Reality Check: Server Insights : servers

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) upgraded their entire IT infrastructure to HP ProLiant servers

Kristie Popp — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:44:00 GMT

By Steve Gillaspy, Group Manager, HP BladeSystem Product Team

Today, HP announced that Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) upgraded their entire IT infrastructure to HP ProLiant servers.

To date, CTCA has deployed more than 500 HP ProLiant rack and blade servers as part of a major infrastructure overhaul designed to increase system performance, uptime and reliability – all of which are critical to delivering the best patient care. In particular, HP is working with CTCA and the healthcare industry, to help streamline the industries’ migration to electronic health records from the legacy, paper-based records systems previously used. Electronic health records have been shown to improve patient care by increasing overall treatment efficiencies while reducing opportunities for human errors.

CTCA’s unique treatment approach combines the best traditional medical treatment with scientifically supported therapies aimed at helping patients better manage side effects, strengthen their immune systems and improve their quality of life during treatment. For almost 30 years, CTCA has been on the leading edge of advanced cancer treatment and serves patients with advanced cancer from all 50 states, and around the world, at facilities located in suburban Chicago, Philadelphia, Tulsa (Okla.), and suburban Phoenix.

Read today’s media advisory here.

Learn more about Cancer Treatment Centers of America here.

Have you recently upgraded your IT infrastructure to HP? Tell us your story.

Now I get the HP POD. See what we are learning at the HP Tech Forum 2009 POD demos, sessions & tours

Kristie Popp — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:06:00 GMT

The HP POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter) is stealing the show at the HP Tech Forum 2009. The POD is set up and you can tour the POD, talk to the experts and also see the power house running the POD. Kevin Egan & Steve Cumings from HP are informative, graciously answering all questions and helping us to all fully grasp the coolness of the HP POD.

Here is a quick overview of the HP POD in plain English by Jason Newton:

Hp Pod In Plain English Hptf

Here are the technical slides from Kevin Egan's technical break out session:

HP POD Containerized Data Center

Some quick take-away points:

HP POD solves the customer challenges:

Capacity Limitations
More energy efficiency needed
Increased pressures on capital expenses

Highlights:

HP can ship the POD fully loaded in six weeks
Lower operating expenses – more efficient
22 racks 50U high --- 11000U in 40x9 container
POD cools the IT… closely coupled cooling. NO mixing of hot & cold air.
Usually cool whole datacenter or certain areas.. not as efficient.
HP’s highest density – non proprietary too.
HP can cater to extreme hot or cold temperatures. Plumbing is the issue – keeping temps right.
The POD is powered by ActivePower www.activepower.com. Partner with HP for the power house – Flywheel, 600Lbs spinning away! They also had a very cool tour. See Jason Newton’s POD in plain English tour above for info & photos from the tours.
Questions on security always come up. Can someone drive away my datacenter? Someone would reaaalllly want to do this, as the POR averages 100,000 lbs. Would need 007 to pull that off. Just get the regular security in place.
HP is investing heavily in POD technology & structure. 20FT version coming out in Q4. At the Houston Campus, they are building out 5 in a spine. HP has a full roadmap for the POD. The PODs offer a huge opportunity to defer capital expenses
One customer has as a totally remote using iLO – only stepping in to make upgrades, change out any hardware.
TCO Comparison available. Kevin’s team would be abile to run this for customers. Contact them here.

All companies have the same problems. Who are the POD customers?

Capacity expansion 40%
Scale out 30%
Disaster Recovery 10%
Transitional 10%
Military & Custom 10%

Lastly: Every HP POD conversation goes to people wanting to live in it!!!

Key quotes from our Featured Bloggers at Tech Forum on the HP POD:

"I think a lot of us drool at the processing and storage capacity potential that the POD represents, but there are a lot of other factors that make the POD a serious, almost no-brainer contender when planning for a datacenter solution."

