IBM Corp has added dynamic workload management and next-generation fiber channel support to the Dynix/ptx Unix environment it picked up when it acquired Sequent Computer Systems Inc last September (CI No 3,701). The company said the latest Dynix/ptx enhancement is a step in the evolution of Project Monterey – Big Blue’s cooperative effort with SCO and others to build a unified Unix for Intel’s IA-64 processor architecture.
In more practical terms, the new Dynix/ptx 4.5 with Application region Manager (ARM) gives users of IBM’s NUMA-Q server range increased ability to dynamically reallocate resources to specific workloads without rebooting or, even, any kind of user intervention. The resources open to remote and automated ARM control have also been extended, to cover memory and kernel tables, as well as processors.
Inevitably, given the nature of IBM’s growing obsession with things e, the enhanced ARM features are claimed to be especially suitable to run e-commerce applications which are vulnerable to performance degradation and downtime caused by unpredictable loads applied to static resources said Ralph Hedberg, IBM’s NUMA-Q product marketing VP.
The second major feature of Dynix/ptx 4.5 is the operating system level support, for the first time in any IBM product, for the emerging Fiber Channel Class 2 standard, and integrated storage area network (SAN) diagnostics. The upshot should be consistently faster I/O response times, thanks to the milli-second performance of Class 2 SAN diagnostics, compared to the tens of seconds of delay more typical of present SAN installations.
