Edit: Have you tried this yet?
Originally posted November 10, 2020 on AIXchange
Rob McNelly provides perspective on a new Redbook and its relationship with IBM Private Cloud.
IBMer Gareth Coates recently tweeted about a new Redbook, “IBM Power SystemsTM Private Cloud with Shared Utility Capacity featuring Power Enterprise Pools 2.0.”
This draft publication, which is compiled by several authors, including Coates, consists of 132 pages covering planning, configuration and management and migrating from Private Cloud 1.0 to 2.0:
“As more enterprises look at ways to reduce costs while maintaining the scalability required to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment, pay-as-you-go or consumption-based infrastructure models have grown increasingly popular. These purchase models enable clients to quickly scale their IT infrastructure up or down to optimize costs while quickly adapting to dynamic business environments.
“The IBM Power Systems Private Cloud Solution expands the breadth and availability of Shared Utility Capacity to enable a wider range of Power clients to take advantage of cloud agility and economics provided by Power Enterprise Pools 2.0 on the flagship Power E980. With Shared Utility Capacity, the concept of Power Enterprise Pools 2.0 is expanded to the Power Server E950 as well as to the Power Servers S922 (9009-22G) and S924 (9009-42G). In addition, minimum activation requirements were lowered to 1 Base Processor Activation and 256 GB Base Memory Activation when moving systems into a pool. This can substantially lower the initial system acquisition price for clients who want to minimize their short-term capital expenses and/or tailor their system configuration to their specific deployment plans.”
Here are some details about IBM’s CoD offerings:
Capacity upgrade on Demand: You can permanently activate inactive processor cores and memory units by purchasing an activation feature and entering the provided activation code on the Hardware Management Console. You can do this without restarting your server or interrupting your business
Elastic Capacity on Demand: You can activate processor cores or memory units for a number of days by using the Hardware Management Console to activate resources on a temporary basis. Activations are available in 24 hour increments.
Utility Capacity on Demand: Utility CoD is used when you have unpredictable, short workload spikes. You can automatically provide additional processor capacity on a temporary basis within the shared processor pool of a single system. Usage is measured in processor minute increments.
Trial Capacity on Demand: You can evaluate the use of inactive processor cores, memory, or both, at no charge using Trial CoD. After it is started, the trial period is available for 30 power-on days.
Power Enterprise Pool: A Power Enterprise Pool is a group of systems that can share Mobile Capacity on Demand (CoD) processor resources and memory resources. Mobile resources can be assigned to individual servers in the pool from the Hardware Management Console.
IBM Power Systems Private Cloud with Shared Utility Capacity: In a Shared Utility Capacity Pool, all systems in a pool share their activated base capacity without any requirement for user intervention. The Pool’s usage is tracked by the minute on the Cloud Management Console. Capacity above the pool’s base capacity can be automatically used and is metered and charged by the minute.
It’s always worth the time to keep abreast of the changes that are taking place with Power Systems.