Shane Pitman , from his blog Neowin, HP Technology Forum & Expo POD tour

"Adding to the list of pluses provided by an HP POD solution are the POD's expandability and configuration options. With space for 22 50U full-depth industry standard racks, the configuration options are enormous. Want all storage? No problem. Want all blades? Can do. Already have the technology but just looking for a better housing solution? HP will ship you an empty POD with the racks, power, and cooling infrastructure in place, ready for your existing hardware, and not just HP hardware. The HP POD will support any third party technology."

Shane Pitman, from his blog Neowin, read more at HP Technology Forum & Expo POD tour

I will post more pics in the next few days of the POD too.

Let us know your thoughts & impressions on the HP POD. Are you ready for a mobile data center?

HPTF 2009: "What happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas!!" Stay connected.

Kristie Popp — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:54:00 GMT

Traveling to the show? Share with us your experiences. Can't travel? Stay tuned to this web site for the latest info.

At Tech Forum (June 16 - 18 in Las Vegas) HP will showcase its premier enterprise computing solutions. The event will feature daily keynote speakers, presentations and booth demos. If travel restrictions are preventing you to attend in person, you still have the opportunity participate. Via a dedicated website that includes a wide range of tools, HP will provide access to summary videos of selected keynote presentations and demos. See this year's choices of topics at the event & expo.

"What happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas!!" Check www.hp.com/go/HPTF-buzz for all the info on the HP Tech Forum 2009 for servers, storage and software. Share with us what you are seeing and experiencing on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Slideshare, upload your photos to Flicker and videos to YouTube.

More blog info coming from the show including lists of the "top threes" from the event. Please also feel free to comment on the site www.hp.com/go/HPTF-buzz to help us give you the info you want. Likes, dislikes?

“Skinless” servers designed for extreme scale, built on standards

Kristie Popp — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:08:00 GMT

By John Gromala, director, product marketing, Industry Standard Servers, HP

Today, HP introduced our first addition to the HP ProLiant line since the 2001 introduction of blade servers with the new extreme scale ProLiant SL-family.

This addition marks a very important inflection point in the industry as more companies adopt very large scale data centers to support their businesses. We're talking about datacenters with thousands --to tens of thousands of nodes here --a segment of data center customer we're calling Extreme Scale-out (ExSO). These customers are the Web giants (search, Web 2.0, etc.) or more traditional businesses in the high-performance computing and enterprise realm. For both, IT is a key enabler of their business and is directly linked to the product or service they deliver to customers (whether it be delivering online applications or digital crash simulations).

Traditionally, these customers have been limited to one-off custom designs or proprietary offerings to meet their needs. Metrics like performance per watt per square foot are the name of the game for these guys. Every dollar spent for power, operations or server acquisition impacts business profitability.

Enter the new HP ProLiant SL6000 Scalable System, which uses a "skinless" systems architecture that replaces the traditional chassis with an extremely lightweight rail and tray design – all based on industry standards.

SL customers use 2U a z6000 chassis that leverages shared power and fans to maximize energy efficiencies and can mix-and-match between 3 new SL servers optimized for very specific ExSO workloads:

1. · HP ProLiant SL2x170z G6 delivers high-density compute with two servers in each 1U tray for highly dense applications such as high-performance computing and web front-end applications.

2. · HP ProLiant SL160z G6 delivers increased memory with 18 dual, in-line memory module (DIMM) slots and up to two peripheral component interconnect (PCI) slots, making it ideal for large memory-cache apps.

3. · HP ProLiant SL170z G6 delivers the greatest storage capacity with up to six large form-factor Serial ATA (SATA) or serial-attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives. The server is ideal for large storage applications such as web search and database applications.

These new ProLiant SL servers join HP’s existing ProLiant DL (rack), ML (tower) and BL (blade) servers. Learn more about ProLiant Servers here.

Jump right to information on the HP’s new Extreme Scale-out (ExSO) portfolio here.

Read more about HP's ExSO portfolio in today's press release here.

