GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

Table of Contents
About the Sponsor���������������������������������������������������������� 4
Introduction�������������������������������������������������������������������� 5
Overview: What Is Linux on Power?������������������������������� 6
Power Architecture���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6
Benefits��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8
The Power of Virtualization���������������������������������������������������������������������������8
Security and Compliance����������������������������������������������������������������������������11
High Availability and DR�����������������������������������������������������������������������������12
Open Ecosystem����������������������������������������������������������� 13
Linux on Power Community������������������������������������������������������������������������14
IBM Power Community�������������������������������������������������������������������������������15
Conferences � ����������������������������������������������������������������� 16
OpenPOWER Summit 2016�������������������������������������������������������������������������17
LinuxCon 2016��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17
IBMTechU 2016� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17
IBM Insight 2016� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������18
ShiftIT���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������18
Leverage the Power with These Apps�������������������������� 18
Skybot Job Scheduler��������������������������������������������������������������������������������19
Halcyon Network Server Suite��������������������������������������������������������������������21
Conclusion�������������������������������������������������������������������� 22

TED SCHMIDT is the Senior Project Manager and Product Owner of Digital Products
for a consumer products development company. Ted has worked in Project and Product
Management since before the agile movement began in 2001. He has managed project and
product delivery for consumer goods, medical devices, electronics and telecommunication
manufacturers for more than 20 years. When he is not immersed in product development,
Ted writes novels and runs a small graphic design practice at http://floatingOrange.com.
Ted has spoken at PMI conferences, and he blogs at http://floatingOrangeDesign.Tumblr.com.

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

GEEK GUIDES:
Mission-critical information for the most technical people on the planet.

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

About the Sponsor

HelpSystems

HelpSystems empowers IT professionals to excel like

never before. Every day more than 9,000 organizations
across the globe rely on HelpSystems to automate and
simplify system and network management, secure data,
and give people simple access to information they
need. For critical needs like IT and business process
automation, system security, network mapping, document
management, and business intelligence, HelpSystems
makes IT lives easier and keeps businesses running
smoothly. Learn more at http://www.helpsystems.com.

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

Linux
on Power
TED SCHMIDT

Introduction
Until recently, IBM’s Power Platform was looked upon as
being the system that hosted IBM’s flavor of UNIX and
proprietary operating system called IBM i. These servers
often are found in medium-size businesses running
ERP, CRM and financials for on-premise customers. By
enabling the Power platform to run the Linux OS, IBM
now has positioned Power to be the platform of choice
for those already running Linux that are facing scalability
issues, especially customers looking at analytics, big data
or cloud computing.

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Running Linux on IBM’s Power hardware offers some

obvious benefits, including improved processing speed
and memory bandwidth, inherent security, and simpler
deployment and management. But if you look beyond the
impressive architecture, you’ll also find an open ecosystem
that has given rise to a strong, innovative community, as
well as an inventory of system and network management
applications that really help leverage the benefits offered by
running Linux on Power.

Overview: What Is Linux on Power?

Power Architecture: Power is an acronym for Performance
Optimization With Enhanced RISC, which originally was
intended as the architecture for mid-range servers and
workstations. A Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), of
course, improves performance tremendously, allowing you
to move system functionality from hardware to software.
Because the Power architecture increases performance of
parallel processing by increasing addressable memory (16TB)
and providing eight threads for every CPU, for a total of
96 concurrent threads, there are incredible improvements
in the time it takes to access memory. Faster queries and
reduced time for data to be brought into memory is critical
for applications like big data.
Compare these to stats for the x86 processor, which
can offer only 30 concurrent threads at a maximum
processor speed of 3.4GHz, on-chip cache of 37.5MB,
and only 1.5TB of addressable memory per socket
(Table 1), and there’s just no contest. Power clearly is the
platform for, well, for power.

