Virtualization and Systems Management

The Virtualization and Systems Management group focuses on advanced and autonomic management aspects of cloud computing, as a part of the IBM Blue Cloud initiative.  In particular, we are working in the area of the cloud software infrastructure, where we combine new ideas to exploit virtualization and innovative systems management techniques. We believe that virtualization and systems management will be primary enabling technologies to make cloud computing become a marketplace reality.

The group’s activities in this area influence a wide range of IBM system products and services, including IBM's xSeries systems (with a focus on blade servers), IBM's pSeries systems, IBM's zSeries systems,  IBM systems management and more.  We collaborate with several teams from IBM research and contribute to productization work of IBM development peers. We are also collaborating on cloud computing technologies with the EU FP7 project Reservoir which is led by our department.

One of our major activities is the Advanced Ensemble Management. Ensemble, a key concept of the IBM Blue Cloud Initiative, is a cluster of similar servers with virtualization capabilities. The ensemble concept greatly simplifies the management complexity of the new cloud-based data centers by providing a single smart entity that encapsulates 100s of servers and 1000s of workloads running inside it. We are integrating advanced technologies of various domains (performance, placement, security, networking, high availability, energy management) to create a highly autonomic and optimized ensemble.

On a joint project called AVOIR with IBM Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (BCRS), we are developing a system for exploiting virtualization, automation, and cloud computing techniques in BCRS centers.  

In another activity, we are contributing to the advanced management of Workload Partitions in AIX (WPAR), including autonomic policy-based relocations of WPARs according to system’s events.

We are also active in the area of IT simplification and user experience in which we address the new cloud management systems and tools that involve complex policy-based functionality.

   Ofer Biran,