Lecture 2 Introducing the IBM Power family

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So let me introduce the Power 9 family of servers. This is designed to match the requirements of customers' most critical data-intensive workloads, from mission-critical data workloads to big data systems to the next generation of AI workloads, Power 9 has a system for any of those jobs. Now by leveraging the servers that meet specific Workload characteristics customers can gain not only a performance advantage over their competitors, but with the price-performance advantage that Power 9 offers, the savings can be invested in building new next-generation AI applications that will disrupt their industry. Simply said, Power 9 provides competitive advantage. Now, before we have a look at the hardware in more detail, let's have a look at the operating system choices, the choice is good. Right. So what operating system is the right one for the task? You want flexibility. Sure, we're talking about Linux in this course, but the enterprise you work in or will be working in is likely to be running workloads that benefit more from the hardened, resilient, tailored robustness of either AIX or IBM i. Now it's important understand that the Power 9 servers and power systems servers in general, run workloads on the operating system of your choice. So be sure to check the documentation though, because a few of the power system servers don't run all three operating systems. All right, so more importantly, it's key to recognize that regardless of the operating system you choose, the capabilities of the platform are unmatched. In other words, it's very likely that Linux will run faster and more reliably on a power system server than anywhere else. Now the small enterprise server line starts with what's called the S914. It's a 4U that comes with one socket and it has four, six or eight cores per socket along with a terabyte of memory. You can order an S914 as a tower rack mounted system. You might notice that the chart does not list processor frequencies and this is because the Power 9 Server shifts with dynamic adjustable frequencies. By default, all of the offerings in this server line, except for the S914, are set to run in maximum performance mode. The S914 is not because it is likely that this server, especially in tower configuration, will be running outside of a data center, is under a desk in an office and therefore a client may not want the high fan speeds and associated noise to run out of the boxes of the default setting of course it is an option. The other servers in this line up, the L922, S922, and S924. All ship by default with the maximum performance setting for processor frequency. The L922 and S922 both come with one or two sockets in a 2U footprint and with the cores per socket as noted, they L922 and S922 also come with a maximum of four terabytes, substantial advantage over competitors. So, finally the S924 is a two socket 4U Server with up to 12 cores per socket, and also comes with a maximum of four terabytes of memory. All right, so don't forget all of the servers in this line up come with Power VM pre-installed, which means you can take advantage of the high virtualization density on these highly capable servers and build your own private Cloud. These servers are ideally suited for scale out data intensive workloads like MongoDB, MySQL, DB2, and other database systems. Now the previous server models were focused more on clustered workloads. But if you're looking to create an on-premise private Cloud, what do you want? You'll want dense compute power in a single footprint where your demands for quickly provision small workload environments can be satisfied. That moves us into the E, the enterprise servers, the E950 and the SAP HANA optimized H950, they come in two socket enforce configurations in a 4U form factor for standard 19-inch racking closures. The EH950, AE950, and the H950 leveraged the eight-way simultaneous multi threading, or SMT eight processors in 12-core, 11-core, 10-core and 8-core offerings. That means each core can handle up to eight simultaneous threads, providing very high potential throughput. We'll talk more about threading later in the course. Clients can leverage the 12-core processor for maximum throughput or the 8-core processor for maximum per core performance, or you can go somewhere in between depending on the workloads that you want to run on the system. So for private Cloud deployments, the E or H 950 servers come with a robust amount, 16 terabytes of memory, which supports up to 920 gigabytes a second of total system memory bandwidth. Okay, for memory hungry workloads like databases, data intensive applications, and in-memory analytics, in addition to the aforementioned, a private Cloud dense configurations. The E and H 980s.

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