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Table 1. IBM Power8 vs. Intel

Spec IBM Power8 Intel Haswell

Frequency 3.52GHz 2.3GHz

Cores 12 16

Logical Cores 96 SMT 32 HT

Cache 96MB 40MB

Memory Bandwidth 384GBps 68GBps

Max GFLOP/s (single) 676 1,178

Max GFLOP/s (double) 338 589

But beyond impressive improvements in processing

speeds and concurrent threads, IBM also added
something called Coherent Accelerator Processor
Interface (CAPI), which allows hardware to bypass the
operating system and communicate directly with the
CPU. This results in even faster data access speeds
and more data being accessed—another big boost for
data analytics.
Finally, Power is BI-endian, meaning it supports
both big-endian (BE) and little-endian (LE) data
management. Although RISC defaults to big-endian—
that is, treating the number one hundred twenty-three
as “123”—it supports little-endian, treating the same
number as “321”.
Intel x86 processors support little-endian Linux,
which means that any application currently running on
Linux on an Intel x86 processor also can run on Power

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on Linux. Because Power processors support little-

endian Linux, customers can realize big improvements
in processing power by moving from x86 processors to
Power with relative ease and no additional development.
To prove the point, Canonical (Ubuntu Linux
distributor) moved 40,000 Linux applications over to
the Power platform in only 160 days. As well, IBM
already has more than 80% of its own Linux applications
ported over to the Power platform, and SUSE and Red
Hat have Linux releases running on Power. Anyone
currently running Linux on an x86 architecture looking
for more power and speed to support analytics or cloud
computing, as well as commitment from IBM and the
Linux community, will take notice of that.

Benefits
It’s clear that the RISC-based architecture of IBM Power
provides a much faster and more powerful platform than
x86. And it has been proven how easy it is to migrate
to Linux on Power for current users of x86 processors
running Linux. So, let’s look at some of the benefits,
other than processing speed and ease of migration, that
Power on Linux offers.
The Power of Virtualization: Power servers are built
specifically to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) without
increasing latency by increasing priority and avoiding
interference of latency-sensitive tasks. IBM offers several
options for virtualizing machines on a Power system,
although VMware is not currently among them.
The first option, PowerVM, will support running

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multiple LPARs of different versions of UNIX, including

AIX, Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE at the same time and
still support IBM i for your core business application.
A variation of this option, called “PowerVM for
PowerLinux” supports only Linux VMs. As an alternative
to PowerVM, PowerKVM is the open-source-based
virtualization solution offered on Power8 servers (versus
the previous generation of Power7). IBM provides the
ability to switch between PowerVM and PowerKVM with
a simple reboot of your VM. Table 2 compares the two
options on a Power8 platform.

Table 2. Terminology on PowerVM and PowerKVM

PowerVM PowerKVM

FSP Flexible Service Provider (FSP)

Hypervisor Host, Hypervisor

Logical Partition (LPAR) Virtual Machine (VM), Guest, Virtual Instance

PowerVM hypervisor driver (pHyp) firmware Open Power Abstraction Layer (OPAL)

Virtual I/O server (VIOS) and the PowerVM KVM Host Userspace (QEMU)
hypervisor driver

Integrated Virtualization Manager Host userspace tools based on the libvert

(IVM) with Hardware Management API, including virsh
Console (HMC)

Integrated Virtualization Manager Management of virtualization through a

(IVM with Hardware Management browser-based user interface with Kimchi.
Console (HMC) Kimchi utilizes libvirt to manage KVM.

Integrated virtualization manager Command-line message-based

(IVM) with Hardware Management hardware management interface to
Console (HMC) manage IPMI-enabled devices on remote
host with IPMtool.

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The benefits of using PowerKVM include memory

virtualization, I/O virtualization and live VM migration. Memory
virtualization allows memory to be over-committed and
swapped out when underutilized, just like in a regular Linux
system. I/O virtualization offers a wide range of I/O resource
sharing options, including PCI pass-through to allow VMs
to access dedicated devices directly, and I/O configurations
that include Fiber Channel, NFS, iSCSI and Ethernet. If you
do decide to leverage the benefits of KVM, be aware that
PowerKVM requires the Open Power Abstraction Layer
(OPAL) interface to access the hardware, and because of that,
it runs only on Power8 servers. Be sure to evaluate all the
configuration options carefully before making a final choice.
PowerKVM also provides Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
(RHEV) and bare-metal virtualization. The former option is
important because Red Hat does not yet support RHEL if it is
running on PowerKVM, so you need to use its virtualization.
The latter option, which is really no virtualization, is
important for those looking for the performance boost of
3–20% that comes from removing the virtualization layer
from between the hardware and the virtual machine. Only
Ubuntu is enabled for bare metal at this time.
So, PowerVM provides the ability to create multiple
LPARs of different operating systems, with the exception
of the PowerLinux variation, which supports only Linux.
PowerKVM is the Power8 solution that takes the next step
by providing memory and I/O virtualization, along with live
VM migration. These are important to anyone looking at
cloud computing, but be aware of some of the limitations
when choosing which virtualization option to use.

