IBM has announced a new management tool designed to automatically allocate cloud resources and balance workload demands in OpenStack environments. The new IBM Platform Resource Scheduler dynamically allocates resources for private and public OpenStack clouds to ensure adherence to SLAs and offer high levels of performance.
The new management tool, part of IBM’s software defined environment (SDE) portfolio, is tailored toward OpenStack-based cloud management solutions. It works with the IBM Smart Cloud Entry and SmartCloud Orchestrator offerings, helping cloud administrators improve the quality of service for their tenants.
The Platform Resource Scheduler helps prevent hypervisor resources from becoming oversubscribed and assists admins in managing complex cloud environments more effectively. The solution also better automates cloud operations and improves average utilization to reduce infrastructure costs while accommodating new tenants on existing infrastructure.
IBM has been shaping up to be a major cloud player with a host of cloud infrastructure and service management announcements over the past few months. On the big data front, the company announced its intent to acquire file transfer specialists Aspera last month. IBM will integrate the company’s technology with its cloud computing infrastructure initiatives.
IBM has also had an international focus on the cloud, announcing deals in China with energy distributor ENN Energy and 21Vianet, a data center provider. The computing giant is also working with Brazilian service provider Alelo on a cloud data center and has several cloud infrastructure and managed service initiatives underway in Europe.
"IBM Platform Resource Scheduler provides a fully virtualized, open and programmable architecture that ensures enterprises are taking advantage of all available cloud resources - from application software licenses to available network bandwidth," said Jay Muelhoefer, director strategy, IBM Platform Computing. "IBM Platform Resource Scheduler is an important building block of SDE and helps cloud clients optimize infrastructure usage, reduce cost of cloud ownership, and deliver higher workload quality of service."
Features of IBM’s new cloud tool include a set of intelligent, policy-driven scheduling capabilities for continuous resource optimization and refinement of hypervisor placement decisions based on both usage and workload patterns. Virtual machine (VM) live migration capabilities are also enabled for re-balancing VMs to meet business objectives without the need for user intervention.
The Platform Resource Scheduler expands on OpenStack’s Nova scheduling capabilities by providing a set of out-of-the-box policies for resource selection. It also includes an SQL-like query language, enabling cloud admins to match workloads more precisely to available resources and also creating opportunities for hardware utilization and service levels.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
