IBM Power Systems E870C and E880C Technical Overview and Introduction

IBM Power Systems E870C and E880C Technical Overview and Introduction

by Scott Vetter, Alexandre Bicas Caldeira, Volker Haug
Released November 2018
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738455631

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Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication is a comprehensive guide that covers the IBM Power® System E870C (9080-MME) and IBM Power System E880C (9080-MHE) servers that support IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux operating systems. The objective of this paper is to introduce the major innovative Power E870C and Power E880C offerings and their relevant functions.

The new Power E870C and Power E880C servers with OpenStack-based cloud management and open source automation enables clients to accelerate the transformation of their IT infrastructure for cloud while providing tremendous flexibility during the transition. In addition, the Power E870C and Power E880C models provide clients increased security, high availability, rapid scalability, simplified maintenance, and management, all while enabling business growth and dramatically reducing costs.

The systems management capability of the Power E870C and Power E880C servers speeds up and simplifies cloud deployment by providing fast and automated VM deployments, prebuilt image templates, and self-service capabilities, all with an intuitive interface.

Enterprise servers provide the highest levels of reliability, availability, flexibility, and performance to bring you a world-class enterprise private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Through enterprise-class security, efficient built-in virtualization that drives industry-leading workload density, and dynamic resource allocation and management, the server consistently delivers the highest levels of service across hundreds of virtual workloads on a single system.

The Power E870C and Power E880C server includes the cloud management software and services to assist with clients' move to the cloud, both private and hybrid. The following capabilities are included:


  • Private cloud management with IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager, Cloud-based HMC Apps as a service, and open source cloud automation and configuration tooling for AIX
  • Hybrid cloud support
  • Hybrid infrastructure management tools
  • Securely connect system of record workloads and data to cloud native applications
  • IBM Cloud Starter Pack
  • Flexible capacity on demand
  • Power to Cloud Services

This paper expands the current set of IBM Power Systems™ documentation by providing a desktop reference that offers a detailed technical description of the Power E870C and Power E880C systems.

