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1. January 2014, IDC #246008
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise Workloads on the IBM X6 Portfolio:
Driving Business Advantages
Sponsored by: IBM
Jed Scaramella
January 2014
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Enterprise information technology (IT) leaders are increasingly seeking to leverage IT to create a
competitive advantage in their market. In a business environment that is continually increasing in
velocity, IT is viewed as a method to speed delivery to market, to connect with customers, and to
improve workforce productivity. New trends and technology in social media, mobility, and cloud are
presenting additional opportunities for enterprise businesses to engage with clients, to enable
ubiquitous access to information and applications, and to provide new sources of data to analyze in
business decision making.
IT organizations are challenged to transform their IT environments to deliver on the promised
capabilities of the new era of cloud, or what IDC refers to as the 3rd Platform. This requires server
systems capable of running enterprise workloads and processing growing sets of data, yet still able to
deliver within the budget constraints of IT.
The IBM X6 portfolio is the sixth generation of IBM Enterprise X-Architecture (EXA), spanning 15 years of
server architecture research and development. These platform designs are based on the principle that
performance capabilities of large IBM systems can be applied to industry-standard servers, resulting in
increased performance, scalability, and availability. The IBM X6 systems leverage numerous innovations
and features that are designed to speed response times while lowering operational costs.
The IBM X6 systems leverage IBM's eXFlash memory-channel storage technology that provides the
application with an in-server memory-channel-based storage tier that is integrated with the processor
and improves latency. This can alleviate problems with bottlenecks associated with external shared
storage and speed response times. The IBM X6 systems are modular designs that not only deliver on
current IT capacity needs but also provide the ability to easily scale as future growth demands
necessitate. IBM X6 customers have the benefit of investment protection from the additional headroom
that can host multiple generations of technology in the same server.
1
Specific platform and
management features, including self-healing architectures, are designed to ensure maximum
application uptime, to provide ease of maintenance, and to integrate into virtual environments.
1
"Multiple generations" refers to the ability to swap out one generation for the next without replacing the server.

2. ©2014 IDC #246008 2
IBM Enterprise X-Architecture is specifically suited for demanding enterprise applications that require
greater performance, increased memory and storage capacity, and enhanced management platforms.
With IBM X6 systems, customers can deploy an efficient and economical server infrastructure that can
run both resilient multiterabyte databases and the capabilities to virtualize large I/O workloads.
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Business Pressure Drives IT Requirements
It has been said and written many times before, but it seems more true now than ever that the
business environment is continually moving at a faster and faster pace; so anything that supports
business is expected to keep pace. IT organizations are no exception; enterprises are increasingly
dependent on IT to create competitive advantage, particularly around areas such as faster delivery of
new products and services to market, connecting with customers, and improving the productivity of
their own workforces.
At the same time, there is a transformation taking place in the market that is driven by new trends in
social media, mobile technology, and cloud. These IT trends present new opportunities for business,
including new ways to engage with clients and new sources of data to analyze. These new trends also
bring unique challenges to the line of business as pressure increases with expectations, so business
executives are looking to IT help drive value by ensuring:
 Fast delivery for new services and applications
 Ubiquitous access to actionable information
 The ability to quickly adapt to changes in the business climate
The market is transitioning away from an IT model that is PC centric to one that is mobile and cloud
based. IDC describes this paradigm shift as the migration from the 2nd Platform to the 3rd Platform, and
a critical success factor in the new era will bethe close alignment of IT organizations and business units.
IT Systems for the Next Generation
All of the trends described previously correlate to pressure on the IT organization, which is faced with
the challenge of transforming its IT environment to deliver on the promised capabilities of the new era
of cloud (or the 3rd Platform). In the face of delivering new capabilities, IT is still grappling with its own
challenges. IDC surveyed IT executives on the top challenges facing IT in the next 12 to 18 months,
the results of which are displayed in Figure 1.

