Internet hosting provider OVH has launched an on-demand cloud service based on IBM's POWER8 processor, tuned specifically for big data, high performance computing, and database workloads. The newest RunAbove service is enabled by PowerKVM virtualization, the Fedora Linux open source operating system, and OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service software.
In addition to introducing this new cloud service, OVH has become the newest member of the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community collaborating to further leverage the POWER processor's open architecture for broad industry innovation.
OVH has developed two cloud offerings that deliver advanced technology with IBM Power Systems. The S offering is based on shared virtual servers hosted on a single POWER8 system and the set-up is intended for developers who want to test the characteristics of the POWER8 architecture to fit a range of their applications. Another offering, the 2XL service, offers one virtual server per physical host, and provides customers dedicated access to the power of the IBM POWER8 architecture. This offering is designed to service high-tech research and development efforts.
The OVH benchmark results of POWER8, based on real use cases of analytics workloads, show multiple times improved performance over analytical queries running on x86-based commodity servers. POWER8 also enables applications to parallelize up to 8 threads per core, four times more than commodity x86 architecture.
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