Fidelma Russo, senior vice president for VMAX, Enterprise and Midrange Systems Division, has used the EMC corporate blog to announce a new mainframe technology development called zBoost. A software-only enhancement, zBoost is claimed to deliver performance improvements of up to 60% and to reduce response times by as much as 40%. For VMAX owners this means that their VMAX storage systems will be able to support significantly more I/O operations per processor engine, or even cut costs by differing provisions to meet their actual storage sysyem processing needs. zBoost provides an uplift in efficiency that will directly improve profits and a corresponding competitive advantage as VMAX storage systems will be able to perform business critical transactions more quickly. Designed for systems from the VMAX 20K and 40K range, zBoost delivers improvements by using the Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT2) and zHFP (System z High Performance FICON) features built into the multicore engines. More specifically, zBoost reallocates processor cores to FICON connection workloads.
EMC has released a whitepaper detailing the latest performance improvements offered by FICON and zBoost.
Even better news for VMAX owners
The news of this impressive software boost is further enhanced by the fact that EMC are making the upgrade available free to all VMAX 20K and 40K owners. This means that businesses will not only receive a free performance upgrade, but the usable lifespan of their existing mainframe hardware will also be extended, helping to boost ROI. EMC has also announced that the zBoost upgrade is non-disruptively installable, making performance boosts instantly available without the need for costly scheduled downtime. As post-warranty specialists and passionate advocates of increased hardware lifecycles, CDS welcome this latest development from EMC. The CDS team is still waiting for EMC to release full details of the zBoost upgrade, and will contact our VMAX clients direct once the program is finalized.