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PowerSC also ensures the segregation of

virtual networks, which ensures that security
compliance is maintained, and provides local
firewall services on the virtualization layer,
which helps improve performance and reduce
network resource consumption.

Security and Compliance: Because the hypervisor for

Power resides directly in the firmware of the system, it
makes the virtual machines just as secure as the physical
servers on which they reside. In fact, the Department of
Homeland Security’s United States Computer Emergency
Readiness Team (US-CERT) and MITRE Corporation reported
zero vulnerabilities against PowerVM. Both organizations
are global leaders in establishing and auditing cyber-security
protocols. As well, HIPAA, DOD, PCI, CObIT and other
compliance protocols are preconfigured into PowerSC, the
security and compliance component of Power Systems, and
can be set up to notify an administrator automatically if a
VM falls out of compliance. Through compliance reporting,
PowerSC even offers suggestions for bringing non-compliant
VMs back into compliance. PowerSC also ensures the
segregation of virtual networks, which ensures that security
compliance is maintained, and provides local firewall services
on the virtualization layer, which helps improve performance
and reduce network resource consumption.

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High Availability and DR: Power on Linux leverages

native Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) to provide
HA and DR capabilities. Using RAID-1, DRBD mirrors an
entire block device to another networked host during
runtime, which allows the development of high-availability
clusters for block data.
DRBD supports a variation on synchronous and
asynchronous data replication that ends up providing
more data protection than asynchronous at a small cost
in performance. To ensure data integrity, DRBD uses the
Linux Crypto API and calculates message integrity codes
to go with data moving between nodes. This allows the
receiving node to validate its incoming data and request
retransmission when an error is found. Additionally, DRBD
permits the verification of local and peer devices in an
on-line fashion (while input/output occurs). Finally, DRBD
provides several automatic methods for recovering from
split-brain errors, when each node thinks it is primary.
When thinking about providing high availability (HA)
for PowerKVM on Linux, SUSE also provides an excellent
option with its Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension.
It comes fully integrated as an extension with SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server, which avoids issues that come from using
third-party products. It provides a great 24x7 HA clustering
solution that includes IP load balancing, TCP disk replication
and shared and scaled data access by multiple nodes via the
Oracle Cluster File System.
In summary, IBM’s Power platform provides multiple
performance benefits over Intel’s x86 system. The RISC
architecture provides impressive speed and parallel

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processing advantages over the x86 system. Combined with

memory availability and a CAPI that provides the CPU with
direct access to external flash storage, this is a big boost
for anyone doing big data analytics. Power also supports
BE and LE, which means migrating Linux applications from
x86 is painless and quick. Finally, Power offers significant
advantages in virtualization, security and HA/DR, which
serve the needs of cloud computing very well.

Open Ecosystem
In 2013, IBM founded the Open Power Consortium
(now called the OpenPOWER Foundation) with Google,
Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan in an effort to create an
entirely open ecosystem around the Power architecture.
The goal is to drive innovation by making all the
intellectual property around the Power architecture
completely available to all OpenPOWER Foundation
members. From Google’s investment in building its own
hyperscale processors based on Power8, to NVIDIA’s
work on providing an alternative to IBM’s CAPI interface
for access to Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), to
Tyan’s customer reference system (based on the Power
architecture, which allows end users to deploy software
that is customized to their unique requirements), IBM’s
willingness to create an open ecosystem around the
Power architecture appears to be working, with 157
members in 22 countries.
But to keep things moving in the right direction, IBM
continues to work closely with ISVs (Independent Software
Vendors), like HelpSystems who already have investments in

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Creating and working with a broader

community helps make Power more
relevant through open innovation, and the
OpenPOWER Foundation helps promote
collaboration on multiple levels, from chip
architecture, to hardware acceleration, to
systems management software.

