The pressures related to managing transactional databases are increasing rapidly. Business growth, the drive to consolidate databases, and the need to deploy new, data-intensive technologies are fostering the massive expansion of data volumes and application workloads. At the same time, the move toward real-time computing requires faster and more reliable data access, especially when databases are used to drive client-facing applications. Businesses need simpler and more cost-effective strategies for expanding their database environment.

IBM and Intel® provide an answer to this challenge with the IBM DB2® pureScale™ feature and the latest generation of IBM System x eX5 servers based on the Intel Xeon® E7 processor family. The combined solution enables clients to scale mission-critical, performance-sensitive databases simply, using affordable, industry-standard servers.

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication describes an IBM solution containing high availability and scalability for mission-critical databases on System x®. The audience includes executives and other decision-makers, consultants, and architects.

Chapter 1 The need for high-performing clusters

Chapter 2 Dealing with business growth

Chapter 3 A client case study

Chapter 4 Why run IBM DB2 pureScale on eX5

Chapter 5 Technology overview

Chapter 6 The value of IBM DB2 pureScale on IBM eX5 servers