The next release of IBM’s i5/OS operating system is almost upon us. General Availability is 21st March 2008. The market view is that this is the most significant release for many years and delivers numerous enhancements across a wide area of functions that deliver benefits to all businesses, large or small.
Some of the key features and benefits of i5/OS V6R1 include:
Security
- Encryption - Protecting data at rest (i.e. on disk) and backups of critical business information through advanced encryption. This supplements the existing hardware based tape encryption as it is independent of tape technology.
- Intrusion detection and prevention – Since i5/OS V5R4 the capability has been in the Operating System to detect attacks on the system from outside but enhanced functions are included with V6R1 that prevent web-based attacks and server to improve application availability and security.
Virtualisation
- Virtualisation of i5/OS Storage - simplify creation of i5/OS test and development environments through storage virtualisation from i5/OS or VIOS (Virtual IO Server.) Available on POWER6 systems running V6R1.
- Shared Processor Pools - Decrease software licensing costs on POWER6 / V6R1 systems by capping the number of processors a group of partitions can use.
- Storage Space Snapshots - Improve availability with backup of virtual i5/OS, AIX, Linux, and Windows environments while they are active
- File level backup for Linux - Improve availability with i5/OS-based file level backups of Linux running in partitions or on integrated servers
- Integrated server enhancements - Reduce costs of server farms with enhanced iSCSI-based integration with BladeCenter and System x servers with support for VMware ESX and ‘VMotion’ live application mobility.
SAN Integration
- New Fibre Channel Adapter - Deliver breakthrough performance for i5/OS V6R1 on POWER6 systems and IBM Systems Storage 8300 environments, or SAN attached tape devices, with a ‘Smart-IOA’ dual port fibre channel adapter.
BladeCenter Support
- Support for JS22 Blade - Enable consolidation of i5/OS and x86 servers with an IBM BladeCenter solution. i5/OS now supported on POWER6 JS22 blade.
Availability
- High Availability Solutions Manager - Reduce impact of planned and unplanned outages with disk clustering solution from IBM.
- IBM ‘iCluster’ High Availability – the purchase by IBM of -DataMirror brings the benefits of the full IBM support offering behind the popular application replication solution, benefitting businesses who now have a ‘one stop shop’ High Availability offering.
Management
- IBM Systems Director Navigator for i5/OS - Reduce IT operational costs with easy, integrated, web-based management environment for i5/OS
- Performance Data Investigator - with new web-based performance data viewer enhances analysis of performance data.
Java and Web
- Performance - Support more transaction per second for Java and WebSphere applications with i5/OS V6R1 enhancements
- IBM 64-Bit JVM - Enhance portability for ISV applications and improve performance of Java applications with IBM Java technology
- Integrated Web Application Server - Simplify deployment of Java applications with built in web application server
- Integrated Web Services server - Extend value and use of business applications through built in web services environment
- Integrated server enhancements - Reduce costs of server farms with enhanced iSCSI-based integration with BladeCenter and System x servers with support for VMware VMotion
Supported Systems
Version 6 release 1 is supported on the following systems;
800, 810, 825, 870, 890,
515, 520, 525, 550, 570, 595.
But is not supported on 270, 820, 830, 840 or anything previous to these.
