IBM Enterprise Workload Manager Release 1

2 IBM Enterprise Workload Manager

1.1 EWLM strategy

Enterprise Workload Manager (EWLM) is a product in the IBM Virtualization Engine Suite for

Servers that can dynamically monitor and manage distributed heterogeneous workloads to

achieve user-defined business goals. Before considering its detailed functionality, let’s look at

how EWLM fits into the IBM Virtualization Engine and how it supports an on demand

operating environment.

An “on demand” operating environment

is not a single product, brand, platform, or

architecture. An on demand operating environment is a set of capabilities that enable

business flexibility and IT simplification. When these capabilities are implemented, they

enable a company to evolve into an on demand business.

Creating an on demand operating environment is not a matter of throwing away your existing

infrastructure, it’s a matter of optimizing it. Optimization is focused on two key areas:

򐂰 Integration: Increasing business flexibility through software capabilities designed to

simplify integration; integrating people, processes, and information in a way that allows

companies to become more flexible and responsive to dynamic markets, customers, and

competitors.

򐂰 Infrastructure management: Creating an infrastructure that’s easier to provision and

manage through automation; creating a single, consolidated, logical view of and access to

all the available resources in the network.

Infrastructure management is what we focus on here in the context of the IBM Virtualization

Engine and EWLM. The optimization of infrastructure management is about enabling access

to and simplifying the management of IT resources by creating a consolidated logical view of

resources across a processor complex, cluster, or distributed network through automation

and virtualization. This is called

resource virtualization, that is, hiding the physical from the

logical implementation.

Chapter 1. IBM Enterprise Workload Manager Overview 3

Figure 1-1 IBM Virtualization Engine

The IBM Virtualization Engine encompasses System Technologies, Operating Systems, and

System Services.

򐂰 System Technologies typically are delivered within the underlying hardware architecture,

most often with the processor itself, for example, Logical Partitions (LPAR).

򐂰 Operating Systems are often hardware specific.

򐂰 System Services span processor architecture and operating systems and typically are

delivered to manage a heterogeneous environment, for example EWLM.

Today’s e-business environments are very complex. Workflow is dynamic and the

infrastructures the workflows run in have become increasingly difficult to monitor and

manage. Before we can optimize an environment like this, we need to get an understanding of

what to optimize. Monitoring of business transactions today can include resources spanning

multiple hardware platforms, operating systems, networks, and applications. Performance

tuning and workload management is happening vertically while most business transactions in

a three tier architecture (web, application, data) encompass a horizontal work flow as shown

in Figure 1-2.

IBM Virtualization Engine Suite for

Servers

Delivered as a suite

Enterprise Workload Manager

Director Multiplatform

Systems provisioning

IBM Grid Toolbox

VE Console

Integrated in Systems Hardware

LPAR Hypervisor, VLANs, Virtual I/O, …

IBM

Virtualization

Engine

TM

Systems

Services

Systems

Technologies

Operating

Systems