HP Delivers Industry-first Management Capabilities for Microsoft System Center

aimeeschoaf — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:29:00 GMT

By Lorre Bumgardner, Product Manager - HP Platforms/Partner management

Monday, April 27th marked a significant milestone in our 20+ year relationship with Microsoft. We are very excited about the news -- we launched the Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center (ICE-SC) at Microsoft Management Summit. The first product of its kind, ICE-SC delivers a complete hardware infrastructure management solution directly in the System Center consoles.

What do I mean by "complete?" For example, "complete" to HP means things like total remote control (iLO), deep insight into ProLiant platforms, proactive virtual machine management (PRO pack), automated deployment (OSD), and power and performance management of the HP server infrastructure. Priced at $549 per managed server and backed by 24x7 support with free software updates, ICE-SC radically simplifies the management experience for HP customers who have standardized on Microsoft System Center. There's even an upgrade for current iLO Advanced customers priced at just $289.

Why now, and why charge for this functionality, you may ask? HP knows that most other server vendors are providing some of this functionality, such as OSD and PRO packs, for free. But HP's approach is to offer a complete, robust solution rather than just basic functionality that won't do everything our customers need. In addition to staying very close to our customer base, we've done a lot of research to determine what HP can do to make life simpler for the people who use our products. ICE-SC is the result of significant feedback from customers, extensive research and more than a year of working with the folks at Microsoft on development.

The "easy" approach would be to deliver minimal integration value, throw our management packs up on our web site and leave our customers to their own devices when it comes to support. But that's not the HP approach. While we'll continue to deliver basic management packs free of charge for SCOM and SCCM updates, we're confident that our customers who need more advanced functionality like automated deployment and virtual machine management expect more, because we've done our homework. You can learn more about this exciting new product at: www.hp.com/go/ICESystemCenter, or come visit us if you happen to be attending MMS!

Buying an HP ProLiant Server Bundled with the Insight Control Suite Just Got Easier

aimeeschoaf — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:33:00 GMT

By John Schmitz

On March 30, we announced our new G6 line of HP ProLiant servers - built for performance and reliability. These servers, which run the HP Insight Control suite, are the industry's best managed x86 servers. HP Insight Control suite, popularly known as "ICE," provides essential infrastructure management capabilities for system administrators who need to save time, reduce complexity, and lower the costs associated with day-to-day server administration.

The HP Insight Control suite (ICE) delivers an essential set of management capabilities including: (1) rapid server deployment, (2) proactive server health management, (3) the ability to optimize server power, and (4) server remote control from anywhere. ICE delivers this robust set of management capabilities with our award-winning HP Systems Insight Manager tool which is available for both Windows and Linux-based environments

And, in an effort to make the HP Insight Control suite easier for our customers to buy, HP now offers ICE bundled with select HP ProLiant DL360 G6 and DL380 G6 models. These offerings include a high-performing ProLiant server AND the HP Insight Control suite - and can NOW be ordered as a single SKU/part number. Additionally, customers who choose to buy these bundles with a ProLiant DL360 G6 or DL380 G6 server will save an additional 20 percent off the price of an individual ICE software license. Learn more at www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol You can see the value and savings is tremendous. Be cool and order your next ProLiant server bundled with ICE and save big!

And to get the most out of your HP Insight Control suite, take advantage of HP Education Services, which are available to help train you and your staff on the fundamentals and advanced capabilities of ICE. Learn more at http://h10076.www1.hp.com/education/hp_ice_curriculum.htm

HP and Sun partnership: Why it Matters to the customer

carlat409 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:32:00 GMT

By Jeff Carlat

You thought it would never happen: arch rivals, HP and Sun, partnering. Well, I have news for you: HP and Sun are collaborating, and we are both excited about it. If you haven't already heard, yesterday, we announced a three-year agreement. What does this mean? HP can now distribute and support Solaris 10 across our ProLiant and BladeSystem x86 platforms.

