Eye on Blades Blog: Trends in Infrastructure : blade servers

A Blade Thanksgiving

Daniel Bowers — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:21:00 GMT

Thursday is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, a time when families often get together to give thanks for the things they most appreciate. I snapped this pic inside one of the server development labs at HP; it looks like even the 'extended family'...(read more)

About Converged Infrastructure by Jim Jackson

Kristie Popp — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:09:00 GMT

by Jim Jackson, About Converged Infrastructure About This Poster Hi, I’m Jim Jackson. I’ve recently joined the HP Infrastructure Software and BladeSystem team as the Vice-President of Marketing and want to take this opportunity to introduce...(read more)

Harnessing Horsepower: Cores, Capacity, and Code

Daniel Bowers — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:33:00 GMT

Last week at IDF , two Intel technologists spoke about different fixes to the problem of compute capacity outpacing the typical server's ability to handle it. For the past 5 years, x86 CPU makers have boosted performance by adding more cores within...(read more)

A Blade Kill

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:07:00 GMT

In April, SPEC updated their server power benchmark to allow results for blade servers, and now HP has released its first blade result. HP just published a SPECpower_ssj2008 result for the HP BL280c G6 server blade . It's the top score for a blade...(read more)

New review of HP blades for small sites

newtonja — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:52:00 GMT

Recently, we shipped a BladeSystem c3000 (or 'Shorty' to those in the know), to Dave Mitchell at the IT Pro for a hands-on review. Inside we added the latest virtualization blades, virtual storage with HP LeftHand and some other new gadgets to...(read more)

Circuit Board Rainbow

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:51:00 GMT

Recently I demonstrated a prototype blade to an IT admin from a large bank. He'd worked with lots of different HP server models over the years, but a bright red color peeking out from the server blade chassis caught his eye. I popped off the cover...(read more)

Icosikaitetra-Core Server Blades

Daniel Bowers — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:46:00 GMT

Yesterday, AMD launched "Istanbul" , their six-core Opteron processor. Paul G. promised that HP would add this CPU into our servers in very short order. "Very short" was right; today we've announced the BL465c G6 and BL495c G6...(read more)

Virtually (and literally) #1

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:41:00 GMT

This week we released VMMark results for the new HP BL490c G6 server blade. The scores establish the BL490c as the highest performing 2-socket server blade for virtualization -- eclipsing blades offered by IBM, Dell, and Cisco. By the way, this 2-socket...(read more)

Chargeback Glitch

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:25:00 GMT

Here’s a story about unexpected behavior prompted by some chargeback rules at Pfizer . (By 'chargeback' I mean the budgeting scheme where IT resources are metered, then costs are attributed to the business units that consume them.) Larry Cannell...(read more)

OMG - that's a lot of blade servers

newtonja — Fri, 08 May 2009 05:55:00 GMT

One of our specialists passed this cool picture along of a massive row of blades. I'd tell you what customer it was from but they would hang me. green PS: you know you're a nerd when you think lots of blinking green lights are cool. (guilty)...(read more)

Just for Fun Friday: Why Servers Rock video!

newtonja — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:50:00 GMT

One of the BEST videos I've seen in awhile about a very unsexy story - servers. Steve Brown at Intel did this and it's great. Even your mom will understand servers after seeing this. Have a great weekend!...(read more)

Designing infrastructure the way IT wants to work

Gary Thome — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:46:00 GMT

We've been on the Adaptive Infrastructure journey at HP for several years now. This week we are announcing an important milestone: BladeSystem Matrix. We've been really thinking a lot about how customers use IT and ways we can optimize IT infrastructure...(read more)

Yeah, but where do I insert the floppy disk?

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:25:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, lots of server admins started deploying the new HP BL460c G6 server blade. Coincidentally, this year is the 20th anniversary of the Compaq SystemPro 386/33 -- the first "PC server" (to use the 1989 throw-back term for...(read more)

"Memory technology evolution: an overview of system memory technologies"; a technology brief

Kleinch — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:36:00 GMT

Our engineering team has put together a good white paper on how different memory technologies work in computer systems today. Advantages, disadvantages, architecture models in server design when selecting the best price and performance in memory configurations...(read more)

Mike Klayko, CEO of Brocade nailed it

newtonja — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:49:00 GMT

I'm a sucker for unscripted honesty. Kudos to Mr. K for taking a deep breath after Cisco's UCS and Project California grandstanding to put some reality in front of the rhetoric. In less than 3 minutes, he really boiled all the hype down and simply articulated what a lot of our customers and partners are thinking too. Watch his video....(read more)