PowerVM
| Company type | Licensed capability |
|---|---|
| Industry | Virtualization software |
| Predecessor | Advanced Power Virtualization (APV) |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | Virtualization for IBM POWER5 through Power10 servers |
| Owner | IBM |
| Website | www |
PowerVM, previously known as Advanced Power Virtualization (APV), is a licensed capability available for IBM POWER5 through Power10 servers that facilitates Micro-Partitioning alongside sophisticated virtualization functions. It supports operating systems such as IBM i, AIX, and Linux.
Description
The IBM PowerVM suite comprises:
- A "VET" code, which activates firmware enabling resource sharing and enhanced functionalities.
- Installation packages for the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), a service partition responsible for sharing disk and network adapters.
Prior to its discontinuation in 2011, PowerVM also provided installation resources for Lx86, an x86 binary translation tool that allowed Intel Linux applications to operate on POWER hardware, contingent on a compatible Linux distribution.
PowerVM is available in two primary versions:
- IBM PowerVM Standard: Supported on POWER6, POWER7, and POWER8 platforms, this edition permits unrestricted partitioning—up to 10× LPARs per processor core (increasing to 20× on Power7+ and Power8)—with a system-wide limit of 1,000 partitions. It also offers Multiple Shared Processor Pools functionality on POWER7 and POWER8 systems. This version is commonly deployed in production settings.
- IBM PowerVM Enterprise: Offered for POWER7 and POWER8, it encompasses all features of the Standard edition plus capabilities such as Live Partition Mobility, which allows live migration of active virtual machines between hosts, and Active Memory Sharing for dynamic memory redistribution among virtual machines.
Up until August 2014, a third variant named IBM PowerVM Express was available, aimed at sandbox environments running on "Express" servers like the Power 710/730, 720/740, 750 models, and Power Blades. This edition was restricted to a maximum of three partitions (including one VIOS) and did not support Multiple Shared Processor Pools.
See also
- Comparison of platform virtualization software
- IBM High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine—a Linux-based hypervisor with emerging support for PowerPC
- Linux on Power