Power Cloud Box makes the first step in cloud computing easy

When more and more companies are moving towards private cloud, the first problem they face, and perhaps the most troubling, is how to "pool" existing resources through virtualization. Recently, IBM launched the IBM Power Cloud box solution, through the power server, POWERVM virtual machine, BAE Director Vmcontrol management platform of the perfect combination of three, you can easily resolve the problem of enterprise user resource pooling. Let enterprises easily take the first step in cloud computing.

▲ Outside the venue

March 9, IBM in Shanghai held the theme "Open Day p, cloud chip 帷幄" IBM Power Bae Cloud Solutions Forum, and officially launched a new power infrastructure cloud solution ―power Cloud-box. After the meeting, Mr. Han Zhongheng, general manager of the Greater China Power BAE Server product division of IBM Systems and technology, and BAE Server product director of the IBM Systems and Technology division of Greater China, Ms. Li Hong, received a joint interview with the media.

Mr. Han Zhongheng

Ms. Li Hong

Power Cloud Box: Customized for Chinese users

Reporter: Ask IBM in the global launch of the Cloudburst, but in the domestic push power cloud-box, what is the different strategy power Cloud-box is a customized cloud solution for China?

Li Hong: First look at the Power Cloudburst and power Cloud-box. The Power Cloudburst is IBM's global-promoted solution, and there has been no push or too many customer cases in China so far. The reason is that China's national conditions and foreign countries are very different. Power Cloudburst is an integrated solution with Power750 machines and storage, as well as software and services, the most important of which is service. If this package is assembled, it is easy for a more mature customer to accept.

Second, it's great to invest in such a solution, because you are a package, so the investment is very big, if the customer is not clear what this is a situation, make such a huge investment, perhaps he will be very hesitant. So this program is not bad, in some mature customers, may go to push, this is better, but we see Chinese customers, such as the degree of Chinese customer virtualization, but also a little lower than the level of foreign countries, I say this low level and low popularity is not the same. The popularity of China's virtualization is very high, the scope is very wide, we sell the server, 80%, no matter what model, we have been very accustomed to dividing two to three partitions.

But there are still a lot of customers stay at the level of the partition, you let him further virtualization, such as the flexible deployment of resources, for production systems, they still have a lot of concerns, afraid of technology a flexible what the problem. So his level of virtualization, not to say popularity, standards than abroad there is a gap. So in this case, you push a big one-time investment solution, I'm not saying that the hardware Power750 very expensive, the key is that there are a lot of things, so he is very difficult. So for China's existing national conditions, we do from the bottom. This is why we push the power cloud-box. You want to do the cloud may buy IBM hardware, buy IBM storage software to buy services, do not buy all of a sudden, so that people suddenly scare away. Let's first help our clients build a pool concept without talking about inputs, virtualize the infrastructure, go up and set up a pool for him, and look at the interfaces, like our cloud start solution and our labs and ISVs working together, step by step, so we divide the process into one step, Do not invest very much in the early stage, and effectively protect the user investment.

So we push the whole cloud-box according to the actual situation of China, so we don't focus on Power750, so we are not talking about Power750, if you have POWER6 machine is not not. The new machines can certainly have better price/performance, so we talk about how to cloud in China's existing business environment, based on this situation.

Question: Cloud-box and previously said Tiangong plan the main difference between the two or is the inner relationship, heavenly plan can evolve to Cloud-box products

Li Hong: The relationship between our power cloud and heavenly Plan, perhaps many people are not very clear, can say that these two concepts are complementary, can say that you have me, I have you. Why do you say that? This morning I talked about power cloud everyone on the scene, we talk about power in China Cloud for enterprise users, our goal is more clear, we do not want to change the structure of enterprise-class customer applications on a large scale, because this is too much difficulty, this input and difficulties too much, We are looking at the application of enterprise customers, we see that he has a database type of application, such as application layer and access layer applications, so we give him a two-dimensional cloud as the basis of the deployment unit solution. We did not say you all want to break up, you can have some big server inside in the cloud, you go to support this kind of large-scale database application, this is the scale up part, in scale out this part and Heavenly Creations Plan has the very big relation.

Once talked about scale out will think of x86 server, in fact, x86 server should say that it and UNIX servers are unique, especially the power server, his biggest feature is the degree of virtualization to do very well, in this machine you can become a lot of partitions, do not change the original application structure. He may change purely physical to virtual machine and physical machine and exist scale out to improve the physical utilization of each single machine. If you have seen the real case comparison of Tiangong plan, he is using the combination of two power servers, we can see him as a deployed unit to replace 4, 6, 8 x86 server, we can use him as a power Cloud Scale Out of the real application service its unit to do so he is in the whole cloud-box inside very important scale out part of that I've just talked about us throughout today's concept, we may be concerned about the main platform in Laas, Tiangong plan in the replacement of this platform in fact, and specifically enhance the above and ISV cooperation, so he exceeded the IaaS reached PAAs, because you are in the bottom scale out part, he is relatively simple, do not need to touch the application, but scale out with the ISV closely related.

