IBM 8687 Installation Guide - Page 68

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IBM

^

xSeries 440 Planning and Installation Guide

With its Enterprise X-Architecture enabled features, the x440 server offers

flexibility, availability, and scalability to handle customer requirements for

consolidating distributed workloads onto a single powerful and highly

available platform to achieve total cost of ownership (TCO) savings.

–

Reducing the number of servers by replacing many small servers

with fewer large servers

Physical consolidation may be implemented on a site, department, or

enterprise basis. For example, many x220 file/print servers can be

consolidated onto newer, much faster, more reliable x440 servers, or older

servers with high hardware maintenance costs can be consolidated or

replaced by newer, much faster, cheaper-to-maintain x440 servers.

–

Physical server consolidation

The number of separate hardware platforms and operating system

instances within a consolidation site may vary considerably by customer.

Typically, some reduction in the number of distinct servers is

accomplished when gathering distributed systems into a central

installation or when a number of small servers are replaced with larger

servers of the same platform. Based on the enterprise

’

s platform, four

physical server consolidation cases can be considered.

•

Case 1: Small servers from one platform to server(s) on the same

platform

•

Case 2: Small servers from different platforms to servers on different

platforms (platform source and target are the same)

•

Case 3: Small servers from one platform to server(s) on a different

platform

•

Case 4: Small servers from different platforms to server(s) on a

different platform (platforms

’

source and target are not the same)

Cases 1 and 2 are physical server consolidation, and there is no logical

work to do. For cases 3 and 4, a platform migration has to be planned, and

applications and data have to be ported from one platform to another. The

objective of the physical server consolidation phase is not to share

applications or data but to have an application that was running on one

platform run on a new platform. Therefore, this operation has to be

differentiated from application or data integration.

Physical consolidation can be divided into two subcategories, namely

server consolidation and storage consolidation.

This can take place within the same architecture -- for example, several

two-way servers replaced with one 16-way x440 server or many

uniprocessor servers moving to several multiprocessor x440 servers.

Section	Page
Front cover	1
Contents	5
Notices	9
Trademarks	10
Preface	11
The team that wrote this redbook	11
Become a published author	14
Comments welcome	14
Chapter 1. Technical description	15
1.1 The x440 product line	16
1.2 System partitioning	20
1.3 IBM XA-32 chipset	21
1.4 Processors	26
1.4.1 Intel Xeon Processor MP	27
1.4.2 Intel Xeon Processor DP	30
1.5 SMP Expansion Module	31
1.6 IBM XceL4 Server Accelerator Cache	33
1.7 System memory	33
1.8 PCI subsystem	37
1.9 Redundancy	38
1.10 Light Path Diagnostics	39
1.11 Remote Supervisor Adapter	41
1.12 Operating system support	42
1.13 IBM Director	44
Chapter 2. Positioning	49
2.1 xSeries 440 application solutions	50
2.1.1 Server consolidation	50
2.1.2 Enterprise applications	52
2.1.3 Infrastructure applications	54
2.1.4 Clustering	55
2.2 Why choose the x440	57
2.2.1 IBM XA-32 chipset	57
2.2.2 Intel Xeon MP and DP processors	58
2.2.3 XceL4 Server Accelerator Cache	60
2.2.4 High-performance memory subsystem	60
2.2.5 Active PCI-X	61
2.2.6 XpandOnDemand scalability	61
2.2.7 System Partition Manager	62
2.3 The benefits of system partitioning	63
2.4 Server consolidation	65
2.4.1 Types of server consolidation	65
2.4.2 Why consolidate servers	71
2.4.3 Benefits from server consolidation	71
Chapter 3. Planning	77
3.1 System hardware	78
3.1.1 Processors	78
3.1.2 Memory	79
3.1.3 PCI slot configuration	82
3.1.4 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller	86
3.2 Cabling and connectivity	88
3.2.1 SMP Expansion Module connectivity	88
3.2.2 Remote Supervisor Adapter connectivity	91
3.2.3 Remote Expansion Enclosure	92
3.2.4 Serial connections	97
3.3 Storage considerations	97
3.3.1 xSeries storage solutions	98
3.3.2 Disk subsystem performance	102
3.3.3 Tape backup	103
3.4 Server partitioning and consolidation	104
3.5 Operating system considerations	104
3.5.1 Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	106
3.5.2 Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition	109
3.5.3 Microsoft Windows 2000 Server	110
3.5.4 Microsoft Windows .NET Server	111
3.5.5 Novell NetWare	111
3.5.6 Red Hat/SuSE Linux	111
3.5.7 VMware ESX Server	112
3.6 Application considerations	114
3.6.1 Scalability and performance considerations	114
3.6.2 SMP and server types	115
3.7 Rack installation	116
3.8 Power considerations	117
3.9 Solution Assurance Review	118
Chapter 4. Installation	121
4.1 System BIOS settings	122
4.1.1 Updating BIOS and firmware	122
4.1.2 Enabling memory mirroring	122
4.1.3 Enabling Hyper-Threading	123
4.2 Device drivers	125
4.3 Operating system installation	125
4.3.1 Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server	126
4.3.2 Red Hat Linux installation	133
4.3.3 NetWare installation	135
4.3.4 VMware ESX Server	142
4.4 Additional Information	142
Chapter 5. Management	143
5.1 Active PCI Manager	144
5.1.1 Using Active PCI Manager	146
5.1.2 Adding adapters to the system	150
5.1.3 Analyzing an existing configuration	158
5.2 System Partition Manager	164
5.3 Process Control	169
5.3.1 Process alias rules	170
5.3.2 Process execution rules	174
5.3.3 Group process execution rules	175
Abbreviations and acronyms	187
Related publications	189
IBM Redbooks	189
Referenced Web sites	189
How to get IBM Redbooks	192
IBM Redbooks collections	192
Index	193

IBM 8687 Installation Guide - Page 68

Reducing the number of servers by replacing many small servers, with fewer large servers

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