virtualization” dilemma– VMware has no plans to support anything other than x86 workloads

PowerVM– IBM Systems Director manages virtualized workloads across multiple platforms

Includes support for VMware, PowerVM and z/VM

– Result: A more effective solution for physical and virtual system administration


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Reduce cost: Administration of virtual workloads

New white paper from ITG (April 2009) provides comparative TCO data for typical workload consolidations in three industry segments – financial services, technology and government:

– PowerVM delivers better value than VMware, due to lower total administration costs


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Reduce cost: Virtualization licensing and support costs

VMware vSphere 4: new pricing imposes increase for VMware customers

– High-end Enterprise Plus tier added

– Previous VMware Infrastructure 3 customers must pay extra to upgrade

– ‘Per-socket-pair’ model replaced by ‘per-processor’

PowerVM: New features added, but pricing model for Editions unchanged

– Continual increase in customer value


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Improve service: Why is resource utilization important?

IT costs are a significant portion of enterprise investment, yet utilization levels are typically low compared to other assets (~20% for UNIX systems and less than 10% for x86 servers)

– As a result, increased utilization of IT infrastructure has become a top priority

23%

25%

26%

28%

33%

36%

37%

42%

44%

53%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Storage virtualization

Disaster recovery

Storage hardware

Security

Business intelligence

Data center consolidation

Application integration

Cost cutting

Server consolidation

Server virtualization

% of respondents rating issue as high priority

CIO key spending initiatives

Source: Goldman Sachs Group IT Spending Survey, July 2008


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Flexibility Factors VMware ESX 3.5(in VMware Infrastructure 3)

VMware ESX 4.0(in VMware vSphere 4)

PowerVM

Dynamic virtual CPU changes in VM No Add (but not Remove) Yes

Dynamic memory changes in VM No Add (but not Remove) Yes

Dynamic I/O device changes in VM No No Yes

Direct access to I/O devices from within VM No Some (with Nehalem) Yes

Maximum simultaneous live migrations 4 4 8

Improve service: PowerVM delivers superior flexibility to optimize IT resource utilization and boost responsiveness


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Improve service: CPU utilization

VMware vSphere 4– Allows a single VM to be configured with 1 to 8 virtual CPUs– Now possible to ‘hot add’ - but not ‘hot remove’ - virtual CPUs in a VM (the previous

version required a reboot of the VM for any virtual CPU changes)– vSphere Hot Add capability not available in Standard Edition– Granularity of CPU resources for reallocation is a complete physical core (not a fraction)

PowerVM– Allows a single VM to use as many virtual CPUs as the server has cores (up to 64)– Changes in the number of virtual CPUs can be made dynamically– Micro-partitioning allows dynamic reallocation of CPU resources (invisible to workloads)– Granularity of CPU resources that can be allocated is 1/100th of a physical core


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Improve service: I/O device utilization

VMware vSphere 4– Allows limited direct I/O access (unlike prior version, which was virtual I/O only)– New Direct Path I/O capability requires Nehalem chip set support– Intel-specific solution requires BIOS activation of VT-d setting (differs from AMD)– Cannot use VMotion to move VMs configured with Direct Path I/O

PowerVM– Provides choice of virtualized or direct I/O, to optimize workload performance– Virtualized device I/O managed through Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)– Two VIOS partitions can be created for redundancy


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Improve service: Workload utilization

VMware vSphere 4– Supports virtual machines only (complete system with OS)– High redundancy when multiple VMs are deployed using

the identical OS (e.g. Windows Server 2003)– High level of systems management redundancy

PowerVM– Supports both LPARs (VMs) and WPARs for optimal

consolidation and workload mix:• PowerVM Workload Partitions Manager for AIX• Includes Live Application Mobility

– Minimizes redundant/repetitive systems administration– Allows for hundreds of fully-isolated virtualized workloads

on a single physical server


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Improve service: Consolidating diverse enterprise workloads

