This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the new member of the IBM Z® family, IBM z14™. IBM z14 is the trusted enterprise platform for pervasive encryption, integrating data, transactions, and insights into the data.

A data-centric infrastructure must always be available with a 99.999% or better availability, have flawless data integrity, and be secured from misuse. It also must be an integrated infrastructure that can support new applications. Finally, it must have integrated capabilities that can provide new mobile capabilities with real-time analytics that are delivered by a secure cloud infrastructure.

IBM z14 servers are designed with improved scalability, performance, security, resiliency, availability, and virtualization. The superscalar design allows z14 servers to deliver a record level of capacity over the prior IBM Z platforms. In its maximum configuration, z14 is powered by up to 170 client characterizable microprocessors (cores) running at 5.2 GHz. This configuration can run more than 146,000 million instructions per second (MIPS) and up to 32 TB of client memory. The IBM z14 Model M05 is estimated to provide up to 35% more total system capacity than the IBM z13® Model NE1.

This Redbooks publication provides information about IBM z14 and its functions, features, and associated software support. More information is offered in areas that are relevant to technical planning. It is intended for systems engineers, consultants, planners, and anyone who wants to understand the IBM Z servers functions and plan for their usage. It is not intended as an introduction to mainframes. Readers are expected to be generally familiar with existing IBM Z technology and terminology.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at the International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center.

Octavian Lascu is a Senior IT Consultant for IBM Romania with over 25 years of experience. He specializes in designing, implementing, and supporting complex IT infrastructure environments (systems, storage, and networking), including high availability and disaster recovery solutions and high-performance computing deployments. He has developed materials for and taught workshops for technical audiences around the world for the past 19 years. He has written several IBM publications.

Hervey Kamga is an IBM Z Product Engineer with the EMEA I/O Connectivity Team in Montpellier, France. Before serving in his current role, he was a Support Engineer and Engineer On Site for 13 years with Sun MicroSystems and Oracle in EMEA. Hervey’s areas of expertise include Oracle Solaris (Operating System and hardware products), virtualization (VMware, virtualBox), Linux (Ubuntu), and IBM Z I/O features and protocols (IBM FICON® and OSA).

Esra Ufacik is an IBM Z Lead Architect in IBM Systems covering Asia Pacific. Throughout her career, she has held various roles in different companies with Z products, such as IBM z/OS® and IBM Parallel Sysplex®. These roles include implementation, migration, SAN, storage, software problem support, solution designing, Linux on z Systems®, IT Optimization, TCO assessments, technical authoring, and guest lecturing. In 2016, she was assigned as IOT lead for Blockchain in IBM Systems division

Bo Xu is a Senior System Service Representative in China. He has more than 20 years of experience with IBM Z platform maintenance support. He has been working in IBM’s Global Technology Services® department to provide IBM Z platform support to clients as a local Top Gun, and as second-level support for IBM DS8000® as one of the country’s Top Gun & Skill Owners. His areas of expertise include IBM Z platform hardware, channel connectivity, and IBM DS8000 storage.

John Troy is an IBM Z and storage hardware National Top Gun in the northeast area of the United States. He has 35 years of experience in the service field. His areas of expertise include IBM Z servers and high-end storage systems technical and customer support. John has been an IBM Z hardware technical support course designer, developer, and instructor for the last six generations of IBM high-end servers.

Frank Packheiser is a Senior zIT Specialist at the Field Technical Sales Support office in Germany. He has 27 years of experience in IBM Z platform. Frank has worked for 10 years in the IBM Education Center in Germany, developing and providing professional training. He also provides professional services to IBM Z and mainframe clients. In 2008 and 2009, Frank supported clients in Middle East/North Africa (MENA) as a zIT Architect. In addition to co-authoring several IBM Redbooks publications since 1999, he has been an official ITSO presenter at ITSO workshops for the last four years.

Michal Kordyzon is an IBM Z Client Technical Specialist at IBM Poland with 12 years of experience with the IBM Z platform. He also has expertise in LinuxONE. His other areas of expertise include mainframe architecture, Linux systems, Hyperledger fabric, Node.js, and Machine Learning algorithms.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Patty Driever
Dave Surman
Harry Yudenfriend
Ellen Carbarnes
Diana Henderson
Robert Haimowitz
Anthony Saporito
Garth Godfrey
Darelle Gent
Parwez Hamid
Gary King
Jeff Kubala
Philip Sciuto
Rhonda Sundlof
Barbara Weiler
IBM Poughkeepsie

Christine Smith
Amanda Stapels
Bill Bitner
Leslie Geer III
Romney White
IBM Endicott

Barbara Sannerud
IBM White Plains

Monika Zimmermann
Walter Niklaus
Carl Mayer
Angel Nunes Mencias
IBM Germany

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