If you just do the hardware replacement, you can not replace, such as the application is not good, ISV application can support, this is more assisted, so heavenly plan to do a good supplement, he is not only in the IaaS part, he involved in the middleware, and even the application of ISVs built on the above, This allows the power Cloud-box to succeed in the scale out section.

Question: Power Cloud-box solution from the infrastructure, what more benefits to users than competitors

Li Hong: Here's a talk about IBM's power Cloud-box and our other manufacturers ' solutions, which we think are the advantages. Advantages in several ways:

Our cloud, which is constructed on this infrastructure, has a wide applicability to applications. I've just talked about it. In enterprise applications, unlike the cloud-specific applications, it is impossible to expect large and small businesses to change their applications into this mode. Public clouds are possible, but it is hard to do business with private clouds. So many customers are not going to change the application structure. You said that the deployment of resources can be, but the application also changed, he is generally unwilling, it is indeed difficult. For example, ERP, database you want to change to parallel small node is more difficult. So IBM this platform, I feel that provides the largest scope of application, a lot of things are step-by-step verification, in fact, in the application of customers we see several typical, one is online trading applications. Second, the application of batch processing, the third is the application of intelligent analysis, which are relatively large, of course, there are some front-end server applications. Why are we meeting here today Watson, we did see the POWER7 design, through the customer installed and Watson's project promotion, we see that this architecture of the server does have a wide range of applications, such as intelligent computing, the application of mass processing can also support very good. Of course, traditional OLTP we have a lot of high-end Power780 last year's installed user feedback, the performance is very positive, and feel the change in power consumption after the sharp decline, this is the customer is more satisfied with the place. So I think, a lot of different, IBM server his applicability is very wide suitable for a lot of work. So it's a good choice to choose a platform that supports a variety of workloads.

Second, IBM's virtualization technology, I do feel, IBM virtualization technology after more than 40 years, technology is very mature, many other manufacturers are incomparable, and his stability, this is the enterprise-class customers most concerned about. For example, you let him make a differential zone, a resource share from a simple dynamic partition he has a lot of consideration, if you are not stable, he is more reluctant to try, so the mature technology will have a lot of confidence in them to do such things. So these two I think are more critical than the technology and hardware platform itself.

Power Cloud Box Goal: All Enterprise-class users

Reporter: I want to ask a small question, now to see the power cloud-box more inclined to the existing center of the transformation, or to migrate to the cloud, we also see the rapid establishment of a small cloud application of the sample, as a new application of the Data Center Foundation, Whether such a small market will be the target market of Cloud-box

Han Zhongheng: The goal can be it, our power Cloud-box, we have published this program we have a case, in the past a month or two some industries have begun to do the power Cloud-box, there is in the telecommunications, there are in the government industry, there are public security. For example, a provincial public security client provides a situation where they had a new application, a server and a system that wanted to put the new application up in a year, which was a great solution. But he found that almost every three months there is a new application, this model out, we can not every time to buy new servers, if this mode using power Cloud-box, we can put the requirements in a resource pool, you need to apply here, So a variety of industries big and small, I think this is easier to get started.

Li Hong: I say a little bit about this problem, in fact in this today's push idea, we are in the elaboration power platform, is actually a power cloud-box, will be a Cloud ready, our target platform is not individual, but tells the broad user one information, This platform will help you make it easier to frame the cloud platform you want to frame in the future, so our target users are all the vast enterprise users, not I want to do this cloud testing time to buy this platform, you are ready to do this we can help you do this, and the target customers are all enterprise-class customers.

Reporter: Morning conference share of telecommunications companies successfully deploy the power system pool to build a cloud computing platform case, to achieve the cost of saving 20–30%, deployment cycle from 3 months to a week, there is no quantitative indicators system we apply this new product, the establishment of the corresponding structure, relative to the enterprise portrait, Compared with previous ones, what are the improvements

Li Hong: I think it's not too hard to quantify this data, this quantitative data, we are in an isolated application environment, with us in the process of virtualization of resources, and in the process of cloud, our resources have changed, which is what we mainly say quantification. Today we cite a number of examples, we have a lot of specific numbers, the original application of the customer is 20-30 independent machines, the original machine application is very low, but 15–20% applications, they are enterprise-class users, so they dare not use full capacity of the machine. Then his machine brand is very multifarious, what platform has, the kind is very numerous, the management also feels that consumes the time and the energy, this is our quantification number. When it was later unified onto a platform, after dealing with this virtualized resource, he found that in this part, his corresponding support for it decreased, because the customer also used a series of advanced measures, such as he also used the management of green technology, he found his spending is reduced, so 20–30% This is customer feedback.