VMware vSphere 4– Only supports native x86-based workloads – mainly Windows and Linux/x86– No plans to extend support to workloads created for other architectures– Management tool (vCenter) is limited to an x86-only subset of IT infrastructure– Perpetuates ‘silos of virtualization’ that require multiple management tools

PowerVM– Supports all workloads built for AIX, IBM i and Linux (including Linux/x86)– IBM Systems Director can manage both x86 and PowerVM virtualized workloads– Scales to support the most demanding mission-critical workloads


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Manage risk: Live migration of virtualized workloads

VMware vSphere 4– Some VMotion processor compatibility limitations removed (uses Intel Flex Migration)– However, customers still cannot live migrate workloads between Intel and AMD– Other constraints: Requires dedicated physical NICs and subnet– VMotion allows no more than 4 simultaneous live migrations

PowerVM– Live Partition Mobility allows up to 8 simultaneous live migrations– Can be used with PowerVM Lx86 and Active Memory Sharing

Virtualized SAN and Network InfrastructureVirtualized SAN and Network Infrastructure


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Manage risk: Extend the useful life of legacy applications with cross-platform virtualization

VMware vSphere 4– Only supports x86-based workloads – mainly Windows and Linux/x86– Many new vSphere features constrained to Intel Nehalem platforms (not AMD)– Limited to ‘first wave’ homogeneous workload consolidation and x86 silos

PowerVM– PowerVM is the only enterprise virtualization solution capable of running workloads

compiled for different hardware architectures (Power and x86)– Supports ‘second wave’ heterogeneous workload consolidation– * PowerVM is also well-positioned for ‘third wave’ cloud-based consolidation, whereby

heterogeneous workloads are deployed to an external cloud provider

x86 Platforms

x86 Linux App

Linux

x86 Platforms

x86 Linux

App

Linux

Power Systems Platform

Linux

PowerVM Lx86

x86 Linux

App

AIX

AIX Application

POWER Linux

Application

PowerVM

x86 Platforms

x86 Linux

App

Linux

Install and Run

No Porting

No Recompile

No changes

IBM i

iApplication

PowerVM™ Lx86


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Manage risk: Virtualization security

VMware vSphere 4– Dependence on x86 architecture makes the

hypervisor vulnerable to an increasing number of published security exploits

– Intel/AMD virtualization support (VT) was a relatively recent addition, with known issues

– VMware recently gained CC EAL 4 certification, but this only relates to security of the virtual network traffic between VMs

PowerVM– Power (and System/z) architecture built from the

ground up for secure partitioning & virtualization– PowerVM has CC EAL 4 certification

* For further details, read the System Virtualization Security white paper from the IBM SWG Competitive Projects Office (CPO).


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More PowerVM competitive resources

PPT: The Value of Consolidation on Enterprise Power Systems IBM BP White Paper (ITG): Value Proposition for IBM Power Systems IBM BP Report: System Virtualization Security IBM Booklet: IBM Client Success with PowerVM IBM BP


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PowerVM Editions

PowerVM Editions offer a unified virtualization

solution for any Power workloads:

PowerVM Editions let customers select the optimal virtualization solution

PowerVM Editions Express Standard Enterprise

Maximum LPARs 1+2 / Server 10 / Core 10 / Core

Management IVM IVM, HMC IVM, HMC

Virtual I/O Server

PowerVM Lx86

Multiple Shared Processor Pools

Live Partition Mobility

Active Memory Sharing


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PowerVM: Leads the competition in delivering dynamic infrastructure

√ Reduce Costs

√ Improve Service

√ Manage Risk

The leading virtualization platform for UNIX, i and Linux clients


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Revised September 26, 2006

Special notices


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Revised April 24, 2008

Special notices (cont.)

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© 2009 IBM Corporation Virtualization Comparative Review: IBM PowerVM and VMware vSphere 4 IBM Power Systems June 2009