IBM to launch consolidation tool, rebrand servers
Consolidation software will let people find jobs on several servers and move them to a single machine with virtual partitions.
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IBM plans to announce software on Friday called the Consolidation Discovery and Analysis Tool. CDAT is designed to let customers find jobs running on multiple servers, and then move them to a single machine sliced into several virtual partitions. Virtualization software such as VMware or Xen enables customers run multiple operating systems simultaneously in partitions called virtual machines. Big Blue said customers fire up an average of 1,000 virtual machines on x86 servers each day, and added that half of its x86 server customers plan to use virtualization by the end of 2006.
In addition, IBM has rebranded its xSeries line of Intel-based servers with the "System x" label. Through that, the high-end x460 becomes the System x3950, the mid-range x366 becomes the System x3850 and the lower-end x260 becomes the System x3800.