IBM unveils its new energy-saving LinuxONE server

13 Sep 2022

Image: IBM

The tech giant said its new server can reduce energy consumption by 75pc while supporting multiple workloads.

IBM has revealed its latest LinuxONE server, with a focus on energy reduction to help companies hit their sustainability goals.

The company said its new LinuxONE Emperor 4 is a highly scalable Linux and Kubernetes-based platform, designed to support thousands of workloads in the footprint of a single system.

For example, putting Linux workloads on five Emperor 4 systems can reduce energy consumption by 75pc, space by 50pc and lower the CO2 equivalent footprint by more than 850 tonnes annually, compared to x86 servers under similar conditions.

The company’s internal tests suggest that the IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4 requires 16 times fewer cores compared to x86 servers.

The tech giant said that for CEOs across industries, scaling their business with modern infrastructure can often be a challenge while also trying to reach sustainability goals.

In a recent IBM survey, 48pc of CEOs said increasing sustainability is one of their highest priorities in the next two to three years. However, 51pc also cited sustainability among their greatest challenges in that same timeframe.

IBM fellow and cloud platform CTO Marcel Mitran said energy-intensive data centres can account for a large portion of an organisation’s energy use.

“Reducing data centre energy consumption is a tangible way to decrease carbon footprint,” Mitran said. “In that context, migrating to IBM LinuxONE is designed to help clients meet their scale and security goals, in addition to meeting sustainability goals for today’s digital business.”

IBM said its new server is designed to offer “cloud-like flexibility”. Clients can run workloads at sustained high density and increase capacity by turning on unused cores without increasing energy consumption. Energy consumption can also be tracked using the IBM Instana Observability application on LinuxONE.

LinuxONE Emperor 4 supports a large number of Linux and Red Hat OpenShift-certified workloads including data serving, core banking and digital assets.

The new server also features security encryption to protect data that’s at-rest or in-flight, which IBM said is a priority for clients in regulated industries such as financial services.

LinuxONE Emperor 4 will be available globally from 14 September, with entry and mid-range systems to follow at the start of 2023.

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com