Reduce energy use and emissions with the high efficiency of a single IBM z17 replacing up to 2,944 x86 cores¹
Built for efficiency and long-term savings
IIBM Z® delivers power and energy efficiency for sustainable IT. By consolidating Linux® workloads, organizations can cut energy use by 65% and reduce CO₂e emissions by over 109 metric tons each year—supporting environmental goals.2
Powered by IBM Telum® II, the AIU, and IBM Spyre™, IBM Z enables real-time AI inference with minimal energy impact. Cut power use by up to 83% compared to x86 when running AI-enhanced OLTP workloads.3
Moving x86 workloads to IBM Z results in lower costs and environmental impact. Cut energy use and data center space while achieving up to 44% lower TCO over 5 years with cloud-native, containerized workloads.4
HMC dashboards and APIs on IBM Z monitor power, heat and more. Access OS and partition metrics to validate sustainability efforts and meet reporting mandates.
IBM Z systems are built using environmentally responsible materials. IBM Global Asset Recovery Services supports reuse and recycling to reduce waste and extend hardware value.
Tools
Use these tools to plan, assess and enhance your sustainability strategy with IBM Z. From system consolidation to energy tracking, each tool helps build a more efficient, eco-conscious IT environment.
Explore the product carbon footprint reports to better understand the environmental impacts associated with IBM Z servers.
Estimate energy use and system weight for IBM Z configurations to plan for power, cooling and sustainability goals. Resource link login required.
Leverage a Grafana dashboard to compare IBM Z and x86 power data and uncover efficiency gains from workload consolidation.
Access open-source tools for managing IBM Z with the HMC, including Python/Go libraries, CLI, Ansible modules and monitoring tools.
Resources
See how consolidating x86 workloads on IBM z17 reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions and total cost of ownership.
Use the IBM Z HMC Environmental Dashboard to track power consumption, cooling requirements and other sustainability metrics.
Recover value and reduce environmental impact by returning or recycling your IBM Z systems through IBM Global Asset Recovery Services.
See how SEAL Systems used IBM Z to reduce their energy footprint while boosting IT efficiency and performance—achieving sustainable growth with a resilient, consolidated infrastructure.
Footnotes
¹ IBM internal tests simulating a complete IT solution running containerized WebSphere Liberty and EDB Postgres workloads, show that a single IBM z17 can do the work of up to 2,944 cores of the compared x86 solution.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests for the core consolidation study targeted a comparison of the following servers. IBM Machine Type 9175 MAX 136 system consisting of three CPC drawers containing 136 configurable processor units and six I/O drawers to support both network and external storage. The x86 solution used a commercially available enterprise server with two 5th generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors, 64 cores per CPU. Both solutions had access to the same storage. The workloads consisted of a containerized online transaction processing (OLTP) WebSphere Liberty v25 application running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) v4.17, and an EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 on the same OCP cluster simulating core online banking functions. Both solutions used Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 and KVM. Results may vary. The test results were extrapolated to a typical, complete customer IT solution that includes isolated from each other production and non-production IT environments. TCO included software, hardware, energy, network, data center space, and labor costs. On the IBM z17 side the complete solution requires one IBM z17 Type 9175 MAX 136, and on x86 side, the complete IT solution requires 23 compared servers.
2 Consolidating a complete IT solution on an IBM z17 instead of running it on a compared x86 solution with similar conditions in New York can reduce energy consumption by 65% and the CO2e footprint by over 109 metric tons annually. This is equivalent to consuming 12,284 fewer gallons of gasoline.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests for the core consolidation study compared an IBM Machine Type 9175 Max136 with 136 configurable processor units with an x86 solution that used a commercially available enterprise server with two 5th gen Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors and 64 cores per CPU. Workloads consisted of a containerized OLTP WebSphere Liberty v25 application running on Red Hat OCP v4.17 and an EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 on the same OCP cluster. Both solutions used Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 and KVM. Test results were extrapolated to a typical, complete customer IT solution that included production and non-production IT environments isolated from each other. The IBM Machine Type 9175 solution required one Max136 and the x86 solution required 23 compared servers. Contains information from Electricity Maps Carbon Intensity Data, which is made available here under the Open Database License (ODbL). Equivalencies are based on the EPA GHG calculator. Results may vary.
3 Save up to 83% of power consumption by replacing a compared x86 solution comprised of two-year-old servers running AI-infused OLTP workloads with an IBM z17.
DISCLAIMER: Based on IBM internal performance tests running on IBM Systems Hardware of machine type 9175 compared to the same tests running on a commercially available enterprise server with 2x 28 Intel Xeon Gold 5420+ CPU @ 2.20 GHz. The MegaCard benchmark is a containerized IBM WebSphere Liberty v24 online transaction processing (OLTP) application deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP) 4.17 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.4 with KVM. EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 is used as the database. The model extrapolated the test results to a typical, complete customer IT solution that includes isolated from each other production and non-production IT environments. On the IBM z17 side the complete solution requires one IBM z17 Type 9175 MAX 136, and on x86 side, the complete IT solution requires 72 of the compared servers. Results may vary.
4 Save up to 44% on the total cost of ownership over 5 years by moving cloud-native, containerized workloads from a compared x86 solution to an IBM z17 running the same software products.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests for the core consolidation study targeted a comparison of the following servers. IBM Machine Type 9175 MAX 136 system consisting of three CPC drawers containing 136 configurable processor units and six I/O drawers to support both network and external storage. The x86 solution used a commercially available enterprise server with two 5th generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors, 64 cores per CPU. Both solutions had access to the same storage. The workloads consisted of a containerized online transaction processing (OLTP) WebSphere Liberty v25 application running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) v4.17, and an EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 on the same OCP cluster simulating core online banking functions. Both solutions used Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 and KVM. Results may vary. The test results were extrapolated to a typical, complete customer IT solution that includes isolated from each other production and non-production IT environments. TCO included software, hardware, energy, network, data center space, and labor costs. On the IBM z17 side the complete solution requires one IBM z17 Type 9175 MAX 136, and on x86 side, the complete IT solution requires 23 compared servers.