Mainframe Data Center Resource Management

Mainframe administrators and system programmers are familiar with the resource and workload management facilities provided by IBM Workload Manager (WLM). WLM is a comprehensive tool set that provides an automated resource management environment, driven by high-level business goals, and that, in many cases, is self tuning. Tools are provided to define the business goals or objectives, to control system resources, and to feed metrics concerning these resources back to the resource controller, which attempts to ensure that the goals are met. This is an implementation of the measure/policy/control loop described in “Resource Management Control Loop” .

Historically, IBM has been driven by the same needs that drive Sun: making computer systems easier to manage and making better or more efficient use of their capacity. WLM is key to IBM's future in reinforcing its position within the data center by lowering the cost of managing their large mainframe systems.

The Solaris resource management components together with the measurement techniques under development form the building blocks for the long term future of Solaris resource management and the foundation on which automated, business-level, goal-driven resource management will be built.