Ubuntu tees up OpenStack on IBM's iron

Canonical’s OpenStack spin has landed on IBM’s Power hardware as part of zSystems' Linux stack.

The Ubuntu shop’s cloud has been released for IBM’s zSeries IBM LinuxOne and on IBM Power Systems.

Canonical’s cloud will run on IBM’s planned LC servers, announced in April. The servers run OpenPOWER – from the group building customised POWER CPUs.

IBM LinuxONE and z Systems, a set of software for IBM’s mainframes launched in August 2015, already ran SUSE and Red Hat in addition to Ubuntu.

The software stack included Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Chef.

Canonical said in a statement it had been working with IBM to ensure users of zSystems mainframes, LinuxONE, Power Systems and OpenPower got the same “experience” in terms of management and use as OpenStack customers on x86.

IBM sold its x86 servers business to Lenovo in January 2014, having already taken hold of IBM’s PC business.

Canonical claims Ubuntu is the most popular operating system in cloud, with more than two million Ubuntu Linux instances launched in the cloud in 2015.

It also claims to run 55 per cent of OpenStack production clouds.

E870C and E880C Power Systems for the cloud, running AIX, IBM i and Linux, have OpenStack-based cloud management (Cloud PowerVC Manager) and elastic consumption attributes, meaning users can extend on-premises compute resources out to the IBM cloud – z Systems Operational Insights is a SaaS-based service offering analytic insights on cloud operations.

The POWER8-based E870C and E880C provide automated virtual machine (VM) deployments, pre-built image templates and self-service capabilities. An HMC Apps as a Service technology preview provides a capability to automatically aggregate Power Systems’ performance and inventory data across an enterprise. These apps are hosted in a secure cloud and provide health state, geotagging and threshold alerts that can be accessed via a secure portal from users’ mobile devices.

These apps come with new Power E870C or E880C servers at no charge. Full general availability should come in 2017, with more applications as part of the suite.

Big Blue is also announcing Spectrum Copy Data Management and Protect.

Copy Data Management, an agentless VM, provides what IBM calls "detailed, easy-to-use management of data copies." IBM says it builds a catalog of copy data from local and hybrid cloud and off-site cloud infrastructure, identifies duplicates and compares copy requests to existing copies. This helps ensure that a smaller number of copies are created and saves on storage.

IBM has a relationship with Catalogic for copy data management.

Spectrum Protect has been extended with cloud object storage options for use in hybrid cloud deployments.

Get an E870C and E880C data sheet here. ®