Specifications

44 IBM Flex System p260 and p460 Planning and Implementation Guide
2.4 IBM SmartCloud Entry
In IT environments, you face the challenges of delivering new capabilities with
growth of data, and the increase of applications and the amount of physical
hardware, such as servers, storages, and networks. The traditional means of
deploying, provisioning, managing, and maintaining physical and virtual
resources can no longer meet the demands of increasingly complex IT
infrastructure. Virtualization simplifies and improves efficiency and utilization,
and helps you manage growth beyond physical resource boundaries.
With SmartCloud Entry, you can build on your current virtualization strategies to
continue to gain IT efficiency, flexibility, and control.
There are many advantages to adapting a cloud environment:
򐂰 You can reduce a data center’s footprint and management cost.
򐂰 You can use an automated server request/provisioning solution.
򐂰 You can improve utilization and workload management, and deliver
new services.
򐂰 You have rapid service deployment, where you reduce the time to
deployment form several weeks to just days or hours.
򐂰 You have a built-in metering system.
򐂰 You can improve IT governance and risk management.
IBM simplifies your journey from server consolidation to cloud management by
providing complete cloud solutions, hardware, software technologies, and
services for implementing a private cloud with added value on top of a virtualized
infrastructure. IBM SmartCloud™ Entry for Cloud offerings provides these cloud
solutions, and have features that set them apart from other products. This single
product provides a comprehensive cloud software stack with capabilities that can
be otherwise provided only by using multiple products from other providers, such
as VMware. It enables customers to quickly deploy their cloud environment; in
addition, IBM offers advanced cloud features as you need them.
You can use existing IBM server investments and virtualized environments to
deploy IBM SmartCloud Entry with the essential cloud infrastructure capabilities:
When you create images using this product, you:
򐂰 Simplify the storage of thousands of images.
򐂰 Easily create new ‘golden master’ images and software appliances using
corporate standard operating systems.
򐂰 Convert images from physical systems or between various x86 hypervisors.