Managing IT systems is difficult. Virtualization brings numerous benefits to the datacenter and system administrators. However, it also creates a new set of choices. More choice implies more decisions, and thus an increased management responsibility. Furthermore, the move toward cloud computing, with a service-based acquisition and delivery model, requires that datacenter managers take a holistic view of the resources that they manage and the actors that access the data center. IBM® Service Delivery Manager addresses this problem domain. Delivered as a set of appliances, it automates provisioning, deprovisioning, metering, and management of an IT platform, and the services it provides. It addresses the needs of both IT management and service users. This IBM Redbooks® publication is intended for technical professionals who want to understand and deploy IBM ISDM Cloud on a Power platform.

This IBM® RedpaperTM is the second in a series that addresses the performance and capacity considerations of the evolving cloud computing model. The first Redpaper publication (Performance Implications of Cloud Computing, REDP-4875) introduced cloud computing with its various deployment models, support roles, and offerings along with IT performance and capacity implications associated with these deployment models and offerings. In this redpaper, we discuss lessons learned in the two years since the first paper was written. We offer practical guidance about how to select workloads that work best with cloud computing, and about how to address areas, such as performance testing, monitoring, service level agreements, and capacity planning considerations for both single and multi-tenancy environments. We also provide an example of a recent project where cloud computing solved current business needs (such as cost reduction, optimization of infrastructure utilization, and more efficient systems management and reporting capabilities) and how the solution addressed performance and capacity challenges. We conclude with a summary of the lessons learned and a perspective about how cloud computing can affect performance and capacity in the future.

In this IBM® RedguideTM document, we highlight the key requirements for a smarter data center network and show how the data center fabric, a new switching architecture, provides the required performance, scalability, and management. We explore Juniper Networks' QFabric, a revolutionary DCN fabric product, and describe how its characteristics and key network innovations provide real business value in rapid service deployment, cost-efficient service delivery, energy efficiency, and business resiliency and security. We examine Juniper's QFabric design, product software, hardware, and deployment, and illustrate how QFabric can drastically improve your DCN while reducing your business costs. We describe three common QFabric network use cases that highlight fundamental changes in DCN architecture. Use cases are based on our project experiences, specifically optimized application delivery control, secure isolation provisioning of a multi-tenant environment, and support of business continuity. IBM understands that the first step in transforming network infrastructure is developing an enterprise network architecture that considers business and IT environments, security and privacy policies, service priorities, and growth plans. This guide describes how to migrate to a smarter data center using QFabric and also considers organizational aspects of migration. Over decades, IBM has built deep technical expertise and understanding of the evolving demands of network, server, storage, and desktop virtualization. IBM has extensive design and integration experience in complex DCN infrastructures and cloud computing environments. And IBM has a global pool of skilled networking professionals with in-depth IT and networking infrastructure knowledge and world class project management skills. IBM and Juniper Networks' strong partnership offers leading edge network products and technologies that will help you create and implement this unrivalled DCN design using the information covered in this paper.

This book presents the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2019, held at the Fraunhofer Zentrum and the Technische Universität in Kaiserslautern, Germany, on 19–21 June 2019. The conference brought together academic researchers in robotics from 20 countries, mainly affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube Region and covered all major areas of robotic research, development and innovation as well as new applications and current trends. Offering a comprehensive overview of the ongoing research in the field of robotics, the book is a source of information and inspiration for researchers wanting to improve their work and gather new ideas for future developments. It also provides researchers with an innovative and up-to-date perspective on the state of the art in this area.

Cloud computing opens a broad range of business opportunities across the computing industry and enables companies in other industries to provide services to their employees, customers, and partners. Cloud computing provides a compelling approach to addressing this opportunity. The IBM® SmartCloudTM for Service Providers portfolio can dramatically lower the business and technical barriers of entry to cloud computing. Companies rely on their business applications and systems as an integral part of their business. They can expand the business value of their applications and systems by using cloud computing to enable delivery of these functions as services. Companies have various options when adopting cloud computing. They can: Use existing service providers to operate services on their behalf. Implement hybrid solutions that extend existing applications through integration with cloud services. Add cloud service hosting capability to their existing facilities. For ecosystem partners, cloud computing provides compelling capabilities that ease deployment and long term management and maintenance. Equally important, cloud computing facilitates a more flexible business and technical environment. This environment can expand, contract, and adapt as services are added, removed, and evolve. The cloud replaces physical activity associated with change and change management by creating a fluid environment that adapts through automation. This IBM RedguideTM publication describes the business and technology choices companies make when entering the cloud service provider space. It introduces various cloud service provider business models and shows how to apply them to your business. This guide introduces the IBM CCRA cloud service provider adoption pattern, providing guidance about the definition, architecture, and deployment of cloud computing environments. Two cloud service provider deployment scenarios are highlighted throughout the guide, and they reflect the two most common starting points for service providers entering the cloud computing marketplace. The guide culminates with details about these deployment scenarios, and showing how they can be deployed today.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication gives an overview of Cloud solutions, followed by detailed information and usage scenarios for IBM CloudBurst® in a System x® environment. Cloud computing can be defined as a style of computing in which dynamically scalable resources, such as CPU, storage, or bandwidth, are provided as a service over the Internet. Cloud computing represents a massively scalable, self-service delivery model where processing, storage, networking, and applications can be accessed as services over the Internet. Enterprises can adopt cloud models to improve employee productivity, deploy new products and services faster and reduce operating costs—starting with workloads, such as development and test, virtual desktop, collaboration, and analytics. IBM provides a scalable variety of cloud solutions to meet these needs. This IBM Redbooks publication helps you to tailor an IBM CloudBurst installation on System x to meet virtualized computing requirements in a private cloud environment. This book is intended for IT support personnel who are responsible for customizing IBM CloudBurst to meet business cloud computing objectives.

