Reality Check: Server Insights : x86

New AMD Six-core Opteron™ Processors add more horsepower to the industry’s x-86 workhorse

anand.akela@hp.com — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Current economic, environmental and energy constraints often do not make it possible to add additional servers in the data center to align with the demands of the business. As a result, companies are looking to consolidate workloads on fewer servers to reclaim the underutilized capacity, lower the total cost of ownership and simplify data center management. Virtualization technologies, like VMware, on larger platforms such as the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 are key to improving server utilization.

HP ProLiant DL785 G6, with 48 processing cores, up to 512 GB memory and 11 PCI-e I/O ports, provides ample resources for very large number of virtual machines and offers a very high consolidation and virtualization ratio. The new world-record VMMark benchmark result with 53.73 score while running 210 virtual machines proves that the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 is ideal for virtualization and consolidation environments. The industry x-86 workhorse beats the nearest 8-socket competitor by almost 58% on VMMark benchmark.

DL785 G6 shows increased scalability with the new AMD Opteron processors. As compared to the previous result on DL785 G5 (with 8 Quad-Core processors), the DL785 G6 (with 8 six-core processors) showed 70.2% increased performance. I have been asked this question many times – what makes DL785 G6 or other multi-processor ProLiant servers with the new six-core Opteron processors run more than 50% faster than the previous generation G5 servers with AMD quad core processors?

In addition to the virtualization acceleration technology like Rapid Virtualization indexing (RVI) , the newly introduced HT-Assit with six-core 8400 series AMD Opteron processors is a key contributor to the excellent performance of HP multi-processor servers including DL785 G6.

HT Assist helps reduces memory latency, improves HyperTransport bus efficiency and increases overall system performance in multi-processor systems by reducing the probe traffic and resolving probes quickly. It can eliminate the probe broadcasting in 8 out of 11 typical CPU-to-CPU transactions in a multi-processor system like DL785 G6.

These technologies help HP ProLiant servers achieve #1 virtualization performance results and near linear scaling as demonstrated on VMMark benchmark. The 4-processor DL585 G6 server shows 1.86 times scaling from 2-processor DL385 G6 server and the 8-processor DL785 G6 server shows 1.79 times scaling from 4-processor DL585 G6 server.

This unparalleled virtualization leadership is demonstrated in the AMD video featuring HP ProLiant DL785 G6 running 180 VMs! AMD will have this demo live at their booth (#1408) at VMWorld, August 31-September 3^rd 2009.

Please join us in the HP Booth (#2023) at VMWorld to see the ProLiant G6 servers, including DL785 G6, and a showcase of a wide variety of server, storage and networking virtualization solutions.

The ProLiant Collection at HPTF 2009 - 25 platforms in 73 days

Kristie Popp — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:05:00 GMT

HPTF showcased an overwhelming amount of demos, sessons, cool techies stuff everywhere you looked. Twitter crept into the scene this year with ten monitors showcasing all of the tweet buzz. ProLiant was certainly shouted about from every corner. One shout that caught my attention was the ProLiant Collection released 25 platforms in 73 days! I heard one key competitor released 6 in that time frame. ProLiant delivering on all three technology advances: performance, efficiencies, and cost savings - serious improvements in all three areas, each without compromising the other.

        Over the past 73 days ProLiant released:
               - 3 new SL6000 Family Servers, introduced at the show
               - 2 new DL1000 Family Intel Servers
               - HP BladeSystem Matrix
               - 13 new Intel G6 Nehalem Servers
               - 7 new AMD G6 Instanbul Servers

Key take-aways on the SL6000

HP’s Doug Tucker walked me through the features of the SL line in easy terms. The SL features front-end cabling and easy serviceability – just pull out the tray. The 2U design supports 2 expansion trays. With the SL,you have a good choice of mix & match configs.