HP can help YOU, our customers, confidently deploy and support Solaris workloads on ProLiant. This is big news! This partnership with Sun will also enable Solaris 10 to run best on ProLiant. While it can be debated whether Solaris runs best on ProLiant or Solaris runs best on Sun or other x86 hardware, this agreement is significant for our customers - as it will dramatically improve the experience when it runs on ProLiant.

Go ahead, choose for yourself, but this partnership is designed to meet needs communicated through customer feedback. In turn, we are executing on giving you, the customer, a better experience when running Solaris 10 on ProLiant. HP + Sun are partnering for you.

Meet Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration -- Improving Data Center Administrator Productivity

aimeeschoaf — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:46:00 GMT

By Mark Linesch, HP Enterprise Storage and Servers Software

On January15th HP formally unveiled the Insight software brand, which includes our 3 suites, Insight Control, Insight Dynamics - VSE for ProLiant, and the Virtual Server Environment for Integrity, as well as Systems Insight Manager as an onramp to HP platforms.

We also announced several key product enhancements as part of our Adaptive Infrastructure momentum announcement on January 15^th:

new extensions to Insight Dynamics - VSE, HP Insight Orchestration for automated provisioning, and Insight Recovery for cost-effective disaster recovery
enhancements to the capacity planning/consolidation capabilities of ID-VSE with support for non-HP x86 servers such as Dell and IBM, providing more on-ramps to industry-leading HP platforms
expanded hypervisor support for Insight Dynamics - VSE to include Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi, in addition to ESX
new flexibility options for the HP Virtual Server Environment for HP Integrity servers include online migration for HP Integrity Virtual Machines and the ability to move workloads on physical HP Integrity blade servers with drag-and-drop ease with the logical server capability
TCE and functionality enhancements for the Insight Control Environment for an improved purchasing experience and extended remote management capabilities

Of particular note is the new extension to Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration. The Insight Orchestration option is designed to improve data center administrator productivity. With the push of a button, applications can be assigned to physical and virtual servers, as well as to specific storage and network resources - and then returned to the pool when no longer needed. Want to see how Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration can help you? Check out www.hp.com/go/insight for more details.

Want to know how the new HP Tower UPS perform in a Real Field Test?

s_mathur — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:58:00 GMT

While in the development process, our HP engineers put our products through rigorous testing and qualification to make sure they are of the highest quality and are compatible with all HP ProLiant computer systems and servers . Extensive evaluation, testing, and product improvement guarantee the highest level of system protection, electrical performance, product quality and compatibility. This testing allows us to offer the highest quality Uninterruptible Power Systems with a 3-year limited warranty and our exclusive 60-day Battery Pre-Failure Warranty.

Our engineers really analyze our product to the extreme...but everyone knows it's our sales guys who are our toughest critics.

The sales teams are on the front lines dealing with the good, the bad, and the ugly. They listen to our customers and provide the development team feedback. They want to insure they we develop a product that they can sell; one that beats the competition hands-down in quality and total cost of ownership. They scrutinize every detail of our UPS's, and this time they put our UPS to the test.

Below is an email I received from one of our outside sales guys regarding our new tower T750 G2 UPS, which we launched on Nov. 17th... I think it speaks for itself. (Below the story is further product information)

Here in the East we experienced a tremendous ice storm on late Thursday evening, which left many Massachusetts/New Hampshire communities without power, including the town in which I live. It will be weeks before power is fully restored.

On early Friday, after driving around downed power lines and many trees, I managed to get to reach a customer to do a datacenter visit. On returning to my home office in Hollis NH, I found the power to still be out. Luckily I had a generator, and I put my (un-named brand) T1500 demo unit on-line to protect my office equipment load from the generator's fluctuations. I immediately found that it constantly clicks, chatters and beeps as the generator varies voltage and frequency when the load changes. The other vendor's T1500 can't seem to carry much of load although it's rated at 1000 Watts.