Linux, AIX and IBM i solutions. These partners know what

customers want and are looking at ways to help IBM expand
and manage the capabilities offered by running Linux on the
Power platform. They appreciate the value of big data and
cloud computing, and they understand the value that Power
on Linux offers their customers.
Linux on Power Community: Creating and working
with a broader community helps make Power more
relevant through open innovation, and the OpenPOWER
Foundation helps promote collaboration on multiple
levels, from chip architecture, to hardware acceleration,
to systems management software. The Foundation already
has 11 chartered workgroups, such as Systems Software,
Memory, Accelerator and Hardware Architecture, just to
name a few. These workgroups are focused on delivery of
projects like LE Linux KVM, OpenCL SDK to OpenPOWER
Platform interface and IO Device Architecture (IODA2),
all of which will increase the platform’s accessibility to

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FIGURE 1. OpenPOWER Foundation:

http://openpowerfoundation.org

channel partners. IBM and the OpenPOWER Foundation

are committed to expanding the open-source ecosystem
for Linux on Power.
IBM Power Community: In addition to the OpenPOWER
Foundation, IBM has a strong on-line community that is
geared more toward individuals in the Linux on Power
community, where the Foundation is geared more toward
channel partners. IBM’s on-line community provides an array
of technical resources for Linux software on Power systems,

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FIGURE 2. The Linux on Power Community:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/group/tpl

including direct access to other Linux on Power users and

individuals on the development teams for both Linux and
IBM Power technologies. From blogs that herald releases
of new features, to wikis that provide access to detailed
technical knowledge, to open forums where you can find
access to the community’s top experts in Linux on Power,
the IBM Power Community offers something for every need.

Conferences
In addition to collaborating on-line with others in the Linux
on Power Community, it’s obviously important to get some
hands-on experience and training, and to establish working
relationships with other professionals.

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

OpenPOWER Summit 2016: The OpenPOWER

Foundation held the 2016 OpenPOWER Summit in early
April, building upon the great success of the Foundation’s
inaugural Summit in 2015. This event featured speakers
and demonstrations from the OpenPOWER ecosystem,
including industry leaders and academia sharing their
technical solutions and state-of-the-art advancements.
For more information on the OpenPOWER
Summit, see http://openpowerfoundation.org/
openpower-summit-2016.
LinuxCon 2016: The Linux Foundation offers events
that are collection points for maintainers and developers
across multiple important open-source software projects
in the enterprise, networking, embedded and cloud
infrastructure. Any company (or person) that wants to
leverage the power of open source, especially Linux on
Power, should strongly consider attending LinuxCon.
If you rely on, or are even considering Linux on Power,
it really makes sense to be a part of Linux Foundation
events, because they are a great place to meet and
network with the people who are actively involved in the
Linux on Power community.
More information about LinuxCon is available
at http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/
linuxcon-north-america.
IBMTechU 2016: IBM also offers its own events across
the country every year. If you want to grow your Linux
on Power knowledge and skills, IBMTechU offers multiple
opportunities with in-depth technical training at one of
the IBMTechU Comes to You events across the country.

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There are hundreds of sessions led by IBM product

and industry experts where you can learn about Linux
on Power or sharpen existing skills. IBMTechU offers
hands-on labs, demos and workshops geared to all skill
levels, so it’s easy to find whatever you’re looking for.
IBMTechU also offers the opportunity to test-drive new
products from IBM and IBM channel partners in the
Solution Center.
You can learn more and register at http://www-304.ibm.com/
services/learning.
IBM Insight 2016: IBM Insight 2016 is slated for
October 2016 and is another way to stay connected
with the Linux on Power community with more than
1,600 in-depth educational sessions including technical
training, hands-on labs and industry use cases presented
by more than 1,000 industry experts. It also includes
certification opportunities.
ShiftIT: Channel partners also provide a great wealth
of conference opportunities for staying connected to
the Linux on Power community. For instance, this year,
HelpSystems will be sponsoring ShiftIT, an opportunity for
Linux on Power professionals to get equipped with the
tools, skills and perspectives they need to leverage and
secure the power and performance offered by a Linux on
Power data center.
Visit http://www.helpsystems.com for more information
on ShiftIT.

Leverage the Power with These Apps

Earlier I mentioned existing IBM channel partners

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

With key features like a central monitoring

interface, automated alert notifications and
high-availability and auditing capabilities,
Skybot quickly helps you reap the
performance benefits offered by Linux on
Power and makes the argument for moving
Linux from Intel to Linux on Power.

who are making great strides in leveraging the open

ecosystem of Linux on Power and providing tools to
customers to harness the power of this platform.
HelpSystems, which started providing automated
scheduling solutions for IBM S/38 in 1982, is a great
example of an ISV partner that helps strengthen the
argument for moving to Linux on Power.
Skybot Job Scheduler: Using a self-contained HTTP
server and database that run on Linux on Power and
connect to agents installed on all of your managed
servers (Linux, UNIX, IBM i and W indows), Skybot offers
an easy way to automate your data-center operations.
W ith key features like a central monitoring interface,
automated alert notifications and high-availability and
auditing capabilities, Skybot quickly helps you reap the
performance benefits offered by Linux on Power and
makes the argument for moving Linux from Intel to Linux
on Power.