The superabundance of data that is created by today's businesses is making storage a strategic investment priority for companies of all sizes. As storage takes precedence, the following major initiatives emerge: Flatten and converge your network: IBM® takes an open, standards-based approach to implement the latest advances in the flat, converged data center network designs of today. IBM Storage solutions enable clients to deploy a high-speed, low-latency Unified Fabric Architecture. Optimize and automate virtualization: Advanced virtualization awareness reduces the cost and complexity of deploying physical and virtual data center infrastructure. Simplify management: IBM data center networks are easy to deploy, maintain, scale, and virtualize, delivering the foundation of consolidated operations for dynamic infrastructure management. Storage is no longer an afterthought. Too much is at stake. Companies are searching for more ways to efficiently manage expanding volumes of data, and to make that data accessible throughout the enterprise. This demand is propelling the move of storage into the network. Also, the increasing complexity of managing large numbers of storage devices and vast amounts of data is driving greater business value into software and services. With current estimates of the amount of data to be managed and made available increasing at 60% each year, this outlook is where a storage area network (SAN) enters the arena. SANs are the leading storage infrastructure for the global economy of today. SANs offer simplified storage management, scalability, flexibility, and availability; and improved data access, movement, and backup. Welcome to the cognitive era. The smarter data center with the improved economics of IT can be achieved by connecting servers and storage with a high-speed and intelligent network fabric. A smarter data center that hosts IBM Storage solutions can provide an environment that is smarter, faster, greener, open, and easy to manage. This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides an introduction to SAN and Ethernet networking, and how these networks help to achieve a smarter data center. This book is intended for people who are not very familiar with IT, or who are just starting out in the IT world.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the positioning of the IBM Systems Director in the complete management range. It also compares the IBM Systems Director with the IBM Flex Systems Manager (FSM) and describes the environments for which each tool is best suited. This publication helps you plan, install, tailor, and configure the IBM Systems Director on different platforms. It contains information about required system resources and which network ports are used. It shows how to use the Workload Estimator to select the appropriate hardware for IBM Systems Director server and provides information about the IBM Systems Director Editions. Best practices are covered for the basic management tasks that are available in IBM Systems Director, including how to perform discovery; how to collect inventory on discovered resources; how to deploy agent, driver, and firmware updates; how to manage hardware events; and other miscellaneous tasks. An overview of best practices is provided for using IBM Systems Director VMControlTM. Systems Director VMControl is a cross-platform product that assists you in rapidly deploying virtual appliances to create virtual servers that are configured with the operating system and software applications that you want. It also enables you to group resources into system pools, which enable you to centrally manage and control the different workloads in your environment. The following plug-in offerings are described: Energy monitoring and management features offered by IBM Systems Director Active Energy ManagerTM along with the best practice, which needs to be followed in using the IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager. The IBM AIX® Profile Manager is a tool that can help implement and monitor the security of all AIX servers in a production environment but also implement and monitor the system compliance of those AIX servers. Best practices and the most important questions to ask before creating Workload Partition Manager (WPAR) and WPAR Manager infrastructure. In addition, how you can manage and relocate WPARs using WPAR Manager graphical interface and the command-line interface. Network Control basic functionalities and how to plan for Network Control deployments and also a number of common scenarios with best practices. The IBM Systems Director Service and Support Manager describes how to set up and how to handle serviceable events. Best practices for the Storage Monitoring and Management capabilities offered by IBM Systems Director server. This book is for IBM IT specialists and IT architects, IBM Business Partners, and clients, who are utilizing or considering implementing IBM Systems Director.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2017, held at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, from June 21-23, 2017. The conference brought together academic and industrial researchers in robotics from 30 countries, the majority of them affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, and their worldwide partners. RAAD 2017 covered all major areas of R&D and innovation in robotics, including the latest research trends. The book provides an overview on the advances in service and industrial robotics. The topics are presented in a sequence starting from the classical robotic subjects, such as kinematics, dynamics, structures, control, and ending with the newest topics, like human-robot interaction and biomedical applications. Researchers involved in the robotic field will find this an extraordinary and up-to-date perspective on the state of the art in this area.

Threats come from a variety of sources. Insider threats, as well as malicious hackers, are not only difficult to detect and prevent, but many times the authors of these threats are using resources without anybody being aware that those threats are there. Threats would not be harmful if there were no vulnerabilities that could be exploited. With IT environments becoming more complex every day, the challenges to keep an eye on all potential weaknesses are skyrocketing. Smart methods to detect threats and vulnerabilities, as well as highly efficient approaches to analysis, mitigation, and remediation, become necessary to counter a growing number of attacks against networks, servers, and endpoints in every organization. In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we examine the aspects of the holistic Threat and Vulnerability Management component in the Network, Server and Endpoint domain of the IBM Security Framework. We explain the comprehensive solution approach, identify business drivers and issues, and derive corresponding functional and technical requirements, which enables us to choose and create matching security solutions. We discuss IBM Security Solutions for Network, Server and Endpoint to effectively counter threats and attacks using a range of protection technologies and service offerings. Using two customer scenarios, we apply the solution design approach and show how to address the customer requirements by identifying the corresponding IBM service and software products.