The constant noise of the other vendor's T1500 was very distracting. I remembered that I had a new HP T750 G2 UPS, which as you know has Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR provides consistent, clean output power to the attached equipment.) I split the load between the two UPS units thinking the HP T750 G2 did not have enough capacity. After an hour of listening to the (un-named brand) T1500 constantly "click, chatter and beep" I put all the load on the HP T750 G2 and shut-off the (un-named brand) T1500. I was skeptical about whether the HP T750 G2 could handle this load. HP does claim to be the best, so I put that HP promise to the test. Now the HP T750 G2 is carrying the load of my ENTIRE home office, and is virtually silent with just an occasional "beep" when the refrigerator jumps on the generator. When I shut down the generator for refueling, my laptops, printer and entire office load "just keeps on running". If the new HP T750 can perform that well, I can only imagine how great the HP T1500 will perform.

HP has a great UPS product... It's convinced me!!

Dick Jerauld
HP Rack, PDU, UPS, & KVM Solutions
East Region

Has an HP UPS saved your small or medium business? Send me your story.

HP offers a full line of tower UPS for your small/medium business, remote sites, or retail environment. To learn more about the tower UPS's and our entire portfolio of power products, please visit www.hp.com/go/RackandPower

Lauren Trost
Hewlett-Packard
UPS Product Manager

I received a new HPC Multi-core server today – documenting the configuration

d-field — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:36:00 GMT

One of the complexities in benchmarking applications is defining the server configuration adequately. The purpose of a benchmark is to provide guidance - to demonstrate how to obtain a given performance from a specific application workload. This guidance is not useful if the performance cannot be reproduced. To make benchmark results reproducible, it is necessary to define the server configuration, specifying everything that can affect performance. From a hardware point of view, this is not difficult - specify the model numbers of every component in each server, then specify the model numbers of the components in storage and networking components. Some of this information is available on-line, such as processor model number. Other information, such as model or speed of memory DIMMs, is usually not accessible on-line, but this data is important. For example, some current x86 servers have an option of 667MHz or 800MHz DIMMs, and this choice can affect application performance considerably.

Identifying the software components can be difficult, since you need to know which components affect the performance of the workload.

And the most obscure configuration area is firmware - in some cases, versions of firmware have a big impact on workload performance. It is rarely necessary to document the firmware version of the server, but it is a good idea to document firmware versions of networking components.

Next, it is important to know how the quantities of specific components affect performance. Performance varies with the number of disks internal to the servers, the number controllers connecting the server to external disks, the number and topology of network switches, etc.

One important variable is the number of memory DIMMs. The number of DIMMs affects performance in two ways - the total amount of memory on the server, and the memory performance. It is useful to run the workload using the maximum number of DIMMs, then repeat the benchmark using ½ as many DIMMs. Memory is expensive, and it is very useful to know how the workload performance varies with memory configuration.

Small Form Factor Drive Storage Doubles

s_mathur — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Have you been waiting for higher capacities on your 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF) drives? HP will launch the 300GB 3G SAS 10K SFF Enterprise Drive shortly. With this drive you will get more for less:

- More storage capacity than any other SFF drive in the market

- 50% less power usage in 70% less space than 3.5-inch 15K drives.

This drive is an enterprise drive, ideally suited for those environments for servers and storage solutions running business critical, high I/O and heavy workload applications. They provide the high performance and maximum reliability (about 3.5 times that of Entry Drives) required by

Near 24/7 operating environments
Large databases
High-transaction applications such as e-mail, ERP, and CRM
Real-time customer facing environments

Being the leader in the industry when it comes to small form factor SAS drives, HP is known to ship more small form factor drives than any other OEM. With integrated HP technology, such as Systems Insight Manager, SmartStart and HP Flash utilities, you can take advantage of pre-failure alerts and avoid costly data loss and un-planned downtime. HP also provides a pre-failure warranty allowing you to replace a degrading drive before it actually fails. To further simplify support processes, HP drives are covered under the server CarePack.

