New technology can distribute processing loads around the world and greatly reduce costs
By Martin Slofstra
IBM Corp. and SAP AG previewed a technology that enables the live migration of SAP applications across remote IBM systems via cloud computing.
The technology, developed as a part of the European Union-funded Reservoir Cloud Computing Project, is designed to provide companies with a range of cloud computing solutions. Cloud computing is an emerging approach to shared infrastructure in which large pools of systems are linked together to provide IT services.
According to the two companies, this approach to delivering and consuming IT provides answers to challenges many businesses face today; such as the immense complexity of sprawling data centers, the growing cost of energy, and the need to dynamically adapt the allocation of IT resources to constantly changing workloads and business priorities.
At a technology demo conducted at the massive CEBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, IBM and SAP showcased how users can run enterprise applications in the cloud, demonstrating in particular the migration of workloads across physical servers and across data centers.
"The breakthrough we're showing today is that applications can flexibly move across remote physical servers, regardless of location -- which makes our work a strong enabling technology for the cloud," explained Dr. Joachim Schaper, vice-president of SAP Research.
The new technology is allowing both companies to realize the vision of cloud computing by moving applications across disparate interconnected networks to optimize load balancing across remote servers. When changes in workload occur, the new technology automatically balances resource utilization and power consumption across remote servers.
“This is done, for example, by evacuating and turning off under-utilized servers (and possibly entire data centers) when demand drops, and powering on idle servers when load increases."
In this demonstration, the migration of SAP workloads across the cloud is supported by IBM's POWER6 systems, which enable users to run separate applications on different virtual machines, called logical partitions, on the same physical server.
RESERVOIR is an IBM-led joint research initiative of 13 European partners to develop technologies that help automate the fluctuating demand for IT resources in a cloud computing environment.