IBM z13s

Mainframes that unlock business potential by:

Excelling at traditional data and transactional processing

The z13s™ is powered by up to 20 configurable processor units along with improvement in performance per core compared to its predecessor, the IBM® zEnterprise® BC12Y. Furthermore, the new multi-threaded processor design allows the z13s to deliver a record level of capacity for Linux virtual machines over prior generations without requiring a change to footprint size or energy requirements. The z13s offers the scalability, configurability, performance, and flexibility to rise with your business.

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Reducing risk with trusted, secure and reliable Z systems

The appeal of IBM Z® systems lies in large part in the reliability and security it provides your data and your business. Over generations, enterprises trusted and relied upon the IBM Z family to bring 99.999 percent reliability to data centers. You can count on the z13s to provide a reliable, trusted, and securable environment with state of the art encryption technology for your data center.

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Improving operational efficiency

The z13s offers many capabilities designed to improve efficiency in the data center. Specialty engines such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), IBM System z® Integrated Information Processor (zIIP), Internal Coupling Facility (ICF) or additional System Assist Processors (SAPs) are designed to help optimize the capabilities of the platform to support a broad set of applications and workloads, while helping to dramatically improve mainframe economics.

Advancing quality of service

The z13s enables enterprise-grade Linux, one designed to be more robust and trusted for critical workloads, has higher performance and throughput at a lower cost per transaction and is integrated with new open capabilities that will lead to wider adoption of open source content. You need IBM Z systems qualities of service for your Linux applications and the z13s, along with open source investments, delivers enhancements to availability, scale, and security to meet these demands.

Delivering your real-time vision

Built on IBM Z systems core values and strengths, the z13s delivers innovations and technologies to enable real-time digital business. It is designed to handle the explosive growth of increasingly mobile clients and employees, able to leverage new and vast amounts of data, and can provide deeper real-time insight at the point for greatest business impact. All this can be deployed within a secure and resilient cloud ready infrastructure.

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Technical details

Software requirements

Supported Operating Systems: z/OS V2.2, V2.1, V1.13, V1.12 (toleration) available via IBM Software Support Services

z/VM 6.3, z/VM 6.2 (toleration)
KVM enablement
z/VSE 5.1 and subsequent releases
z/TPF 1.1
Linux on z Systems. See link below for Linux support details:

See a complete list of software requirements

Hardware requirements

Specifications will vary by model and configuration. See the Technical Guide below for details and requirements.

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Technical specifications

z13s offers unique mainframe system capabilities unmatched by other enterprise servers. Highlights:

Specialty engines: IFL, zIIP, Coupling Facility
Security: EAL5+, ECC Digital signature, Smartcards, Crypto coprocessor and accelerators
I/O: FICON, FCP, Open Systems Adapter, 10 GbE RoCE/SMC-R, HiperSockets, SMC-D
Memory: 4 GB Minimum / 4 TB Maximum 64 GB Minimum / 4 TB Maximum

See a complete list of technical specifications