we are studying the virtualization option to reduce our datacenter cost, and this research was assigned to me.
we looked into alternatives and we almost reached a conclusion that PowerVM is the only option to virtualize pSeries servers. we found no signs of cloud support explicitly mentioned in any document, however there was the mention of CloudBurst.
from the videos we watched and the documents we read, it seems that CloudBurst is more oriented towards Application Servers (WebSphere Software). but our environment is not relying only on WebSphere. we have some banking applications, Oracle Databases and MQ/Broaker.
the question is: 1- can we virtualize the existing applications (all running AIX) on a cloud running on top of some of the existing servers? (given that we do the sizing properly) 2- is PowerVM to run on top of CloudBurst? 3- if the above solution is applicable, is this some sort of HA solution (since the VM will run on top of multiple physical boxes, while the same physical box will run multiple live images)
thanks for your help
we had some feedback that the WebSphere CloudBurst is not requierd for cloud enabling PowerVM, since CloudBurst is related to WAS (Web Application Server).
the other alternative is to combine PowerVM with IBM System Director VMControl Enterprise Edition to enable cloud like management