IBM PowerVM and IBM PowerVC enhancements

IBM United States Software Announcement 216-384
October 11, 2016

Table of contents

	Overview		Program number
	Key prerequisites		Ordering information
	Planned availability date		Prices
	Description

At a glance

IBM® PowerVM®, which delivers industrial-strength virtualization for IBM POWER® processor-based systems, is enhanced with the following new functions:

SR-IOV vNIC Failover
Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) large send performance improvements for IBM i and Linux™
Scalability and resiliency improvements for Shared Storage Pools
NovaLink
- Partition support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Support for SR-IOV configurations
Software-defined networking (Open vSwitch) technology preview
PowerVM hypervisor memory optimization through large page exploitation
Live Partition Mobility resiliency and performance improvements

IBM Power® Hardware Management Console includes the following new capabilities:

Ability to export performance data to an external CSV file format
Dynamic setting of the Simplified Remote Restart property

IBM PowerVC provides a comprehensive virtualization and cloud management offering for IBM Power Systems™ servers. Enhancements include:

New high-availability capabilities
- Automated policy-based VM remote restart
- VM remote restart when system is powered off
New storage capabilities
- Improved storage zoning control
Dynamic Resource Optimizer (DRO) improvements
- Optimization and balancing based on memory usage
PowerVM NovaLink management improvements
- SR-IOV vNIC and vNIC failover configurations
- NovaLink partition running Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- PowerVM shared storage pools
- VM console launch for guest VMs

Overview

PowerVM delivers industrial-strength enterprise virtualization for IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux environments on POWER processor-based systems and has expanded function and new management capabilities.

PowerVC is an advanced virtualization management and cloud offering for Power Systems servers based on OpenStack technology. This comprehensive virtualization and cloud management offering is simple to install and use, and enables virtual machine setup and management.

Key prerequisites

PowerVM

Any IBM system that includes an IBM POWER7®, IBM POWER7 +, or IBM POWER8® processor.
PowerVM NovaLink requires systems with a POWER8 processor and FW840, or higher, that is not managed by an HMC.

PowerVC

IBM PowerVM Standard Edition (5765-PVS) for basic functions, and IBM PowerVM Enterprise Edition (5765-PVE) or IBM PowerVM PowerLinux™ Edition (5765-PVL) for full function.
IBM PowerKVM (5765-KVM).
Firmware v8.2, or higher, is required for the new Remote Restart function for PowerVM that is managed by PowerVC.

Planned availability date

November 11, 2016, for PowerVM
November 18, 2016, for Hardware Management Console/Hardware Management Console (HMC) virtual appliance
December 16, 2016, for PowerVC and PowerVM NovaLink

Description

PowerVM V2.2.5

PowerVM is enhanced with the following new functions:

SR-IOV vNIC Failover, which provides automated failover for SR-IOV network configurations.
Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) large send performance improvements, which now enable improved performance for IBM i and Linux workloads running on PowerVM-based systems.
SEA improvements include failover health checks and failover controls to disable automatic failback.
Scalability and resiliency improvements for Shared Storage Pools enable clients to have larger Shared Storage Pool clusters with greater resiliency.
Reduction of hypervisor memory usage through large page exploitation, which is specifically helpful for workloads like SAP HANA. This is available in firmware level v860.
Multiple LPM data movers increase reliability and performance.
Software-defined networking (SDN) using OpenStack integration with Open vSwitch. This will be introduced with a technology preview. These SDN capabilities include network overlays that enable functionality like cross physical network (subnet) Live Partition Mobility and provide an open networking solution for PowerVM.

IBM PowerVM NovaLink V1.0.0.4

PowerVM NovaLink, which provides a scalable direct OpenStack cloud management connection for OpenStack solutions like PowerVC, has been enhanced with the following new functions:

Partition support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Support for SR-IOV configurations

These improvements are typically controlled by systems management solutions like PowerVC, or they can be managed by OpenStack community editions. SDN orchestration can be achieved through the OpenStack PowerVM drivers and the standard OpenStack Neutron agents.

PowerVC V1.3.2

PowerVC is an advanced virtualization management and cloud offering for Power Systems based on OpenStack technology. This comprehensive virtualization and cloud management offering is simple to install and use, and enables virtual machine setup and management. PowerVC can help achieve the following goals:

Simplify deployment and management of Power Systems-based private clouds.
Increase agility and execution to quickly respond to changing business requirements.
Increase IT productivity and responsiveness.
Simplify Power Systems virtualization management.
Accelerate repeatable error-free virtualization deployments.

PowerVC can manage AIX, Linux, and IBM i VMs running under PowerVM virtualization and Linux VMs running under PowerKVM virtualization.

PowerVC includes the following features and benefits:

Cloud self-service portal for VM deployment and lifecycle management
Virtual machine image capture, deployment, resizing, and management
Policy-based VM placement to help improve usage and reduce complexity
Policy-based workload optimization using either VM migration or resource movement using mobile capacity on demand
VM mobility with placement policies to help reduce the burden on IT staff in a simplified GUI
A management system that manages existing virtualization deployments
Integrated management of storage, network, and compute that simplifies administration

PowerVC Standard Edition has been enhanced with the following new features and functions. These new functions are also in the IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager release because it includes all functions of the PowerVC Standard Edition.

High availability
- Automated policy-based remote restart of VMs for both NovaLink and HMC configurations, which enables faster recovery from server failures. This function enables the administrator to set a policy for automatically restarting VMs on other healthy systems in the case of a host failure.
- VM restart is now possible for HMC-managed systems that are powered off.
Storage management: Storage zoning has new options (initiator zoning) that enable fewer storage zones to be used, which gives clients with large storage configurations more flexibility and control.
Dynamic Resource Optimizer (DRO) now balances workloads based on host memory utilization for PowerVM NovaLink environments. This enables dynamic optimization for either compute or memory resources.
PowerVM NovaLink management improvements include support for:
- SR-IOV vNIC and vNIC failover configurations
- NovaLink partition running Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- PowerVM shared storage pools
- VM console launch, which provides a guest VM console to the PowerVC user

HMC V8.8.6 has been enhanced to include support for the following:

Ability to export performance and capacity data collected by the HMC to a CSV formatted flat file for use by other analysis tools
Reporting on energy consumption, which can be used either by the REST APIs or by the new export facility
Dynamic setting of the Simplified Remote Restart VM property, which enables this property to be turned on or off dynamically

Reference information

Refer to Software Announcement 215-144, dated May 11, 2015.

Program number

Program number	VRM	Program name
5765-PVS	2.2.5	IBM PowerVM Standard Edition
5765-PVE	2.2.5	IBM PowerVM Enterprise Edition
5765-PVL	2.2.5	IBM PowerVM, Linux Edition
5765-VCS	1.3.2	IBM PowerVC Standard Edition
5765-VCC	1.3.2	IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager
5765-HMV	8.8.6	Hardware Management Console (HMC) virtual appliance

Note: IBM PowerVM for IBM PowerLinux has been renamed to IBM PowerVM, Linux Edition.

Business Partner information

If you are a Direct Reseller - System Reseller acquiring products from IBM, you may link directly to Business Partner information for this announcement. A PartnerWorld® ID and password are required (use IBMid).

BP Attachment for Announcement Letter 216-384

Ordering information

PowerVM Enterprise Edition V2.2 (5765-PVE)

Description	OTC feature number
Per Processor Core on Small Sys N/C	0071

Prices

For additional information and current prices, contact your local IBM representative.

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Note: Shipments will begin after the planned availability date.

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