3. ©2014 IDC #246008 3
FIGURE 1
Primary Challenges Facing IT
n = 308
Source: IDC's Converged and Integrated Systems End-User Survey Report (IDC #242461, August 2013)
The top-ranked challenges are stagnant budgets and controlling costs, meaning that IT must be able to
do more with less. For IT decision makers, this means finding server systems capable of running
enterprise workloads and processing growing sets of data. Among the other top challenges are issues
associated with uptime and availability, improving IT agility, and making IT staff more efficient. These
challenges speak directly to server systems being reliable in terms of application availability, flexible in
dealing with future change, and easy to use and manage. As cost is the overriding challenge, these
issues must all be met economically, which lends many to look toward x86 architectures.
18.2
27.9
28.9
29.9
35.4
38.3
47.4
50.6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Effectively leveraging big data
IT staff productivity, head count, and skills
Making effective use of cloud
Improving business agility and IT credibility
Dealing with the impact of mobile devices
Disaster recovery/high-availability capabilities
Security, compliance, and change control
Cost/constrained capital budgets
(% of respondents)

4. ©2014 IDC #246008 4
THE SIXTH GENERATION OF IBM EXA TECHNOLOGY (THE IBM X6 PORTFOLIO)
The IBM X6 portfolio, including IBM System x3850 X6, IBM System x3950 X6, and planned IBM Flex
System x880 X6 Compute Node, represents 15 years of server architecture research and
development. These platforms are the sixth generation of IBM's Enterprise X-Architecture. The
platform designs are based on the principle that performance capabilities of large IBM systems can be
applied to industry-standard servers, resulting in increased performance, scalability, and availability.
Faster Access to Information
The business demands fast access to actionable data, yet storage is often cited as a costly bottleneck
in today's IT infrastructure. Traditionally, applications residing on servers relied on external shared
storage for data access. The capacity demand needed large costly SAN/NAS environments to ensure
required "hit rates" were met. As the infrastructure transitioned to virtual environments, the problem
with bottlenecks grew, with a greater number of virtual machines (VMs) on the same network.
IBM's innovation with eXFlash memory-channel storage technology in these platforms is designed to
speed response times while lowering operational costs. The technology provides the application with
an in-server memory-channel-based storage tier that is integrated with the processor and improves
latency. The performance gain comes from two distinct capabilities with memory-channel storage:
First, it not only leverages the memory bus to create the highest data transfer per device but also
leverages differentiated IBM WriteNow technology. IBM's WriteNow technology enables the lowest
write latency to block I/O storage in the industry by allowing the super-early write commit of data
2
;
second, unlike typical SSD- or PCIe-based storage, memory-channel storage is integrated directly
with the processor, not a remote data transaction, thus increasing parallelization of application
transactions significantly. Versus traditional spinning disk, memory-channel storage can provide
substantially more capacity and performance in the system, which in turn reduces the need for
large external SAN and NAS environments. Having significant performance on the server creates
opportunities for server consolidation and optimization of external storage. This can significantly
decrease capital and operational expenses as well as greatly improve response times by relocating
the IOPS closer to the processor.
Agile and Scalable
Successfully meeting future demand with current technology requires sophisticated capacity planning,
yet the result is often insufficient capacity or underutilized systems. The modular design of the IBM X6
portfolio delivers not only the capacity needed today but also the ability to easily scale as future growth
demands necessitate. The same server is able to host multiple generations of technology in one server,
3
meaning IT can reduce its acquisition cost and retain the capability to accelerate performance when
needed. The benefit of having the right solution with headroom to grow means that datacenter sprawl
and operational complexity can be minimized.
2
5-10µs write latency for eXFlash DIMMs in preliminary testing versus 15-19µs latency for PCIe-based flash storage
from Fusion-io, Micron, and Virident and 65µs latency for Intel S3500 and S3700 SSDs (Better results are expected
when testing is complete.)
3
"Multiple generations" refers to the ability to swap out one generation for the next without replacing the server.

