IBM gives autonomic computing a brain

by Agam Shah

November 8, 2007 —

To keep up with growing complexities of data center maintenance, IBM on Thursday
announced a new set of self-management tools that can reduce the cost and manpower
needed to run data centers.

The tools represent the next phase in the development of IBM's Autonomic Computing
effort, an umbrella of tools used in IBM's hardware, software and services to
reduce human intervention by monitoring and managing systems autonomically.
The package was first introduced in 2001.

New tools include the IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager, an energy
management package that monitors power consumption, and makes adjustments to
improve energy efficiency and reduce power consumption costs, said Ric Telford,
vice president for autonomic computing at IBM.

The software allows customers to cap power usage, prevent cost overruns and
monitor workload usage trends to enable better planning before deploying workloads
across multiple platforms in data centers, Telford said. Users have the option
to designate important workloads to get more power based on the information
provided, he said.

A new platform, IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, provides
an integrated place for system administrators to see the characteristics of
assets in an IT environment, Telford said. It automatically tracks IT information
across multiple computer systems, including servers, storage, networks and applications.
That helps IT staff better understand the relationships and dependencies among
components, Telford said. This platform will be delivered to other service management
products across IBM in the future.

Updates have also been made to some existing packages.

IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager gives information around usage of different
resources, including CPU utilization, in a data center. Based on user behavior
data, decisions on the allocation of IT resources can be made, Telford said.
"This information allows you to be more proactive to the needs of a business
unit going forward," he said.

The update better accounts for the utilization of CPUs and resources by virtual
machines on System p and System x servers, Telford said.

By autonomously analyzing data throughout an IT center, the Tivoli Security
Operations Manager detects security threat and automates the process of incident
recognition, investigation and response.

Datacenters will benefit from the new tools as IT systems become more expensive
to manage, Telford said. A majority of data center costs were on purchasing
hardware and software, but it's now more on manpower, Telford said. By incorporating
operational intelligence, autonomic computing could reduce such manpower costs,
Telford said.

IDG News Service