To find out more about HP drives, click here.

Virtualization Never Looked So Good

R_Palmer — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:33:00 GMT

Virtualization has become a mainstay, even a business imperative, within most data centers today. Today, every server manufacturer is claiming leadership in virtualization platforms, so the real question you need to ask is, "Why HP?" Well, let me give you a few of the key reasons why HP is the right choice for your trusted advisor when it comes to virtualization.

Whether it's for server consolidation, workload balancing or security and disaster recovery purposes, the dramatic growth of virtual machine implementation is mind boggling. This is not necessarily coupled to the comfort level of IT managers though, as there continues to be a disarray of management tools and interfaces required to manage both physical and virtual machines. HP has taken this challenge head on with our new Insight Control Environment (ICE) which gives you a single pane of glass to monitor and manage both your virtual machines and physical machines simultaneously.

On November 17^th, we introduced the new HP ProLiant DL385 G5p server based on the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 processor (code named "Shanghai"). The HP ProLiant DL385 G5p is designed and optimized specifically for virtualization and consolidation environments. In fact, we looked at every facet of the product in our development effort with a few key principles in mind:

Provide a strong investment protection value for existing AMD Opteron customers
Improve the overall performance in the same, or lower, power envelope
Optimize the virtualization performance
Increase the number of virtual machines on a single platform
Simplify and improve the security of deploying of virtual machines

The new DL385 G5p is now available, having met and exceeded these objectives, arriving ahead of schedule. With the new 45nm "Shanghai" processor, with a 6MB L3 cache, we have achieved higher performance and maintained Socket F compatibility, yet at a substantially lower power envelope. HP, unlike some of our competitors, has designed the DL385 G5p to provide our customers with the flexibility to choose between single processor or dual processor configurations, without sacrificing any of the improvements offered by Shanghai. We have optimized the real estate inside of the 2U chassis to deliver twice the memory, twice the NICs and 6 times the storage capacity as the previous generation DL385. With 16 DDR2 DIMM sockets, you can reach 128GB of memory using 8GB high performance DIMMs. This allows for significantly more virtual machines to run on this single platform.

In addition, with virtual machine deployment, networking capabilities are critical. In the new DL385 G5p, we integrated 4 gigabit Ethernet ports to free up the PCI-Express slots to meet your flexible design requirements and increase the bandwidth for the virtual machines running on the server. The flexibility of the PCI bus slot configuration is another key benefit of the HP ProLiant DL385 G5p. With up to 6 PCI-e slots, additional networking, storage and application specific I/O adapters can be added to improve the virtualization experience. There are many customers who require legacy PCI-X controller support and some that are looking for the latest and greatest x16 PCI-e controller support. In the DL385 G5p, we have given those customers the flexibility to configure the PCI bus slots to meet their unique application and environment needs.

Storage performance is a key differentiator in the market today, even more so in virtualization environments. That's why we increased the internal disk storage on the DL385 G5p to 16 2.5" SAS or SATA disk drives; or 6 3.5" SAS or SATA disk drives. This provides up to 6TB of internal disk storage to be shared between the virtual machines with improved performance when compared to external shared disk solutions. By bringing the disks closer to the processors, the performance bandwidth issues are minimized and the overall performance of the storage is improved.

This server is built with efficiency in mind! The HP ProLiant DL385 G5p helps save on energy costs with the industry's highest efficiency power supplies that currently power the complete portfolio of HP ProLiant servers. Finally, with the internal USB slot, you can utilize an iHypervisor on a USB key that allows you to deploy virtual machines securely and easily.

In closing I'd like to quote Paul Gottsegen, VP of Marketing for HP's Industry Standard Servers division, from a recent interview:

"Customers can drive down costs through new "Shanghai"-based HP ProLiant servers that set new levels of power efficiency and performance. HP has experienced unparalleled success over the past four years working with AMD in bringing AMD Opteron processor-based platforms to customers of all sizes. Early results indicate "Shanghai" is a winner."