HP ProLiant SL160z G6

HP ProLiant SL170z G6

HP ProLiant SL2x170zG6

Max expansion: 18 DIMM slots and 2 PCIe slots
Large memory – memory cache apps

Max storage: Up to 6 hard drives - Large Storage – Web search and database apps

Features internal storage, 6 LFF hard drives, way beyond a 1U. Half-width board with no loss in features

Max density: 2xP servers in 1U
High dense – HPC computing and web front-end apps

Doug pointed out the SL2x170z is a grat choice when you need to deploy a lot more servers - four servers in a 2U, 2x the density, 4 fans versus needing 20, only need 1 power supply (can have 2).

Tweets from the floor:

keesdenhartigh: #hptf How is the new ProLiant SL family different? The lowest possible cost and energy, delivering exactly what scale-out customers need

markfontecchio: Video demo of HP's new ProLiant SL servers at the HP Tech Forum in Vegas http://bit.ly/awbNw (expand) #hptf

Rich_Palmer: #hptf - SL line is percieved to offer the greatest opportunity to Vfarms, HPC and massive scale WEB farms.

Check out more info on the SL6000 product choices

Key take-aways on the DL1000

“Powerful, dense & versatile” – states Christina Tiner from HP. This family delivers improved density, power efficiency & cost. It has similar features of the new SL line. The DL1000 for 10-100 servers, SL for 10000s of servers.

Christina mentions customers are looking to the DL1000 for virtualization deployments in a 2U, as well as for HPC environments. The DL1000 is great for 2 -3 workgroups with little space, for general purpose apps, space saving deployments - good consolidation in a traditional rack mount setting. This family is also more flexible than SL – IO expansion, 3PCI slots, graphics controllers.

See the video with Christina Tiner showing the new DL1000 Multi-Node Server at the HP Tech Forum, see how the DL1000 allows the user to put 4 server nodes in single 2U chassis.

Tweets from the floor:

hogbiker: The HP DL1000 Servers are some pretty rockin' technology! I can see these for lots of applications for our customers. #HPTF

Check out more info on the DL1000 product choices

Key take-aways on the HP BladeSystem Matrix

Check out Jason Newton’s blog The future is coming into focus …and BladeSystem Matrix is your lens.

Whether you were at HPTF or not, please let us know your thoughts on the latest ProLiant releases by commenting here. We are listening.

Doubling Down

s_mathur — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:44:00 GMT

In blackjack, if you have a great hand versus the house, you can double your bet or “double down” to show the confidence that you have in winning it all. HP’s commitment to our new Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor is a clear signal that our technology partnership is strong, and the products are even stronger.

In today’s economic environment, customers can’t afford to make anything other than a safe bet. They are concerned about energy efficiency, performance and manageability – these are the keys to getting the most out of IT investments. With the new HP ProLiant G6 servers, based on Six-Core AMD Opteron processors, HP is increasing the capabilities of their award-winning ProLiant product line. Seven new models feature an uncompromising six-core processor that is designed for outstanding performance while still working within the same power and thermal ranges of existing HP servers based on our quad-core family.

We’ve written over and over again that consistency is critical for our customers. In large data centers, having consistency of platforms provides a huge benefit for customers, helping to turn the complexity of managing thousands of devices into a much easier task. From managing to servicing, if you can reduce the complexity and variance of the platforms, you can reduce the costs. And who wants to spend more in management costs? Especially with the business constraints of today’s market bearing down on you.

While we strive for consistency in our processors, we also offer a no-compromise approach to the products. Some in the industry may artificially limit the capabilities of the processors for marketing reasons, but we believe that keeping a consistent set of features from the top of the line down to the lowest option helps customers better manage their platforms. And, when it comes to planning, you know exactly what you are getting, from I/O to memory to cache – making it far easier to plan for your deployment needs.

HP takes the consistency concept a step further. The G6 servers have a common set of features, regardless of the processor, that allow us to cleanly integrate our technology into their platforms and bring the customer a unified product offering that makes it easier to make HP the clear choice for the data center.

