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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 28, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 30
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Systems/Enterprise:
NEW IBM WebSphere INTRODUCES GRID
COMPUTING CAPABILITIES
IBM has announced new software that will address a major source of
inefficiency in computer networks and could drive more mainstream, commercial
implementations of Grid computing -- the ability to take untapped resources
across an enterprise and make them available where and when they're needed,
resulting in a single, virtual system.
In today's data centers, the clusters of servers that run business
applications often do a poor job of juggling unpredictable workload. One
server may sit idle, while another is constrained.
This leads to a Catch-22 where companies -- needing to avoid network
bottlenecks and safeguard connectivity with customers, business partners and
employees -- often plan for the highest imaginable spikes in demand, then
watch as all those servers operate well under capacity most of the time.
Organizations are looking for better ways to use the hardware and software
they have already purchased.
IBM has developed a first-of-its-kind "traffic cop-like" software product
that
automatically and intelligently monitors application workload and routes
traffic to one server or another according to its workload at a given time. It
allows a cluster consisting of many servers -- from dozens to hundreds -- to
operate as a single environment that automatically adapts to sudden changes,
much as the electrical grid works.
This can improve network performance -- for example, eliminating some of
the
missed server connections that can be a mystery to Web users -- and allow
companies to get more value out of their existing server resources.
The technology was developed by IBM Research and the company's software
development teams over the past two years, and becomes available in the IBM
WebSphere Application Server beginning July 25. WebSphere was recently named
by a top analyst firm as the best-selling Web application platform.
The "traffic cop" is easily installed by an IT administrator with a simple
point and click as part of the WebSphere software setup.
The new technology is the latest example of IBM's work to take Grid
computing
into the commercial mainstream. IBM is offering technology and bringing
together business partners, developers, system integrators and IT vendors of
all sizes to form a standards-based Grid ecosystem that will accelerate
adoption in the enterprise. IBM's strategy is built around addressing the
needs of nine industries -- aerospace, automotive, financial, government, life
science, agricultural/chemical, electronics, higher education and
petroleum.
In Grid computing, all of the disparate computers and systems in an
organization or among organizations become one large, integrated computing
system. That single system can then be turned loose on problems and processes
too large and intensive for any single computer to easily handle in an
efficient manner.
Under non-grid circumstances: mainframes might lie idle 40 percent of the
time; Unix servers are sometimes "serving" less than 10% of the time; many
business PCs may be under utilized as much as 95% of a typical day.
Capabilities such as those in the new WebSphere software help a Grid gather
untapped power and functionality and make it available to users across the
grid as needed.
Future versions of IBM WebSphere will extend the "traffic cop" capability
to
disparate parts of a company and automatically coordinate multiple clusters of
servers running various business applications, rather than just single
clusters running a particular application such as online trading. Other new
features in WebSphere that help customers improve network performance:
- WebSphere Performance Advisor: This simplifies the IT administrator's job
by using live data collected from a running system to analyze changes and
recommend actions to improve application performance. It advises IT managers
how to set up the system to handle different levels of network traffic -- such
as a brokerage firm looking to handle a surge in stock trades -- and also
specific parameters, such as setting up database connections. While this
feature helps customers anticipate changes in their environment today, future
improvements will provide more advanced autonomic features that can manage the
system without human intervention.
- Automatic Backup Clusters: With WebSphere, customers can automatically
configure their system to set up a back-up cluster of servers in case the
primary cluster fails -- without having to write any code. No longer do
customers have to spend time setting up back-up clusters since workload is
automatically sent to another cluster elsewhere in the system if a cluster
fails.
WebSphere Offers Broader Support For Platforms, Standards
With V5.0.2, WebSphere also broadens its support for a multi-platform, open
standards-based IT environments by adding Microsoft's Windows 2003 server to
the 25 platforms that WebSphere already supports. Windows 2003 Server joins
Linux, Windows XP, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IBM's eServer family of iSeries,
pSeries and zSeries, and many other supported software and hardware
platforms.
WebSphere V5.0.2 also expands its support for open standards-based Web
services. In addition to all newly released Web services standards (AXIS V1.0
and JSR 109 support, plus the latest specifications for SOAP, UDDI, WSIF and
Web Services Gateway), WebSphere V5.0.2 is the first production-level
application server to support WS-I 1.0, which gives developers an advantage in
building Web services applications across heterogeneous environments.
WebSphere also provides additional support for JDK 1.4 specification, which
moves WebSphere closer to J2EE 1.4 compliance.
Pricing and availability
WebSphere Application Server v5.0.2 -- Enterprise -- available July 25 for
$30,000 per processor (includes one free year of maintenance and services)
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