IBM Power Systems H922 and H924 Technical Overview and Introduction

IBM Power Systems H922 and H924 Technical Overview and Introduction

by Scott Vetter, Bartlomiej Grabowski, Mauro Minomizaki, Tamas David Domjan
Released January 2021
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: 9780738459356

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Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication is a comprehensive guide that covers the IBM Power System H922 (9223-22S), and IBM Power System H924 (9223-42S) servers that support memory-intensive workloads, such as SAP HANA, and deliver superior price and performance for mission-critical applications in IBM AIX®, IBM i, and Linux® operating systems. The goal of this paper is to provide a hardware architecture analysis and highlight the changes, new technologies, and major features that are being introduced in these systems' 2020 release, such as the following examples:


  • Availability of new IBM POWER9™ processor configurations for the number of cores per socket.
  • More performance by using industry-leading IBM Peripheral Component Interconnect® Express (PCIe) Gen4 slots.
  • Enhanced internal disk configuration options, with up to 14 NVMe adapters (four U.2 NVMe plus up to 10 PCIe add-in cards).
  • Twice as fast back-end I/O enables seamless maximum speed and throughput between on-premises and multiple public cloud infrastructures with high availability (HA).

This publication is for professionals who want to acquire a better understanding of IBM Power Systems products. The intended audience includes the following roles:


  • Clients
  • Sales and marketing professionals
  • Technical support professionals
  • IBM Business Partners
  • Independent software vendors (ISVs)

