Lenovo Flex System Manager

IBM® Flex System™ Manager (FSM) is a systems management appliance that drives efficiency and cost savings in the data center. IBM Flex System Manager provides a pre-integrated and virtualized management environment across servers, storage, and networking that is easily managed from a single interface. A single focus point for seamless multichassis management provides an instant and resource-oriented view of chassis and chassis resources for both IBM System x® and IBM Power Systems™ compute nodes. You can reduce the number of interfaces, steps, and clicks it takes to manage IT resources, intelligently manage and deploy workloads based on resource availability and predefined policies, and manage events and alerts to increase system availability and reduce downtime while reducing operational costs.

The IBM Flex System Manager management appliance is shown in the following figure.


Figure 1. IBM Flex System Manager management appliance

 

IBM Flex System, a new category of computing and the next generation of Smarter Computing, offers intelligent workload deployment and management for maximum business agility. This chassis delivers high-speed performance complete with integrated servers, storage, and networking for multi-chassis management in data center compute environments. Furthermore, its flexible design can meet the needs of varying workloads with independently scalable IT resource pools for higher utilization and lower cost per workload. While increased security and resiliency protect vital information and promote maximum uptime, the integrated, easy-to-use management system reduces setup time and complexity, providing a quicker path to return on investment (ROI).

IBM Flex System gives forward-thinking companies a way to completely rethink deployment and management of their IT environments; it offers an opportunity to evolve to a more open, agile, and integrated computing system that is dynamically managed from a single vantage point to simultaneously maximize efficiency and innovation.

 

IBM Flex System Manager is designed to help you get the most out of your IBM PureFlex System while automating repetitive tasks. IBM Flex System Manager can reduce the number of manual navigational steps for typical management tasks. From simplified system setup procedures with wizards and built-in expertise to consolidated monitoring for all of your physical and virtual resources (compute, storage, and networking), IBM Flex System Manager provides core management functionality along with automation so you can focus your efforts on business innovation.

IBM Flex System Manager has the following key features:

• Optimizing your workload management through built-in expertise

  With a workload-optimized approach, you can decrease infrastructure costs and improve service levels. You can create and modify system pools using virtual workloads, make dynamic virtual workload adjustments, and move workloads within system pools, resulting in an optimized virtual environment with increased resilience to cope with planned or unplanned down time. A system pool is a group of virtualized system components that are managed as a single entity, allowing you to manage the pools with the simplicity of managing a single system, which is an essential capability for moving to cloud computing and a dynamic infrastructure.

• Managing all of your resources with one solution

  Beginning with deployment through maintenance, upgrades, and problem resolution, IBM Flex System Manager is designed to provide all of the key management functions for your integrated IT resources from a single, easy to use interface. From your office or remotely through a secure connection, you can manage your compute, storage, network and virtualized resources.

  • Compute

    Auto discovery and setup wizards make deploying compute nodes quick and easy using the IBM Flex System Manager. After it is deployed, IBM Flex System Manager provides real-time updates for compute node “health” summaries. With the ability to define performance thresholds to trigger alerts, you can automate responses to potential problems help keep your critical business applications running at peak performance. IBM Flex System Manager can detect many problems with essential system resources and recover automatically. IBM Flex System Manager can also perform trend analysis to forecast and prevent future problems that otherwise might lead to expensive system outages.

  • Storage

    IBM Flex System Manager helps you address storage management challenges from device deployment and through the data life cycle. Storage deployment capabilities in the IBM Flex System Manager include storage device discovery and simple logical and physical device configuration from a single interface. IBM Flex System Manager can provide physical and logical storage topology views and can show relationships between storage and server resources, giving you the ability to track key resources based on their business usage. Provisioning capabilities include image management for simple virtual machine creation, deployment and cloning. You can also manage storage system pools for data life cycle management and storage placement based on business policies.

  • Networking

    Networking resources allow your virtualized compute and storage resources to communicate and function in the cloud. IBM Flex System Manager delivers end-to-end network management for your PureFlex System from a single tool. IBM Flex System Manager supports automated network discovery to speed deployments. It also offers a graphical view of the network from the integrated user interface. Network resources are pooled and virtualized. With logical network profiles, you can quickly and easily specify the network connectivity characteristics of a virtual machine.

    IBM Flex System Manager supports automatic provisioning and simple movements of virtual LANs for virtual machines. You can manage MAC addresses for virtual network interface cards. IBM Flex System Manager provides detailed network usage and performance statistics for virtual machines and physical compute nodes so you can track valuable network resources and manage them based on your business needs.

  • Virtualization

    The basic virtualization functions in the IBM Flex System Manager begin with the ability to create and manage virtual servers from pooled resources. IBM Flex System Manager takes this capability further through the application of built-in expertise to make provisioning and deployment of virtual machines fast and easy. After virtual machines are deployed, the virtualization features of IBM Flex System Manager are designed to help you manage these virtualized resources efficiently. Automation features such as dynamic virtual machine placement, automated optimization, and resource balancing simplify virtualization management. IBM Flex System Manager also helps you keep your virtual machines up and running with support for nondisruptive updates, virtual machine mobility, and a range of other resilience features.