One problem they commonly face is expanding capacity to meet demand. When that demand ebbs, resources will go back to the other virtual servers. With the new servers, IBM also is changing how it charges for software. Customers will pay based on usage rather than a flat fee for an entire server. Bittman praised the scheme, which could cut some customers' up-front costs.
Usage spikes less than four hours long, such as increased Web traffic, incur no additional charges.
That's cheaper than anything you can do in the Intel or RISC space. When servers are combined in what is called a cluster, that capacity boosts to 64,000 transactions a second, Lechner said. Inc. All rights reserved.