HP continues to lead the market in delivering more ProLiant servers featuring AMD Opteron processors than any other system manufacturer. In fact, HP has shipped over four times more than IBM and 1.5 times more than Dell (IDC- Q208 Server Tracker, Oct.08). Have confidence in choosing HP as your trusted advisor as we continue to set the bar for performance, energy efficiency and optimization in virtualization environments.

For more information click here on the DL385 G5P server link, or listen to the replay from Paul Gottsegen at the AMD Shanghai launch event on November 13^th.

I received a new HPC Multi-core server today – Live from SC08

d-field — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:59:00 GMT

This week, I am attending the annual SC08 conference. For 2 decades, the tradition in HPC is to announce and demonstrate new products at the SC conference, and there is a lot to absorb.

For me, the event started with a 2-day HP user conference, attracting some of HP’s largest HPC customers. It was a very full 2 days, with lectures on many subjects from customers, Intel, AMD, software development companies, and of course HP. Even though I work here, I learned a lot about projects in other parts of the company.

At the SC08 show, I saw my 1^st HP POD – portable optimized datacenter – a 40-foot-long shipping container on the outside, and a self-contained computer facility on the inside. This excellently-designed mobile facility can contain 3500 servers or 12,000 disk drives, in standard 19” racks. Just provide a flat location, power, chilled water, and a network cable, and you have a new computer room.

To make the week more interesting, AMD announced the new Opteron Shanghai processor – higher clock speed, bigger cache, faster Northbridge, and improved performance:power ratio.

One of the good things about big companies is that they spawn startups. This year, a startup company announced a new HPC architecture at SC08. Nearly all the employees are my friends and previous HP co-workers. Check out www.conveycomputer.com

AMD launches quad-core Shanghai processors

aimeeschoaf — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:47:00 GMT

This is an exciting time for our partner, AMD, as they launch their newest family of processors, and HP is pleased that our ProLiant portfolio will offer new capabilities computing to customers of all sizes. The new "Shanghai" products (Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 processors) will help HP customers gain greater computing power and business results when they build their infrastructure on HP ProLiant ML, DL and BL servers. Whether they are using virtualization technology to optimize their IT assets or they are consolidating their server inventory, HP ProLiant servers featuring the Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 processors will help customers do more business in a smaller footprint.

Around the globe, customers using AMD Opteron-based HP ProLiant servers value investment protection, consistent performance improvement, power efficiency and optimized design elements that enhance their virtualization strategies. The Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 processors deliver on these expectations with the larger 6GB L3 cache, Socket F compatibility, decreased power envelope, improved performance/watt and enhanced virtualization indexing. Watch for news on HP ProLiant offerings featuring the Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 processors.

- Rich Palmer

Director, HP Technology Strategy

Industry Standard Servers

I received a new HPC Multi-core server today – How to measure the power usage

d-field — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Given that it is important to measure power usage and correlate it to application performance, how do you measure the power?

We use 2 different methods - one for rack-mounted servers and another for blade servers. The rack-mounted servers do not provide power meters, so we bought a power meter. We plug the server into the power meter, so we are measuring the total power used. Then, with a simple PC interface, we allow the application user on the server to obtain continuous power data which is easy to correlate with the applications.

This is easy for the users, but it requires planning and logistics and some work by our system managers, to connect the meter to the right server at the right time.

We often want to measure the power of a cluster running one HPC application in parallel, and it is usually sufficient to measure the power of any one server in the cluster running the application.

It is easier to measure power on an HP blade enclosure, since the enclosure contains power measurement capability and provides this data in a usable way. The available data includes the total enclosure power and also the power used by each blade server and each fan in the enclosure. We integrated this information with the Platform Computing LSF job scheduler. Now, users of our blade servers submit their jobs via LSF and automatically receive their power usage data as part of the job.

Next week, I expect to post a message from the SC08 conference.