This paper does not replace the latest marketing materials and configuration tools. It is intended as another source of information that, together with existing sources, can be used to enhance your knowledge of IBM server solutions.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Chapter 1. General description
    1. 1.1 Systems overview
      1. 1.1.1 Power E870C server
      2. 1.1.2 Power E880C server
      3. 1.1.3 System control unit
      4. 1.1.4 System nodes
      5. 1.1.5 I/O drawers
    2. 1.2 Operating environment
    3. 1.3 Physical package
    4. 1.4 System features
      1. 1.4.1 Power E870C system features
      2. 1.4.2 Power E880C system features
      3. 1.4.3 Minimum features
      4. 1.4.4 Power supply features
      5. 1.4.5 Processor card features
    5. 1.5 Disk and media features
    6. 1.6 I/O drawers
      1. 1.6.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 1.6.2 I/O drawers and usable PCI slot
    7. 1.7 EXP24S SFF Gen2-bay Drawer
    8. 1.8 Model comparison
    9. 1.9 Build to order
    10. 1.10 Model upgrades
      1. 1.10.1 Power E870C
      2. 1.10.2 Power E880C
      3. 1.10.3 Upgrade considerations
    11. 1.11 Management consoles
    12. 1.12 System racks
      1. 1.12.1 IBM 7014 model T00 rack
      2. 1.12.2 IBM 7014 model T42 rack
      3. 1.12.3 Feature code #0551 rack
      4. 1.12.4 Feature code #0553 rack
      5. 1.12.5 AC power distribution unit and rack content
      6. 1.12.6 Rack-mounting rules
  5. Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
    1. 2.1 Logical diagrams
    2. 2.2 IBM POWER8 processor
    3. 2.3 Memory subsystem
      1. 2.3.1 Custom DIMM
      2. 2.3.2 Memory placement rules
      3. 2.3.3 Memory activation
      4. 2.3.4 Memory throughput
      5. 2.3.5 Active Memory Mirroring
      6. 2.3.6 Memory Error Correction and Recovery
      7. 2.3.7 Special Uncorrectable Error handling
    4. 2.4 Capacity on Demand
      1. 2.4.1 Capacity Upgrade on Demand
      2. 2.4.2 Power enterprise pools and Mobile Capacity on Demand
      3. 2.4.3 Elastic Capacity on Demand
      4. 2.4.4 Utility Capacity on Demand
      5. 2.4.5 Trial Capacity on Demand
      6. 2.4.6 Software licensing and CoD
    5. 2.5 System bus
      1. 2.5.1 PCI Express Gen3
      2. 2.5.2 Service Processor Bus
    6. 2.6 Internal I/O subsystem
      1. 2.6.1 Blind-swap cassettes
      2. 2.6.2 System ports
    7. 2.7 PCI adapters
      1. 2.7.1 PCI Express
      2. 2.7.2 LAN adapters
      3. 2.7.3 Graphics accelerator adapters
      4. 2.7.4 SAS adapters
      5. 2.7.5 Fibre Channel adapter
      6. 2.7.6 Fibre Channel over Ethernet
      7. 2.7.7 USB adapters
      8. 2.7.8 InfiniBand host channel adapter
      9. 2.7.9 Cryptographic Coprocessor
      10. 2.7.10 CAPI adapters
    8. 2.8 Internal storage
      1. 2.8.1 Media features
    9. 2.9 External I/O subsystems
      1. 2.9.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 2.9.2 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer optical cabling
      3. 2.9.3 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer SPCN cabling
    10. 2.10 External disk subsystems
      1. 2.10.1 EXP24S SFF Gen2-bay Drawer
      2. 2.10.2 EXP24S common usage scenarios
      3. 2.10.3 IBM System Storage
    11. 2.11 Hardware Management Console
      1. 2.11.1 Hardware appliance HMC
      2. 2.11.2 Virtual appliance HMC
      3. 2.11.3 HMC code level
      4. 2.11.4 HMC connectivity to the POWER8 processor-based systems
      5. 2.11.5 High availability HMC configuration
    12. 2.12 Operating system support
      1. 2.12.1 Virtual I/O Server
      2. 2.12.2 IBM AIX operating system
      3. 2.12.3 IBM i operating system
      4. 2.12.4 Linux operating systems
      5. 2.12.5 Supported Java versions
    13. 2.13 Energy management
      1. 2.13.1 IBM EnergyScale technology
      2. 2.13.2 On Chip Controller
      3. 2.13.3 Energy consumption estimation
  6. Chapter 3. Private and Hybrid Cloud features
    1. 3.1 Private cloud software
      1. 3.1.1 IBM Cloud PowerVC Manager
      2. 3.1.2 Cloud-based HMC Apps as a Service
      3. 3.1.3 Open source cloud automation and configuration tooling for AIX
    2. 3.2 Hybrid cloud support
      1. 3.2.1 Hybrid infrastructure management tools
      2. 3.2.2 Securely connecting system of record workloads to cloud native applications
      3. 3.2.3 IBM Cloud Starter Pack
      4. 3.2.4 Flexible capacity on-demand
    3. 3.3 Geographically Dispersed Resiliency for Power
    4. 3.4 IBM Power to Cloud Rewards Program
  7. Chapter 4. Reliability, availability, serviceability, and manageability
    1. 4.1 RAS enhancements of POWER8 processor-based servers
      1. 4.1.1 POWER8 overview
    2. 4.2 Reliability
      1. 4.2.1 Designed for reliability
      2. 4.2.2 Component placement
    3. 4.3 Processor/Memory availability
      1. 4.3.1 Correctable errors
      2. 4.3.2 Uncorrectable errors
      3. 4.3.3 Processor core/cache correctable error handling
      4. 4.3.4 Processor instruction retry and other try again techniques
      5. 4.3.5 Alternative processor recovery and partition availability priority
      6. 4.3.6 Core contained checkstops and other PowerVM error recovery
      7. 4.3.7 Cache uncorrectable error handling
      8. 4.3.8 Other processor chip functions
      9. 4.3.9 Other fault error handling
      10. 4.3.10 Memory protection
      11. 4.3.11 I/O subsystem availability and Enhanced Error Handling
    4. 4.4 Enterprise systems availability
    5. 4.5 Availability effects of a solution architecture
      1. 4.5.1 Clustering
      2. 4.5.2 Virtual I/O redundancy configurations
      3. 4.5.3 PowerVM Live Partition Mobility
    6. 4.6 Serviceability
      1. 4.6.1 Detecting errors
      2. 4.6.2 Error checkers, fault isolation registers, and First-Failure Data Capture
      3. 4.6.3 Service processor
      4. 4.6.4 Diagnosing
      5. 4.6.5 Reporting
      6. 4.6.6 Notifying
      7. 4.6.7 Locating and servicing
    7. 4.7 Manageability
      1. 4.7.1 Service user interfaces
      2. 4.7.2 IBM Power Systems Firmware maintenance
      3. 4.7.3 Concurrent firmware maintenance improvements
      4. 4.7.4 Electronic Services and Electronic Service Agent
    8. 4.8 Selected POWER8 RAS capabilities by operating system
  8. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  9. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Power Systems E870C and E880C Technical Overview and Introduction
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, Alexandre Bicas Caldeira, Volker Haug
  • Release date: November 2018
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738455631