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

FIGURE 3. HelpSystem’s Skybot

Energy Solutions is an energy utilities consulting

company in Oakland, California, that manages multiple
Web sites with incentive programs and also provides
public portals with energy-use reporting for the CA
utilities commission. The company accomplishes all this
with less than ten servers, two transaction processing
systems and Skybot Scheduler, the enterprise job
scheduling and workload automation software.
Before Skybot, Energy Solutions had separate
schedulers across multiple servers, which required
labor-intensive maintenance and manual intervention
to check on whether batch jobs were complete.
Development and maintenance of custom scripting
required a lot of expensive developer time. T ime-based

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 GEEK GUIDE  LINUX ON POWER

Halcyon’s monitoring software pays close

attention to critical IT systems and core
applications on which business depends.

jobs were inefficient, redundant and produced job logs

that provided little or no value.
By installing Skybot, Energy Solutions was able
to create a centralized view of its entire enterprise
infrastructure. The company replaced manual job
checks with a consolidated job history and implemented
automatic notification of any delays or errors. It also
replaced custom-written scripts with flexible, cross-system
scheduling in Skybot Scheduler, and it finally was able
to create sensible job schedules that included real-time
triggers based on system events like file arrivals.
Halcyon Network Server Suite: HelpSystems also
offers the Halcyon Network Server Suite for Linux on
Power. This suite provides Linux, W indows, AIX and VIOS
monitoring alongside applications that are hosted on
Linux on Power to ensure maximum availability.
Halcyon’s monitoring software pays close attention
to critical IT systems and core applications on which
business depends. Early warnings of any potential
problems or “bottlenecks” are sent to administrators
before they affect the business. Through automation,
Halcyon also allows IT teams to create self-corrective
actions to problems that arise, helping to prevent

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recurrence of problems in the future. Normal tasks,

checks or jobs, which typically might be done
manually, also can be automated, freeing up additional
development resources, which helps reduce costs and
allows IT teams to focus on other initiatives to drive the
business forward.
Halcyon also comes with a cloud-based reporting
solution that shows management that the IT team is
achieving the service levels expected by the business.
The same reporting solution can be used to flag any
issues as they arise so they can be resolved quickly.
Halcyon helps companies prevent business disruption,
increase the efficiency of their IT services and save costs.
On average, Halcyon’s solutions increase IT efficiency by
30–40%. For most companies, this equates to significant
savings and an impressive return on investment for
Linux on Power shops. And, HelpSystems is just one
of the many IBM Linux on Power ISV partners who is
participating in the collaborative opportunities offered
by IBM’s Linux on Power open ecosystem.
Visit http://www.helpsystems.com for more information
on both of these IBM Linux on Power channel partner tools
for getting the most out of Linux on Power.

Conclusion
IBM has long provided top performance with its Power
Systems servers. The RISC-based Power platform
far surpasses Intel’s x86 in CPU speed and parallel
processing and offers more memory availability and a
CAPI that provides direct CPU access to external flash

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storage. For big data analytics, this is requisite. Power

supports big-endian and little-endian data formatting,
which allows existing x86 customers to migrate their
Linux applications quickly and easily. And, for any
enterprise interested in cloud computing, like Google,
Power offers impressive advantages in virtualization,
including support for LPARs running different operating
systems, and virtualization of memory and I/O. W ith
security that’s built in to the hardware, high-availability
and disaster recovery, Power also provides the answer
for those with compliance and audit concerns.
W ith the more recent move to an open ecosystem
and the support of strong channel partners like
HelpSystems, IBM has positioned Linux on Power
to be the enterprise-computing platform of choice,
especially where the demands of data analytics and
cloud virtualization are necessary. Not since AIM was
dissolved has there been as strong of an open ecosystem
as there is around Linux on Power. By building a
strong community around a technology that offers
scalable, secure virtualization, multicore options for
any workload, the ability to connect the CPU directly
to external hardware and ease of migration from x86
hardware, IBM has positioned Linux on Power as the
enterprise platform of the future. n

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