2 IBM Enterprise Workload Manager
1.1 EWLM strategy
Enterprise Workload Manager (EWLM) is a product in the IBM Virtualization Engine Suite for
Servers that can dynamically monitor and manage distributed heterogeneous workloads to
achieve user-defined business goals. Before considering its detailed functionality, let’s look at
how EWLM fits into the IBM Virtualization Engine and how it supports an on demand
operating environment.
An “on demand” operating environment
is not a single product, brand, platform, or
architecture. An on demand operating environment is a set of capabilities that enable
business flexibility and IT simplification. When these capabilities are implemented, they
enable a company to evolve into an on demand business.
Creating an on demand operating environment is not a matter of throwing away your existing
infrastructure, it’s a matter of optimizing it. Optimization is focused on two key areas:
Integration: Increasing business flexibility through software capabilities designed to
simplify integration; integrating people, processes, and information in a way that allows
companies to become more flexible and responsive to dynamic markets, customers, and
competitors.
Infrastructure management: Creating an infrastructure that’s easier to provision and
manage through automation; creating a single, consolidated, logical view of and access to
all the available resources in the network.
Infrastructure management is what we focus on here in the context of the IBM Virtualization
Engine and EWLM. The optimization of infrastructure management is about enabling access
to and simplifying the management of IT resources by creating a consolidated logical view of
resources across a processor complex, cluster, or distributed network through automation
and virtualization. This is called
resource virtualization, that is, hiding the physical from the
logical implementation.
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Chapter 1. IBM Enterprise Workload Manager Overview 3
Figure 1-1 IBM Virtualization Engine
The IBM Virtualization Engine encompasses System Technologies, Operating Systems, and
System Services.
System Technologies typically are delivered within the underlying hardware architecture,
most often with the processor itself, for example, Logical Partitions (LPAR).
Operating Systems are often hardware specific.
System Services span processor architecture and operating systems and typically are
delivered to manage a heterogeneous environment, for example EWLM.
Today’s e-business environments are very complex. Workflow is dynamic and the
infrastructures the workflows run in have become increasingly difficult to monitor and
manage. Before we can optimize an environment like this, we need to get an understanding of
what to optimize. Monitoring of business transactions today can include resources spanning
multiple hardware platforms, operating systems, networks, and applications. Performance
tuning and workload management is happening vertically while most business transactions in
a three tier architecture (web, application, data) encompass a horizontal work flow as shown
in Figure 1-2.
IBM Virtualization Engine Suite for
Servers
Delivered as a suite
Enterprise Workload Manager
Director Multiplatform
Systems provisioning
IBM Grid Toolbox
VE Console
Integrated in Systems Hardware
LPAR Hypervisor, VLANs, Virtual I/O, …
IBM
Virtualization
Engine
TM
Systems
Services
Systems
Technologies
Operating
Systems
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