William J. Clarke

Reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) of the IBM eServer z990

The IBM eServerTM zSeries® Model z990 offers customers significant new opportunity for server growth while preserving and enhancing server availability. The z990 provides vertical growth capability by introducing the concurrent addition of processor/memory books and horizontal growth in channels by the use of extended virtualization technology. In order to continue to support the zSeries legacy for high availability and continuous reliable operation, the z990 delivers significant new features for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS). This paper describes these new capabilities, in each case presenting the value of the feature, both in terms of enhancing the self-management capability of the server and its availability.

IBM zEnterprise redundant array of independent memory subsystem

The IBM zEnterprise® system introduced a new and innovative redundant array of independent memory (RAIM) subsystem design as a standard feature on all zEnterprise servers. It protects the server from single-channel errors such as sudden control, bus, buffer, and massive dynamic RAM (DRAM) failures, thus achieving the highest System z® memory availability. This system also introduced innovations such as DRAM and channel marking, as well as a novel dynamic cyclic redundancy code channel marking. This paper describes this RAIM subsystem and other reliability, availability, and serviceability features, including automatic channel error recovery; data and clock interface lane calibration, recovery, and repair; intermittent lane sparing; and specialty engines for maintenance, periodic calibration, power, and power-on controls.

RAS design for the IBM eServer z900

The IBM eServer zSeries™ Model 900, or z900, has been designed with major enhancements for hardware reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) in support of the zSeries RAS strategy, the eServer self-management technologies, and the z900 design objective of continuous reliable operation. The eServer self-management technologies enable the server to protect itself, to detect and recover from errors, to change and configure itself, and to optimize itself, in the presence of problems and changes, for maximum performance with minimum outside intervention. From the RAS perspective, the longstanding RAS strategy for the IBM S/390® and now the zSeries has provided an excellent foundation for self management. This paper describes the z900 RAS enhancements and how they strengthen the RAS strategy building blocks and provide a basis for autonomic computing.

IBM system z10 design for RAS

The IBM System z10™ server reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) design continues to reduce the sources of server outages through innovative RAS architecture and techniques. The z10™ server introduced functional improvements that challenged the RAS design. Increases were made in the performance of each processor, the total number of processors, the total size of the memory, the amount of cache, the bandwidth of the I/O, the thermal density, and the exposure to soft errors. These changes demanded stronger RAS functions to prevent unscheduled outages. Significant improvements were made to the IBM e-business on demand® functions (concurrent, customer-requested upgrades) that enable customers to better manage capacity without having to take planned outages. The hypervisor simplified configuration changes, such as adding cryptography or channel subsystems to logical partitions, by eliminating the need for preplanning. Single-core checkstopping and single transparent CPU (central processing unit) sparing were added. The RAS functions reduced the number of scheduled outages. Product improvements were complemented by improvements in RAS modeling. This paper describes these RAS improvements and how they provide value to the customer.

Advancing reliability, availability, and serviceability with the IBM z13

Each new system family brings changes from its predecessor as technologies shrink, as system structure evolves, and as requirements grow. A remap of an exceptional reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS) design from generation to generation would soon lead RAS characteristics to be inadequate. In this paper, we provide an introduction to some of changes in the IBM z13® and discuss the RAS improvements associated with these changes. We discuss the processor drawer, the memory and cache hierarchy, the I/O firmware stack, the power and thermal systems, the power and service control network, and enhancements to sparing.