Using Virtualisation To Consolidate Existing IT Resources

According to Handy, a Power 595 or 570-system upgrade can be accomplished during planned downtime by simply replacing the processors, memory and system controllers with new POWER7 components within the existing system frame.

POWER7 processors will then offer two to three times the performance of POWER6 using the same amount of energy.

For either system, once upgraded to POWER7, applications from POWER6 systems can then be moved to the newly upgraded Power 595 or Power 570 servers using IBM's PowerVM Live Partition Mobility or AIX Live Application Mobility software, without impacting availability of the applications.

IBM's migration strategy for organisations wanting to maximise their usage of existing resources is far from unique in the marketplace, and most organisations will find their vendor or systems integrator - will be able to assist them in similar strategies for their platforms.

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They key to effective use of existing resources is to take a modular approach to hardware deployment and to then use specialised software to make the migration/upgrade process as efficient as possible.

And good planning helps, but that, of course, is a given...

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power