Besides, it's not the biggest change he feels, he felt that the biggest change is his management simplified a lot of the original 20-30 machines different platform management is very difficult, now as long as the management of 2-3 servers, resources to deploy easily, he also reduced a lot of manpower, the original may need someone to control this, Now you can do it alone.

Resource utilization has also increased dramatically, before he was placed on one platform for each application, so why is it three weeks since he has to buy a machine, so it is. Now that you're sharing resources, no matter what your new purchases are, expand your entire pool of steps, your new requirements after coming, you do not need to buy new hardware equipment, you only have the surplus resources, the existing resources can be divided into a portion of resources, which may be calculated by their own, which is more convenient, Can be arranged within a few days to complete this matter, this part of the resources to deploy the application can be on. So it is really improved a lot, because he later put a lot of applications, now may put 7-8 kinds of applications, he put the time to feel very quickly, not on the application will buy the machine, these two things have no inevitable relationship, so the speed is much faster. This is the quantitative change.

Increase "soft" training to crack the high threshold of domestic operation

Reporter: From the enterprise point of view, UNIX talent is relatively small, enterprises feel that the migration to AIX talent reserves and technical impact are relatively high. This view has also been recognized by some of our ISVs, if the implementation of corporate customers, how can we help them to solve the difficulties of other enterprises to build a private cloud, it is not the first to establish the relevant talent reserves more appropriate

Han Zhongheng: We have fewer people who know Aix, and more people who know more about Windows. We also know that to get more people to understand the benefits of AIX is that we need more input and training, as well as course support, and additional AIX technicians. We have about 50 people invested in power system technicians this year, and we realize that if you want to quickly get many enterprise-class users to use AIX, they need that support. So we're also spending a lot of money, and we're going to increase the amount of AIX input, through channel universities, our partners, the degree of AIX, our labs are going to do a lot of courses, and the new IBM industry is increasing their level of application. Of course, we also hope that in China's universities to start investing, let college students start learning, let them better understand.

We now have an AIX community community that is an ecosystem of AIX talent. We hope that this community will be able to better put the ecosystem, the so-called AIX talent ecosystem, we have a similar challenge every year a series of activities, we have all the people who know Aix all over China, do some training, test test. Last year also, this year, is to hope that more people get together to interact, the community to do more and more, this is what we are doing now.

Li Hong: I think what you said is really a very important question. We also have this awareness, so this year, one of the things we did was to set up Aix Community, to launch the AIX community on six sites, basically focused on AIX, with a lot of relevant AIX content, He's not too much of a product, our hardware. His focus is on the AIX operating system.

I really listened to one of our agents yesterday said that he has a problem can not be solved, is a hardware monitor resolution, he is the Internet station, looked for, found that someone gave the answer. I found this thing really a manufacturer may have difficulty, we need an environment, need a community, let the technician feel here can learn something, find help, I think this is very important.

2nd, I think, from the enterprise customers, the original customer has a lot of Aix users, I think the original customer to do the problem of virtualization, he has been so long, he has not felt this technology itself is very complex, we do differential zone one hours can be completed, not very complex, That's how hard it can be for us to make windows. What is the difficulty of our own desktop machine casually set, do not worry about the panic, but in the enterprise unit, he is not a will not be a problem, he has a responsibility problem, he is generally unwilling to touch this thing, maybe there are many applications, he was afraid to touch, the responsibility of the problem, an accident, who tube so there is this problem.

We are also concerned that many ISVs have recently heard us talk about virtualization, the Tiangong program, and he thinks virtualization is good, but many ISVs previously contacted X86,linux, and he didn't really see what our powervm looked like, so from this month onwards, Our global only for ISVs have the training, it is not difficult to master the technology, in fact, a it you will set the basic, set that will not be very laborious, but you have not seen. We want to get the ISV's own technicians to master this technology through a series of activities.

Today, the cloud computing is through the concept of understanding, striding into the actual application phase. "IBM is the pioneer and leader in the global cloud computing industry," says Mr Han Zhongheng. " Today, our power cloud is a leading power cloud base cloud platform built on enterprise-class power BAE hardware and software products, plus IBM's complete power cloud base cloud implementation service, Will enable more Chinese users of the cloud strategy from the easy start, thereby revolutionizing the internal efficiency of enterprises, rapid response to changes in business needs, to promote business model innovation, and ultimately in the cloud computing era of the new starting point from excellence to excellence, to ensure that evergreen. "