PureSystems is an IBM product line of factory pre-configured components and servers also being referred to as an "Expert Integrated System". The centrepiece of PureSystems is the ''IBM Flex System Manager'' in tandem with the so-called "Patterns of Expertise" for the automated configuration and management of PureSystems. PureSystems can host four different operating systems ( AIX,

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS i ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

) and five

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

s (

Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Wi ...

, KVM,

PowerVM PowerVM, formerly known as Advanced Power Virtualization (APV), is a chargeable feature of IBM POWER5, POWER6, POWER7, POWER8, POWER9 and Power10 servers and is required for support of micro-partitions and other advanced features. Support is pr ...

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

, Xen) on two different instruction set architectures:

Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power ISA ...

and x86. PureSystems is marketed as a converged system, which packages multiple information technology components into a single product.

Architecture

The architecture itself is called IBM Flex System. It aims at managing hybrid cloud infrastructure environments "out of the box". The basic intention is for the combination of integrated hardware and software that can be easily maintained. A similar concept had already been introduced with the

IBM AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-c ...

. Today, such systems are called converged systems. More specialized integrated hardware and software are referred to as appliances. The compute nodes of the server blades can be x86 or

and they can be used either individually or mixed in the same rack simultaneously, thus offering a hybrid ensemble which borrows from the zEnterprise/ zBX ensemble (cf. a gameframe), including its ability to manage a combined physical/virtual hybrid environment from a single console. PureSystems is shipped with the IBM Flex System Manager. It is an appliance which manages the resources according to the so-called "Patterns of Expertise", which provide field engineers' expertise from decades of system configuration. These "Patterns of Expertise" offer industry-specific (e.g. banking, insurance, automotive) defaults for the fully automatic and optimal orchestration of resources (e.g. workload balancing). PureApplication uses in conjunction with the IBM System Manager first Flex repeatable software patterns (pattern) and industry-specific processes, which are derived from the year-long collaboration of IBM with their customers and business partners.

Platform

The basic building block of the system is the 10U high Flex Enterprise system chassis with 14 bays in the front for compute nodes ("servers") and storage nodes. Additionally, there are bays in the rear for I/O modules. A flex-chassis can accommodate up to 14 horizontal compute and storage nodes in the front, and 4 vertically oriented switch modules in the rear. Contrasting to this, the

IBM BladeCenter The IBM BladeCenter was IBM's blade server architecture, until it was replaced by Flex System in 2012. The x86 division was later sold to Lenovo in 2014. History Introduced in 2002, based on engineering work started in 1999, the IBM eSer ...

(9U high) has vertically oriented compute nodes ("blades"). This means that the components between the BladeCenter chassis and Flex chassis are not interchangeable. Based upon the Flex Systems architecture (the components of which are individually available), there are three main products: * PureFlex System (

IaaS The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...

) * PureApplication System ( PaaS) * PureData System (tightly coupled and specialized

computer appliance A computer appliance is a home appliance with software or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. Such devices became known as ''appliances'' because of the similarity in role or management to a home ap ...

/ software appliance)

PureFlex

PureFlex is a factory pre-configured and combined hardware-/software system for

in terms of

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over m ...

. It combines server, network and storage. IBM PureFlex is available in three configurations: Express, Standard, Enterprise.

PureApplication

PureApplication is a pre-configured platform for

platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computing ...

applications. It is optimized for transaction-oriented web and database applications. PureApplication comes with

IBM DB2 Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and ...

database and WebSphere Application Server pre-configured so users can run their applications into a preconfigured middleware engine. Unlike PureFlex, which is sold by IBM Systems and Technology Group (STG), PureApplication is marketed by the IBM Software Group (SWG). IBM claims that PureApplication allows for installation (or deployment) of new applications within four hours. The system's virtual pattern deployers encrypt on-disk data using Security First Corp's SPxBitFiler-IPS encryption technology, which is also licensed by IBM for its Cloud Data Encryption Service (ICDES). IBM PureApplication System is available in three classes: * W1500-32 and W1500-64, using Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors, housed in a 25U rack * W1500-96 through to W1500-608, using Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors, housed in a 42U rack * W1700-96 through to W1700-608, using IBM POWER7+ processors, housed in a 42U rack

PureData

PureData Systems takes the approach of PureApplication a step further being essentially a tightly coupled and specialized

and software appliance, the latter supporting both

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The wor ...

and

DB2 Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and ...

