Select Power or x86? When cloud computing is irreversible, the debate over the past more than 10 years has come to a climax.
in a short span of a few years, cloud computing has been from a seemingly beautiful concept, quickly translated into practical applications, the current enterprise more concerned about is not whether the cloud should be invested, but how to invest in the cloud, then, how to choose the cloud computing infrastructure is an unavoidable topic.
There must be more people who think that the cloud should be based on the x86 architecture. Indeed, more than 10 years ago, the server market boss RISC must have never thought x86 this later, not so strong challenger can develop so fast, now has become the server market the most mainstream choice. and the main x86 of Intel, AMD, VMware and so on, is unceasingly convinces the customer, the cloud computing future is yours, is ours, is x86.
is cheaper, more open, more standardized, and simpler to use, and x86 has these advantages that are more receptive to non-critical business users. And with the x86 processor in the architecture, process technology, the number of core and other aspects of the continuous improvement, x86 performance of the direct pursuit of RISC, when Intel introduced the RAS feature X86,risc in the key task of the throne also seems less solid.
Cloud Computing has brought a new wave of infrastructure-building boom, both--x86 and RISC, both sides of the debate, have created huge market opportunities, and for x86, cloud computing has brought large data centers to the fore, a new opportunity to occupy a bigger market; for RISC, especially the RISC market backbone IBM For power, this is an opportunity for RISC to stabilize its heel and flop.
How does
power flop in the clouds?
So what does power have to rely on?
In the
cloud era, data centers face three major challenges: cost control, risk reduction, and increased flexibility.
in terms of cost, cloud computing has rapidly inflated data center equipment, brought tremendous pressure on power and space, increased the complexity of management, and increased human costs, leading to soaring overall costs.
In the risk, cloud computing lets the enterprise new business unceasingly joins, the business complexity unceasingly enhances, the business dependency also further enhances, this to the system reliability, the usability proposed the higher request.
in flexibility, traditional data center structure is more rigid, it resources can not be effectively shared, can not quickly and flexibly respond to changes in business requirements, can not provide effective support for business innovation.
summed up, cloud computing for the data center put forward three new requirements: Energy saving, cost savings, backup, disaster recovery, rapid deployment, rapid response.
from these requirements, it seems that x86 servers are more compliant--the prevailing view is that x86 servers are more cost-effective, more energy-efficient, easier to deploy and scale, backup and disaster-prone, but IBM doesn't think so. In general, we believe that power has the advantage of high performance and reliability, such as misinterpreting and RISC, such as "Price/performance", "Energy saving", and "easy to deploy", which seem to have no edge over the high-end machines.
The traditional advantage of
RISC systems is in key mission areas, such as finance, telecommunications, and IBM power has a distinct advantage in China's RISC market, which, according to IBM data, The UNIX market is 1.5 times times more than 4 x86 servers, and most critical applications run on UNIX platforms. In the fourth quarter of 2011, power accounted for more than 65% per cent of China's RISC market, leading rivals such as HP, Oracle, and Fujitsu.
in the face of new opportunities from cloud computing, IBM Power hopes to use this trend to further expand its advantage in the RISC market, while also pointing the finger at x86, which was not valued by power in the past. This year, IBM Power released multiple and x86 comparative tests, From typical telecom applications to building cloud computing platforms, as a result, power is not as "difficult to build, high in consumption and high cost" as we often imagine, but, on the contrary, from the IBM test results, power can have smaller footprint, lower consumption and lower cost.
(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)
