1. IBM Systems and Technology Group System x
Solution Brief
High Availability
Reference Architecture
Deploying IBM BladeCenter HX5 and
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
Maintaining the availability of IT systems and services is crucial to
Highlights sustaining business vitality. Yet natural disasters, malicious attacks and
even simple configuration problems can easily threaten that availability,
• Leverage the industry expertise of IBM leaving applications unavailable until administrators resolve problems
and Microsoft to implement an “in-the-box”
solution for highly available virtualization
and restore data. As businesses consolidate physical servers through
• Validated reference architectures offer virtualization, those threats are amplified—the loss of a single physical
improved workload availability and server could mean significant downtime for multiple virtualized
uptime, simplified management, and
applications. You need hardware and software solutions that can
reduced energy use and physical footprint
• IBM® BladeCenter® HX5 blade servers help ensure high availability and deliver exceptional performance in
with the Intel® Xeon® processor 7500 series virtualized environments.
deliver outstanding performance, high
memory capacity and throughput, and
high-speed I/O
With a validated high availability reference architecture based on
IBM hardware and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™
virtualization technology, you can leverage the industry expertise
of IBM and Microsoft to implement an “in-the-box” solution that helps
to ensure high availability for your virtualized environment. While
Hyper-V helps to simplify server virtualization, IBM BladeCenter
servers provide the processing performance, large-scale memory
capacity, high memory bandwidth and high-speed I/O for building a
robust foundation for virtualization. The high availability reference
architecture brings together IBM and Microsoft technologies to
deliver high workload availability, simplified management, decreased
energy use and a reduced physical footprint.
Validated at the IBM Center for Microsoft Technology, high availability
reference architectures from IBM and Microsoft include:
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
• IBM BladeCenter blade servers
• IBM System Storage® disk storage

2. IBM Systems and Technology Group System x
Solution Brief
Microsoft software built for high availability combine exceptional raw compute power with increased
The Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system supports many key memory bandwidth, support for significantly greater memory
high-availability features to help meet your uptime requirements: capacity and high-speed I/O to deliver better performance
and scalability than previous-generation servers.
• Failover Clustering—Builds redundancy into your network
and helps to eliminate single points of failure Supporting up to 16 DIMMs, BladeCenter HX5 servers
• Network Load Balancing—Distributes workloads across enable IT administrators to deploy large-scale memory
cluster nodes in order to support a larger number of capacity to enhance application performance or host more
simultaneous users VMs than before. Adding MAX5 memory expansion blades
• Shadow Copy—Provides point-in-time file copies that can to an HX5 server doubles the system’s memory capacity,
be stored on shared resources enabling you to run even more VMs on each server while
• Windows Server Backup—Built-in basic backup and helping you control virtualization licensing costs. BladeCenter
recovery tasks, including Hyper-V support HX5 servers are ideal candidates for resource-intensive
• Windows® Recovery Environment—Provides a partial applications and workloads being transferred to the blade
operating system and tools for fast recovery form factor.
• Improved Storage Availability—Maintains storage uptime
with improved fault tolerance and recovery from BladeCenter HX5 servers are easy to own, manage and upgrade
configuration errors with pay-as-you-grow expansion that helps you protect your
investments over the long term. The modular design enables
Failover clustering and the virtualization capabilities of scaling from two to four sockets without having to change
Hyper-V in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 now provide platforms. Capabilities such as advanced light-path diagnostics,
support for disaster recovery within IT environments and across error handling and around-the-clock remote access management
data centers. Using Hyper-V live migration, running virtual help simplify systems management and minimize downtime.
machines (VMs) can be moved from one Hyper-V physical host Automatic node failover and QPI faildown help promote greater
to another without any disruption or perceived loss of service. system uptime. In addition, an energy-smart design and IBM
Providing the core technology required for dynamic load Systems Director Active Energy Manager™ help lower power
balancing, VM placement and high availability for virtualized consumption and costs.
workloads during physical computer maintenance, live migration
allows you to create a dynamic and flexible IT environment that Combining BladeCenter HX5 servers with IBM System
responds to emerging business needs. Storage allows you to create an infrastructure that responds to
changing business requirements while facilitating data sharing
To take full advantage of live migration and the high availability and collaboration across your business. IBM System Storage
platform enhancements in Windows Server 2008 R2, solutions help you address your information management
implement Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager needs, enabling you to create a resilient, cost-effective and
(SCVMM) 2008 R2 to provide a management solution for the flexible infrastructure for securely storing information and
virtualized data center that allows you to simplify and leverage mitigating risk. Start with entry-level DS5020 disk storage
your virtual environment. With SCVMM 2008 R2, you’ll systems that can deliver powerful capabilities to help protect
centralize management and monitoring of your virtual server your data, and provide ample capacity scaling to either
infrastructure while adding new functionality that increases 50.5 TB of FC storage or 112 TB of SATA storage. For
control and flexibility, including the ability to migrate storage mid-range deployments, the flexible and high-performing
for running VMs, SAN-based migration across clusters, IBM System Storage DS5300 series offers “pay-as-you-grow”
template-based rapid provisioning, and more. scalability with 4Gbps or 8Gbps FC connectivity, offering
capacity up to 480 TB using SATA drives, drive-level disk
A strong, stable platform for virtualization encryption and field upgradeability to complement your most
The IBM BladeCenter HX5 servers capitalize on unique demanding high-availability implementations. For high-end
innovations from fifth-generation IBM X-Architecture® use, IBM System Storage XIV is designed to be scalable in all
technology (eX5) to deliver unprecedented performance key aspects, including capacity, interfaces, cache, CPU power
and utilization for database and virtualization environments. Built and internal bandwidth. The architecture supports each aspect
on the Intel Xeon processor 7500 and 6500 series with up to to grow independently, yielding a truly scalable system in
eight cores per socket, IBM BladeCenter HX5 servers both capacity and performance. The result is a dynamic,