. It is thence marketed by the IBM Information Management Software, a brand of IBM Software Group (SWG). PureData is focused at three main tasks within enterprise computing: business intelligence, near real-time data analysis and online transactional processing.IBM expands PureSystems line for data duties
by Joab Jackson, Oct 9, 2012 at ''computerworld.com'' It comes in four flavours:IBM Expands PureSystems Family With New PureData Big Data Box
by Darryl K. Taft, Oct 9, 2012 at ''eweek.com'' * PureData Systems for Transactions * PureData Systems for Analytics * PureData Systems for Operational Analytics * PureData Systems for

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities that facilitates using a network of many computers to solve problems involving massive amounts of data and computation. It provides a software framework for distributed storage ...

PureData System for Transactions is a highly reliable and scalable database platform. It is aimed at

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain mana ...

[i.e. retail and credit card processing environments) which depends on rapid handling of transactions and interactions. These transactions are small in size, but their sheer volume and frequency require a specialized environment. The new system can provide 5x performance improvement, partly through advances in high performance storage. PureData System for Analytics builds on Netezza technology and it is aimed at business intelligence that entails huge queries with complex algorithms. It provides a large library of database analytical functions for data warehouse applications, and can scale across the terabyte or petabytes running on the system. It can support extremely high volume high speed analytics for clients (e.g. mobile phone carriers who want to identify potential churn and provide offers to retain customers). PureData Systems for Operational Analytics is an operational warehouse system which supports

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

decision making. In contrast to PureData System for Analytics, which is aimed at handling large sets of data at a time, PureData for Operational Analytics is more or less a

stream computing In computer science, stream processing (also known as event stream processing, data stream processing, or distributed stream processing) is a programming paradigm which views data streams, or sequences of events in time, as the central input and ...

system that can analyze many small sets of data in real-time while PureData for Analytics will provide analysis only in hindsight, although with large sets of data. Potential uses of PureData Systems for Operational Analytics are fraud detection or analysis of rapid fluctuations in supply-and-demand cycles. PureData Systems for Hadoop H 1001 is a standards-based - so-called expert integrated - system which architecturally integrates IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, Hadoop-based software, server (

IBM System x System x is a line of x86 servers produced by IBM – and later by Lenovo – as a sub-brand of IBM's ''System'' brand, alongside IBM Power Systems, IBM System z and IBM System Storage. In addition, IBM System x was the main component of th ...

), and storage into a single appliance. Moreover, it integrates with

, IBM Netezza, IBM PureData System for Analytics, and IBM InfoSphere Guardium.

Hardware

Compute Nodes

Intel based

Compute nodes based on x86 processors from

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

= x220

= *

Flex System Flex or FLEX may refer to: Computing * Flex (language), developed by Alan Kay * FLEX (operating system), a single-tasking operating system for the Motorola 6800 * FlexOS, an operating system developed by Digital Research * FLEX (protocol), a comm ...

x220 compute node Type 7906 * Standard-width compute node * Processors: Xeon E5-2400

= x222

= * Flex System x220 compute node Type 7916 * Half-width compute node * Processors: E5-2400

= x240

= * Flex System x240 compute node Type 7162, 8737 * Standard-width compute node * Processors: Type 7162: E5-2600 v2; Type 8737: E5-2600 v2 or E5-2600

= x240 M5

= * Flex System x240 M5 compute node Type 9532 * Standard-width compute node * Processors: E5-2600 v4

= x440

= * Flex System x440 compute node Type 7167, 7917 * Double-width compute node * Processors: Type 7917: Xeon E5-4600; Type 7167: E5-4600 v2

