IBM LinuxONE 5 Express: a first step to LinuxONE, in a standard rack

IBM has expanded the LinuxONE 5 family with LinuxONE 5 Express and a smaller-footprint LinuxONE Rockhopper 5. Both have been available since August 2026.

LinuxONE 5 Express

LinuxONE 5 Express is a single system that mounts in a standard 19-inch rack, next to your existing x86 equipment, with no special floor space, cooling or power planning.

• A known starting point. It comes preconfigured, with a defined bill of materials and a predictable starting cost.
• For a first project. IBM aims it at organisations that consolidate a modest x86 estate, evaluate LinuxONE for the first time, or run specific workloads such as digital assets, AI in transaction processing or confidential computing.
• Your Linux. It runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Ubuntu, and grows within the LinuxONE 5 generation.

LinuxONE Rockhopper 5

Rockhopper 5 is for organisations ready to consolidate a large part of their x86 estate in a smaller footprint. Software is licensed by the workloads you actually run, not by the number of physical servers, and the IBM Spyre Accelerator lets generative AI run next to your transactions without a separate GPU tier.

What both bring

• The IBM Telum II processor with an on-chip AI accelerator
• Quantum-safe cryptography built into the hardware
• Confidential computing with IBM Secure Execution

IBM reports that moving containerised workloads from x86 to LinuxONE 5 can save up to 65% of power, 94% of software costs and 44% of the total cost of ownership over five years. These are results of IBM’s internal tests against a specific x86 configuration, and your results will depend on your workloads.

We assess your workloads, show what consolidation would mean for you and implement the platform. Read more about IBM LinuxONE or talk to an expert.