3. IBM Systems and Technology Group System x
Solution Brief
future-proof system that is capable of growing to meet
changing needs. The architecture’s use of standard components
ensures smooth scaling to a maximal configuration and
integration of up-to-date technologies at any time. The IBM
XIV system offers seamless, effortless and nondisruptive
hardware upgrades, with automatic load balancing between
new and old hardware.
Through ongoing participation in Microsoft programs, IBM A B Blade A fails, resulting in
System Storage identifies key Microsoft technology areas to apply VM migration from Blade A
to server and storage solutions that result in complementary to Blade B
storage solutions that can help Microsoft and IBM customers SAN
realize significant benefit from their investment. IBM also verifies
its solutions onsite in Redmond using IBM storage equipment
VHDs reside on
and IBM personnel who help develop joint solutions and perform
shared disk
interoperability and technology validation testing.
Validated high availability reference
architectures—BladeCenter HX5
All validated high availability reference architectures
start with a cost-effective, two-server solution and
provide the opportunity to grow to larger configurations
Figure 1: A two-blade solution builds redundancy into your network and
as needs expand. eliminates single points of failure
Basic Standard Advanced
BladeCenter HX5 BladeCenter HX5 BladeCenter HX5
Processors/Cores (4) Intel® Xeon® Processor E7520 4C (4) Intel® Xeon® Processor E7540 6C (4) Intel® Xeon® Processor X7560 8C
1.86GHz 18MB Cache 95w, 2.0GHz 18MB Cache 105w, 2.26GHz 24MB Cache 130w,
16 cores total 24 cores total 32 cores total
Memory 32 GB 64 GB 128 GB with MAX5
Networking 2 Onboard 1Gb/E NICs 2 Onboard 1Gb/E NICs 2 Onboard 1Gb/E NICs
2/4 Port Ethernet Expansion Card 2/4 Port Ethernet Expansion Card 2/4 Port Ethernet Expansion Card
(CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter
(4 NICs total) (4 NICs total) (6 NICs total)
Storage IBM System Storage DS5020 IBM System Storage DS5300 IBM XIV System Storage
Emulex 8Gb FC CIOv Dual-Port HBA Emulex 8Gb FC CIOv Dual-Port IBM Storage SAN24B Switch
for IBM Blade Servers HBA for IBM Blade Servers Emulex 8Gb FC CIOv Dual-Port
HBA for IBM Blade Servers
Software • Windows Server 2008 R2 EE • Windows Server 2008 R2 EE • Windows Server 2008 R2 EE
• System Center Virtual Machine • System Center Virtual Machine • System Center Virtual Machine
Manager R2 Workgroup Edition Manager R2 Workgroup Edition Manager R2 Workgroup Edition
• IBM Director and Tivoli® • IBM Director and Tivoli • IBM Director and Tivoli
Hyper-V R2 and • Live Migration • Live Migration • Live Migration
SCVMM R2 • HA Included • HA Included • HA Included
• P2V Conversion • P2V Conversion • P2V Conversion
• VM Library Support • VM Library Support • VM Library Support
Notes:
1. SCVMM 2008 Workgroup Edition includes SCVMM 2008 and licenses to manage five physical host servers.
The full edition of SCVMM will be required if more than five hosts are to be managed.
2. Windows Server 2008 Standard includes one virtual Windows guest license
3. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise includes four virtual Windows guest licenses
4. Windows Server 2008 Datacenter 1, 2 and 4 CPU includes unlimited virtual Windows guest licenses

4. Validated architectures accelerate
deployment and help lower costs
Validated high availability reference architectures
from IBM and Microsoft offer an easy-to-implement
path to a reliable and flexible high-performance
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010
virtualized infrastructure, delivering:
IBM Corporation
• Improved workload availability and uptime IBM Systems and Technology Group
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• Simplified, centralized management of RTP, NC 27709
dynamic workloads
• Reduced energy use and physical footprint
• Maximized investment in servers, storage Produced in the United States of America
June 2010
and networking
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• Low-cost, highly available virtualization
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