This paper expands the current set of IBM Power Systems documentation by providing a desktop reference that offers a detailed technical description of the Power H922 and Power H924 systems.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Chapter 1. General description
    1. 1.1 Systems overview
      1. 1.1.1 Power H922 server (9223-22S)
      2. 1.1.2 Power H924 server (9223-42S)
      3. 1.1.3 Common features
    2. 1.2 Operating environment
    3. 1.3 Physical package
    4. 1.4 System features
      1. 1.4.1 Power H922 (9223-22S) system features
      2. 1.4.2 Power H924 (9223-42S) system features
      3. 1.4.3 Minimum features
      4. 1.4.4 Power supply features
      5. 1.4.5 Processor module features
      6. 1.4.6 Memory features
      7. 1.4.7 PCIe slots
    5. 1.5 Disk and media features
    6. 1.6 I/O drawers for Power H922, and Power H924 servers
      1. 1.6.1 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 1.6.2 .I/O drawers and usable PCI slots
      3. 1.6.3 EXP24SX SAS Storage Enclosure (#ESLS) and EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure (#ESLL)
    7. 1.7 System racks
      1. 1.7.1 IBM 7014 Model T00 rack
      2. 1.7.2 IBM 7014 Model T42 rack
      3. 1.7.3 IBM 42U Slim Rack 7965-94Y
      4. 1.7.4 1.8 Meter Rack (#0551)
      5. 1.7.5 2.0 Meter Rack (#0553)
      6. 1.7.6 Rack (#ER05)
      7. 1.7.7 The AC power distribution unit and rack content
      8. 1.7.8 Rack-mounting rules
      9. 1.7.9 Useful rack additions
      10. 1.7.10 Original equipment manufacturer racks
    8. 1.8 Hardware Management Console
      1. 1.8.1 New features
      2. 1.8.2 Hardware Management Console overview
      3. 1.8.3 Hardware Management Console code level
      4. 1.8.4 Two architectures of Hardware Management Console
      5. 1.8.5 Virtual Hardware Management Console
      6. 1.8.6 Connectivity to POWER9 processor-based systems
      7. 1.8.7 High availability Hardware Management Console configuration
  5. Chapter 2. Architecture and technical overview
    1. 2.1 IBM POWER9 processor
      1. 2.1.1 POWER9 processor overview
      2. 2.1.2 POWER9 processor features
      3. 2.1.3 POWER9 processor core
      4. 2.1.4 Simultaneous multithreading
      5. 2.1.5 Processor feature codes
      6. 2.1.6 Memory access
      7. 2.1.7 On-chip L3 cache innovation and intelligent caching
      8. 2.1.8 Hardware transactional memory
      9. 2.1.9 Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface 2.0
      10. 2.1.10 Power management and system performance
    2. 2.2 Memory subsystem
      1. 2.2.1 Memory placement rules
      2. 2.2.2 Memory bandwidth
    3. 2.3 System buses
      1. 2.3.1 Memory buses
      2. 2.3.2 Inter-node SMP X-buses
      3. 2.3.3 PCIe Gen 4 buses
      4. 2.3.4 Service processor interface bus
    4. 2.4 Internal I/O subsystem
      1. 2.4.1 Slot configuration
      2. 2.4.2 System ports
    5. 2.5 PCIe adapters
      1. 2.5.1 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
      2. 2.5.2 LAN adapters
      3. 2.5.3 Graphics accelerator adapters
      4. 2.5.4 SAS adapters
      5. 2.5.5 Fibre Channel adapters
      6. 2.5.6 InfiniBand host channel adapter
      7. 2.5.7 Cryptographic coprocessor
      8. 2.5.8 Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface adapters
      9. 2.5.9 USB adapters
    6. 2.6 Internal storage
      1. 2.6.1 Power H922 Base Storage Backplane (#EJ1F)
      2. 2.6.2 Power H922 Split Backplane option for Base Storage Backplane (#EJ1H)
      3. 2.6.3 Power H922 Expanded Function Storage Backplane (#EJ1G)
      4. 2.6.4 Power H922 NVMe Storage Backplanes with front U.2 drive slots (#EJ1V and #EJ1W)
      5. 2.6.5 Power H924 Base Storage Backplane (#EJ1C)
      6. 2.6.6 Power H924 Split Backplane option for Base Storage Backplane (#EJ1E)
      7. 2.6.7 Power H924 Expanded Function Storage Backplanes (#EJ1D and #EJ1M)
      8. 2.6.8 Power H924 NVMe Storage Backplanes with front U.2 drive slots (#EJ1T and #EJ1U)
      9. 2.6.9 Power H924 SAS and NVMe Backplane with front drive slots (#EJ1S)
      10. 2.6.10 RAID support
      11. 2.6.11 Easy Tier
      12. 2.6.12 External SAS ports
      13. 2.6.13 Media drawers
      14. 2.6.14 External DVD drives
      15. 2.6.15 RDX removable disk drives
    7. 2.7 External IO subsystems
      1. 2.7.1 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Gen3 I/O expansion drawer
      2. 2.7.2 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer optical cabling
      3. 2.7.3 PCIe Gen3 I/O expansion drawer system power control network cabling
    8. 2.8 External disk subsystems
      1. 2.8.1 EXP12SX SAS Storage Enclosure and EXP24SX SAS Storage Enclosure
      2. 2.8.2 IBM Storage
    9. 2.9 Operating system support
      1. 2.9.1 IBM i
      2. 2.9.2 Virtual I/O Server
    10. 2.10 Power Systems reliability, availability, and serviceability capabilities
    11. 2.11 Manageability
      1. 2.11.1 Service user interfaces
      2. 2.11.2 Power Systems Firmware maintenance
      3. 2.11.3 Concurrent Firmware Maintenance improvements
      4. 2.11.4 IBM Electronic Services and IBM Electronic Service Agent
  6. Chapter 3. SAP HANA and Cloud Private
    1. 3.1 SAP HANA on POWER
      1. 3.1.1 IBM Power Systems H922 (9223-22S) and H924 (9223-42S) running SAP
      2. 3.1.2 Virtual Persistent Memory (vPMEM)
    2. 3.2 Cloud-ready H922 and H924 servers
      1. 3.2.1 IBM PowerVC
      2. 3.2.2 IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers
      3. 3.2.3 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for Power
      4. 3.2.4 IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management
  7. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  8. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM Power Systems H922 and H924 Technical Overview and Introduction
  • Author(s): Scott Vetter, Bartlomiej Grabowski, Mauro Minomizaki, Tamas David Domjan
  • Release date: January 2021
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738459356