Reduce energy use and emissions with the high efficiency of a single IBM z17 replacing up to 2,944 x86 cores¹
Built for efficiency and long-term savings
IBM Z® delivers power and energy efficiency for sustainable IT. By consolidating Linux® workloads, organizations can cut energy use by 65% and reduce CO₂e emissions by over 109 metric tons each year—supporting environmental goals.2
Powered by IBM Telum® II, IBM Z enables real-time AI inference while addressing energy concerns. Cut power use by up to 83% compared to x86 when running AI-enhanced OLTP workloads.3
Moving x86 workloads to IBM Z results in lower costs and environmental impact. Cut energy use and data center space while achieving up to 65% lower TCO over 5 years with AI-infused, containerized workloads.4
The IBM Z HMC Environmental Dashboard and APIs monitor power, cooling, and more. Access OS and partition metrics to validate sustainability efforts and meet reporting mandates.
IBM Z systems are built using environmentally responsible materials. IBM Global Asset Recovery Services supports reuse and recycling to reduce waste and extend hardware value.
Tools
Use these tools to plan, assess and enhance your sustainability strategy with IBM Z. From system consolidation to energy tracking, each tool helps build a more efficient, eco-conscious IT environment.
Use the IBM Systems Environment Estimator to create a customized carbon footprint report, including energy use and cooling requirements, for your specific IBM Z configuration.
Estimate the energy use, system weight, and carbon footprint for your IBM Z configuration to plan for power, cooling, and sustainability goals.
Leverage a Grafana dashboard to compare IBM Z and x86 power data and uncover efficiency gains from workload consolidation.
Access open-source tools for managing IBM Z with the HMC, including Python/Go libraries, CLI, Ansible modules and monitoring tools.
Resources
See how consolidating x86 workloads on IBM z17 reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions and total cost of ownership.
Use the IBM Z HMC Environmental Dashboard to track power consumption, cooling requirements and other sustainability metrics.
Recover value and reduce environmental impact by returning or recycling your IBM Z systems through IBM Global Asset Recovery Services.
See how SEAL Systems used IBM Z to reduce their energy footprint while boosting IT efficiency and performance—achieving sustainable growth with a resilient, consolidated infrastructure.
Footnotes
¹ IBM internal tests simulating a complete IT solution running containerized WebSphere Liberty and EDB Postgres workloads, show that a single IBM z17 can do the work of up to 2,944 cores of the compared x86 solution.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests for the core consolidation study targeted a comparison of the following servers. IBM Machine Type 9175 MAX 136 system consisting of three CPC drawers containing 136 configurable processor units and six I/O drawers to support both network and external storage. The x86 solution used a commercially available enterprise server with two 5th generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors, 64 cores per CPU. Both solutions had access to the same storage. The workloads consisted of a containerized online transaction processing (OLTP) WebSphere Liberty v25 application running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) v4.17, and an EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 on the same OCP cluster simulating core online banking functions. Both solutions used Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 and KVM. Results may vary. The test results were extrapolated to a typical, complete customer IT solution that includes isolated from each other production and non-production IT environments. TCO included software, hardware, energy, network, data center space, and labor costs. On the IBM z17 side the complete solution requires one IBM z17 Type 9175 MAX 136, and on x86 side, the complete IT solution requires 23 compared servers.
2 Consolidating a complete IT solution on an IBM z17 instead of running it on a compared x86 solution with similar conditions in New York can reduce energy consumption by 65% and the CO2e footprint by over 109 metric tons annually. This is equivalent to consuming 12,284 fewer gallons of gasoline.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests for the core consolidation study compared an IBM Machine Type 9175 Max136 with 136 configurable processor units with an x86 solution that used a commercially available enterprise server with two 5th gen Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ processors and 64 cores per CPU. Workloads consisted of a containerized OLTP WebSphere Liberty v25 application running on Red Hat OCP v4.17 and an EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 on the same OCP cluster. Both solutions used Red Hat Enterprise Linux v9.5 and KVM. Test results were extrapolated to a typical, complete customer IT solution that included production and non-production IT environments isolated from each other. The IBM Machine Type 9175 solution required one Max136 and the x86 solution required 23 compared servers. Contains information from Electricity Maps Carbon Intensity Data, which is made available here under the Open Database License (ODbL). Equivalencies are based on the EPA GHG calculator. Results may vary.
3 Save up to 83% of power consumption by replacing a compared x86 solution comprised of two-year-old servers running AI-infused OLTP workloads with an IBM z17.
DISCLAIMER: Based on IBM internal performance tests running on IBM Systems Hardware of machine type 9175 compared to the same tests running on a commercially available enterprise server with 2x 28 Intel Xeon Gold 5420+ CPU @ 2.20 GHz. The MegaCard benchmark is a containerized IBM WebSphere Liberty v24 online transaction processing (OLTP) application deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOCP) 4.17 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.4 with KVM. EDB Postgres for Kubernetes v1.25 is used as the database. The model extrapolated the test results to a typical, complete customer IT solution that includes isolated from each other production and non-production IT environments. On the IBM z17 side the complete solution requires one IBM z17 Type 9175 MAX 136, and on x86 side, the complete IT solution requires 72 of the compared servers. Results may vary.
4 Over 5 years, save up to 65% in the total cost of ownership and 93% in the software costs, 92% of the data center power consumption, and 75% of the data center space by deploying an AI-infused OLTP containerized application and a database in a virtual machine on an IBM z17 single frame and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization instead of deploying the same workloads on compared x86 servers.
DISCLAIMER: IBM internal performance tests targeted customers who consider acquiring new x86-based servers or a new IBM z17 machine to deploy AI-infused OLTP (on-line transaction processing) workloads. The tests compared the solution deployed on commercially available x86 servers based on technologies commonly used at the end of 2025 to an equivalent by performance alternative deployment on IBM z17 single frame Machine Type 9176-ME2 Max 82 system consisting of two CPC drawers containing 82 configurable processor units and 16 AI Units, and two I/O drawers. The x86 and IBM z17 single frame solutions had access to the same storage. The x86 workloads consisted of a containerized AI-infused OLTP WebSphere Liberty v24 application (the MegaCard benchmark (github.com/IBM/megacard-standalone) running on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) v4.21, and an EDB Postgres Advanced Server 17.6.0 on the same 3rd party hypervisor cluster, simulating credit card transactions with AI inferencing calls for fraud detection. The execution of inferencing on x86 servers was assisted by the x86 processor on-chip AI accelerators and instruction sets. The IBM z17 single frame solution consisted of the same workloads deployed on OCP Virtualization v4.21 cluster, and the database was deployed in a VM managed by OCP Virtualization. The AI inferencing on LinuxONE 5 was assisted by specific instruction sets and AI Units on Telum II processors. Results may vary.