The following redbooks discuss IBM tape solutions in greater detail:

￿Netfinity Tape Solutions, SG24-5218

￿The IBM LTO Ultrium Tape Libraries Guide, SG24-5946

3.4Server partitioning and consolidation

The concepts of server partitioning and consolidation are discussed in detail in Chapter 2, “Positioning” on page 35.

Implementing a server consolidation solution using VMware and the x440 introduces a number of important and unique issues that you need to consider during the planning phase of your project.

In particular the x440 configuration needs to be carefully sized to meet the resource requirements of the VMware operating system, the guest operating systems, and the applications being deployed.

A detailed discussion on planning, sizing, and implementing VMware solutions on the x440 can be found in the redbook Server Consolidation with the IBM

^xSeries 440 and VMware ESX Server, SG24-6852.

3.5Operating system considerations

In line with the overall message of providing application flexibility to meet the varying needs of our enterprise customers, the x440 is optimized for numerous operating system and application solutions. For the latest operating system support information, go to:

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/compat/nos/matrix.shtml

As described in 1.4.1, “Intel Xeon Processor MP” on page 13 Hyper-Threading technology allows a single physical processor to appear to the operating system and applications as two logical processors. The logical processors share the core processing engine of the physical processor but are able to execute code streams concurrently.

Operating systems must be “Hyper-Threading aware” before they can “see” the additional processors. When they are, they will “see” twice as many CPUs are there really are (see Figure 4-8 on page 118 for an example).

Simply enabling Hyper-Threading may not guarantee improved overall system performance, however. In order to benefit from enabling Hyper-Threading, the operating system and server applications need to be capable of detecting the

90 IBM ^xSeries 440 Planning and Installation Guide

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IBM 440 manual Server partitioning and consolidation, Operating system considerations