5. ©2014 IDC #246008 5
In addition to controlling overhead costs, the X6 portfolio of servers enables IT to have more agility
through IBM FastSetup and Configuration Patterns. These automated provisioning features reduce the
burden on IT administrators and reduce errors associated with manual interventions. IT is always
overwhelmed with the increasing complexity and effort to deploy each new generation of technology.
These built-in technologies in the X6 portfolio drive simplification and ease of management by enabling
IT to deploy large clusters of servers faster and more easily. These technologies give IT the capability
to create a common profile for a cluster of servers and automatically provision the cluster using the
common profile. Unique IBM Configuration Patterns even allow changes to be made to the profile once
on the primary server and then automatically cascaded to the cluster.
Resilient for Maximum Availability
Now more than ever, when IT goes down, the business goes down as well. IT resiliency is a critical
success factor to any enterprise. The IBM X6 portfolio is built on generations of technology designed to
deliver business-critical resiliency, a core element of which is the integrated management stack.
A number of the IBM X6 platform and management features are designed to ensure maximum
application availability, to provide ease of maintenance, and to integrate into virtual environments:
 Self-healing architectures: IBM X6 platforms will automatically switch over to the second CPU
in the event of a primary CPU failure. This is very important because the primary CPU
maintains control and access to the network, storage, and security components in the server.
Additionally, the management firmware (Integrated Management Module) is automatically
backed up if the primary processor fails. Another key capability is the ability to sort pages in
memory based on data integrity — delivering resources with the highest level of reliability for
application and operating system consumption.
 Page Retire: Page Retire, developed from advanced algorithms from IBM Research,
transparently monitors pages in memory and automatically quarantines any corrupt memory
pages, protecting the platform from potential fatal failures. This feature drives higher
availability and system resiliency.
 Integration with hypervisors: IBM X6 platforms introduce two more Upward Integrated Modules
(UIMs) that fully integrate with standard hypervisors to provide advanced management
capabilities. Rolling firmware UIM enables IT to schedule a transparent system firmware update in
virtualized environments, while RAS UIM allows IT to set specific policies to proactively respond
to predictive failure alerts, thus avoiding downtime and "touch" on the platforms.
Built for Business-Critical Workloads
IBM's Enterprise X-Architecture is specifically suited for demanding enterprise applications that require
greater performance, increased memory and storage capacity, and enhanced management platforms.
IBM has a proven track record with EXA in running business-critical workloads stretching back more
than a decade. With X6 platforms, IBM is driving client value by optimizing the following key business-
critical workloads:
 Enterprise resource planning (ERP): The compute performance and scalability of the IBM X6
portfolio are well suited to run business intelligence applications, such as SAP Business Suite.
The resiliency of these systems ensures that tier 1 applications can be run on the more
economical x86 system.

6. ©2014 IDC #246008 6
 Analytics and database: With validated configurations for Microsoft SQL Data Warehouse,
X6 platforms can enable faster provisioning time. The expanded memory capacity and flash
technology can significantly improve database performance and reduce latency in query time.
 Virtualization: The compute and memory in the X6 systems are robust enough to run large
VMs for enterprise applications that traditionally could not be run on smaller servers because
of processor and memory constraints. IBM eXFlash memory-channel storage enables the
deployment and enablement of virtual machines without dependency on external storage. The
management features, including automated provisioning, integration with hypervisors, and
automatic firmware updates, improve the efficiency of running a highly virtualized environment.
CHALLENGES/OPPORTUNITIES
IDC sees challenges and opportunities for IBM X6 platforms to deliver business-critical performance
and availability to customers.
Challenges
 Demonstrating the ROI of the systems: IDC places the IBM X6 platforms in the higher end of
the x86 systems market, which has been traditionally dominated by lower-cost servers. Some
customers still perceive a price premium with four-socket servers, where much of the rationale
on x86 server procurement still centers on capital expenditure. IBM will have to demonstrate
the operational efficiencies and business benefits that a higher-end x86 system can deliver
versus a low-cost volume server.
 Alternative solutions: With data analytics among the top priorities for enterprises, it is to be
expected that there are a range of solutions on the market to address this opportunity. The list
of competitors to IBM X6 platforms ranges from other x86 vendors to Unix vendors and even
vendors offering data analytics via the cloud. IBM's message will have to communicate how
effectively the company competes with all these alternatives.
Opportunities
 For customers: The capabilities of larger x86 systems such as the IBM X6 platforms enable
customers to deploy an efficient and economical server infrastructure that can run resilient
multiterabyte databases and virtualize large I/O workloads. Consolidating applications on a
scale-up x86 architecture can remove complexity in customers' environments and simplify the
management of their systems.
 For IBM: Offering a server platform that effectively and confidently supports large database,
analytics, and virtual workloads creates a significant opportunity for IBM. Customers consider
these types of workloads vital to the business, and they value technology partners that can
deliver on their requirements.

7. ©2014 IDC #246008 7
CONCLUSION
As business and analytical applications grow more sophisticated, the server platform requirements
become more complex. This includes all elements of the server system from processor to memory
technologies to management modules. It is also critically important how systems can maintain
maximum application availability as well as integrate into virtual environments.
As the sixth iteration of the Enterprise X-Architecture, IBM's X6 servers are built on a solid foundation
of system research and development. The IBM X6 portfolio draws upon the history IBM has in
developing large systems and the application of that expertise to industry-standard servers. The result
is servers that can deliver mission-critical performance for demanding enterprise applications, easily
scale to meet future workload demand, and efficiently run robust virtual environments.
This document was developed with IBM funding. Although the document may utilize publicly available
material from various vendors, including IBM, it does not necessarily reflect the positions of such
vendors on the issues addressed in this document.

8. About IDC
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