= x280 X6, x480 X6, and x880 X6

= * IBM

x280 X6, x480 X6, and x880 X6 compute nodes Type 7196, 7903 * Double-width compute node * Processors: ** x280 X6 Type 7903: Xeon E7-2800 v2 ** x480 X6 Type 7903: Xeon E7-4800 v2; Type 7196: Xeon E7-4800 v3 ** x880 X6 Type 7903: Xeon E7-8800 v2; Type 7196: Xeon E7-8800 v3 * Scalability: ** x280 X6: Does not scale ** x480 X6: Scales up to 4-socket by adding one x480 Compute Node + 4S scalability kit ** x880 X6: Scales up to 4-socket by adding one x880 Compute Node + 4S scalability kit; up to 8-socket by adding three x880 Compute Nodes + 8S scalability kit

Power based

Compute nodes based on

-based processors from IBM.

= p24L

= * IBM

p24L Compute Node: 1457-7FL * Standard-width compute node * Processors: Two IBM POWER7 * 16 DIMM sockets * 512 GB using 16x 32 GB DIMMs maximum memory size * Two I/O connectors for adapters. PCIe 2.0 x16 interface

= p260

= * IBM Flex System p260 Compute Node: 7895-22X, 23A, and 23X * Standard-width compute node * Processors: Two IBM POWER7 (model 22X) or POWER7+ (models 23A and 23X) * 16 DIMM sockets * 512 GB using 16x 32 GB DIMMs maximum memory size * Two I/O connectors for adapters. PCIe 2.0 x16 interface

= p270

= * IBM Flex System p270 Compute Node: 7954-24X * Standard-width compute node * Processors: Two IBM POWER7+ * 16 DIMM sockets * 512 GB using 16x 32 GB DIMMs maximum memory size * Two I/O connectors for adapters. PCIe 2.0 x16 interface

= p460

= * IBM Flex System p460 Compute Node: 7895-42X and 43X * Double-width compute node * Processors: Four IBM POWER7 (model 42X) or POWER7+ (model 43X) * 32 DIMM sockets * 1 TB using 32x 32 GB DIMMs maximum memory size * Four I/O connectors for adapters. PCIe 2.0 x16 interface

Software

Both IBM and its partners provide software which is specifically certified for PureSystems ("Ready for IBM PureSystems "). Currently, over 125 ISVs have already certified products for PureSystems, and business partners such as system integrators, resellers, distributors, ISVs or MSP can integrate PureSystems into their portfolio.

Miscellaneous

PureSystems wa
announced
April 11, 2012. It was mainly assembled at IBM Rochester Campus in

Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...

, MN. But on March 6, 2013, IBM decided to shift production of Power Systems, PureSystems and PureFlex Systems servers to Guadalajara,

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

from

Rochester, Minnesota Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on rolling bluffs on the Zumbro River's south fork in Southeast Minnesota, the city is the home and birthplace of the renowned Mayo Clinic. Ac ...

.IBM moving Rochester production to NY, Mexico
March 6, 2013 at ''MPRNews'' After 2014, most systems will be assembled in Mexico.

Videos

IBM PureSystems Family Tour with Jason McGee

What are IBM PureApplication Systems? (Part One)

IBM PureSystems Product Family - IBM PureData™ System Overview

IBM PureSystems - PureData System Overview w/Inhi Cho Suh

References

External links

Homepage for PureSystems

Homepage for Smarter Computing

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20120605221326/http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/portals/PureSystems?Open&page=pgbycat IBM Redbooks Product Guides
Portal IBM PureSystems Centre

IBM PureSystems - IBM Developerworks

HRG Assessment: Comparing IBM PureSystems and Cisco UCS
{dead link, date=April 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes by ''Harvard Research Group''
Part I-V: PureSystems, something old, something new, something from big blue
Apr, 12 2012 Series of five articles at ''storageioblog.com'' IBM server computers