IBM announced that their System X and BladeCenter offerings are now “integrated with VMWare ESXi 3.5”. “Wow!”, you may say to yourself “IBM must be considering a close partnership with VMWare to design the ESXi Hypervisor right into their server’s chipset.” And you would be partially right, VMWare and IBM are happily partnering, as virtualization is becoming a huge selling point for BladeServers. But how IBM implemented a chipset integration is a lesson in out-of-the box thinking that is valuable to everyone.
The answer is “USB Flash Memory Stick Drive”
The miniscule ESXi (32Mb!!!) fits nicely on a Flash drive too small to even sell today. Stick this on the motherboard’s internal USB drive and congratulations, you now have integrated virtualization right into your Server’s chipset. The simplicity of execution is simply brilliant – And IBM’s customers will invariably benefit from the flexibility virtualization offers with no increase in price due to R&D/redesign/retooling/etc.
Brian Fedorko