Intelligent self-management

FlexFrame™ is an intelligent system that has been designed to identify problems at an early stage and to take proactive corrective action. It is a practical realization of autonomic computing being self configuring, self optimizing, self healing and self protecting.

Self-configuration
FlexFrame uses one centrally stored operating system that is booted over the network. It is intelligently implemented so that it supports the entire PRIMERGY range - from the blade server up to the eight-processor high-end server - without requiring any manual configuration. The operating system is automatically configured for the appropriate server as it is booted.

Self-optimization
One example of the self-optimizing capacities of FlexFrame is the Write Anywhere File System (WAFL) which is used in the Network Appliance filers. The storage system uses WAFL to automatically distribute the data across the available hard disks, without requiring any tuning.

Self-healing
FlexFrame has a built-in high availability concept that is a self-healing system. FlexFrame can restart faulty SAP processes or fall back on backup servers. The system’s built-in intelligence even realizes its own limits, and in exceptional situations, is able to call for outside assistance from human users.

Self-protection
Because the SAP software, the operating system and the hardware are entirely separated from one another - i.e. virtualized - FlexFrame can start any module using any available server. This is a key requirement for built-in high accessibility.