IBM Trumpets Power11’s Zero Planned Downtime Capabilities

Anyone who’s ever managed an IT environment—or even used a personal computer—understands the balancing act involved in systems maintenance: You can stop everything, perform the prescribed housecleaning or download the latest software update, all at the cost of productivity in the short term but stability in the long term. Or, you can keep everything running and kick the can down the road, putting your infrastructure at greater risk later. Whatever the chosen action, it’s a trade-off that organizations are increasingly facing.
“The rate and pace of maintenance activities we keep hearing from each and every one of you is increasing exponentially—fixes, patches, updates, upgrades,” Bargav Balakrishnan, VP of product management and infrastructure at IBM, said July 8 as he helped introduce IBM’s new Power11 server.
In light of that reality, IBM is highlighting Power11’s zero planned downtime capabilities as a major selling point for Power11, set for general availability July 25. Hybrid cloud, Power Virtual Server, live updates and autonomous patching all play a role in this achievement, comprising what Tom McPherson, VP of IBM Z Software, calls a “resilient infrastructure” that frees up IT teams to do their core work.
Like with other aspects of the launch, Power11 is leaning on AI to make that happen.
IBM Concert
Power11’s zero planned downtime promise is based in part on IBM Concert, an AI-powered operations center meant for making discoveries amongst applications, understanding connections, making recommendations and taking automated action. IBM Concert discovers vulnerabilities across the stack—“a big deal in most shops,” Balakrishnan noted.
Once the updates are triggered, Concert is off and running, validating readiness, downloading updates, moving workloads to partitions on different systems and then bringing them back when the time is right, unifying a process that was once manual and disparate, Balakrishnan noted.
Migrate While Active
IBM has also been working to make application migration less disruptive. “Over the last two years, we’ve been investing heavily to improve the migration and onboarding experience of Power VS (Virtual Server),” Doris Conti, VP of IBM Power Systems product management, said at the launch event.
Migrate While Active, released late last year, was a product of that work, allowing for disruption-free migration from on-prem to the cloud. In broad strokes, Conti described how the tool is used:
- Select partition mirroring in the migrate while active interface
- Provide details on source code and source node, and validate that it is online and reachable
- Initiate final cutover process
“As the replication’s progressing, you can see the status. It’s all happening while this production system is remaining active,” Conti said. It also helps that Power11 runs on the same architecture whether on-prem or in the cloud, she added.
These tools are in service to the mindset that downtime isn’t an option, as an increasing number of clients turn to Power Virtual Server to strengthen their business resilience.
Disaster Recovery and Security
The resilience conversation also involves the other kind of downtime: the unplanned variety.
Featuring Power11 in the cloud on Day 1, Power Virtual Server isn’t just an alternative to on-prem; it can also be used to enhance on-prem resilience, Conti said. To illustrate, she pointed to a UK-based logistics company, Proximity, that manages 50,000 deliveries a day. After facing disaster recovery problems, “they added Power VS for DR and they’re seeing fantastic results,” Conti said. They can now recover 50% faster and, incurring 80% less cost, she said.
The cost of the average of a data breach has reached $4.8 million, highlighting the need for quick recovery. Addressing this, Power11’s suite of security benefits includes sub-one-minute ransomware detection time with Cyber Vault, “a unified and integrated solution between Power 11 storage software and Expert Labs that’s really been designed to protect, detect, respond and recover,” Balakrishnan explained. Cyber Vault also helps organizations assess their security posture by discovering blind spots, vulnerabilities and critical workloads.
The Quantum Threat
Because anticipation is part of any strong security posture, Power11 also addresses the looming security threat of quantum computing. The immensely powerful yet unstable technology isn’t ready for practical use, but is expected to eventually become capable of breaking today’s encryption standards. In anticipation of that day, Power11 is “quantum-enabled,” incorporating “the latest advanced codes and ciphers to keep you protected and compliant,” Balakrishnan said.
Citing the compliance responsibilities that come with operating a network of data centers serving more than 60 countries, Christian Duemmler, the senior manager responsible for global SAP infrastructure at Bosch, voiced appreciation for Power11’s security considerations.
“With the addition of quantum-safe encryption and technology and solutions like Power Cyber Vault, it’s really good to know that power is innovating to help against evolving cyber threats and supporting the regulatory standards that we see upcoming as well,” he said.
“ … For me, Power is Trust.”