From the “Sea of Sensors” to help manage the systems, to the commonality across power supplies and even the HP ProLiant Onboard Administrator, managing an HP server becomes a simple, and most importantly, repeatable activity. This helps drive more consistency in the data center and allows you to maximize your critical IT resources.

We’re also very excited about the new levels of performance that customers will see with a Six-Core AMD Opteron processor, and a great compliment to that is the new 6GB/second SAS drives that, when combined with the HP Smart Array controllers, allow the I/O subsystem to keep pace with all of those cores. Combining that with our new HT Assist feature is expected to bring an unprecedented level of I/O and memory throughput for AMD-based ProLiant servers.

With all of this new performance, we haven’t pushed the power consumption up, allowing the new six-core processors to work in the same power and thermal ranges as their four-core counterparts. If your goal is to get the most out of your data center while keeping a “green IT” focus, this is the product for you.

There is no greater compliment than being chosen as the cornerstone of a great platform, and with the new G6 servers, there are seven new reasons for customers to choose HP ProLiant G6 servers featuring AMD Opteron processors, each a winning hand for solving today’s IT challenges without breaking the bank.

In Vegas you “double down” when you have a great hand against the house, and it is clear that, with all of these new platforms coming to market, HP saw the great hand that we were dealing with the new six-core processors and doubled down as well.

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

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

The ROI on power savings alone makes the new HP ProLiant G6 servers worth looking at...

aimeeschoaf — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:41:00 GMT

By Nick Vanderzweep

Director of Product Management, HP Insight Software

OK, we just announced our new HP ProLiant G6 servers and I was told they use a lot less power, are a much better virtualization platform, and let you spend less money without sacrificing service levels for your customers. These topics all strike a deep chord with most of us, especially during these tough economic times.

But is this true? Will they really make a dent in a typical ROI? I decided to put the G6 servers to the test. I had some scenarios run though our Insight Dynamics - VSE capacity planning SW using real customer data and the results will really knock your socks off. Here's roughly what we found:

We took real utilization data that was shared with us from one of our customers on 55 of their older servers; and
Ran that data through Insight Dynamics - VSE's "Smart Solver" module to see how they might work when consolidated onto virtual machines running on the new G6 platforms

The results were amazing based on power consumption alone! Here's how it broke down in terms of rough numbers:

We were able to predict that this customer could get a consolidation ratio of about 11:1 with G6, without compromising application horsepower or end-user service levels in any way;
Average power consumption went from about 12.8 kilowatts to 1 kilowattfor the new scenario; and
The savings on reduced power consumption alone was about $1,100 per month, without even yet considering the beneficial effect of reduced software licenses, less foot-print, and so forth.

I expected pretty good results given the "more-bang-for-less-power" message around G6, but -- WOW -- they still amazed me. Your mileage may vary, but I recommend you run your configurations thru our Insight Dynamics - VSE software to give you a confident estimate what your savings might be. Like me, I think you will find that the new G6 servers are way "cooler" than you already imagined.

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.

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

Happy 15th Birthday ProLiant!

JamesMouton — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:45:00 GMT

It's exciting to realize that HP ProLiant is about to turn 15 years old. At the same time, it makes me feel old when I think back to my days as a product manager at Compaq, responsible for the launch of the product family. That was a few gray hairs ago, let me tell you!

Fifteen years and over 15 million ProLiants sold around the globe. That's a long road for this technology to travel and remain the world's #1 x86 server at the same time. Can you think of any other product, in ANY other industry or segment, that can claim it's been #1 in the market for 15 years? I can't!

You know one of the best things about the ProLiant family of products? It's all the innovation that's been launched by smart and creative engineers, out-of-the box thinking customers and partners who always challenge us to do more and more. Yeah, that's right. HP ProLiant is a team effort.

In its first year, the ProLiant family brought a number of innovations to market, including:

SMP (Symmetrical Multiprocessor) architecture;
Offline backup processor with automated recovery;
2MB Transaction Blaster;
Fast Wide SCSI;
Advanced Error Checking & Correcting memory;
SMART array controller;
and Hot Plug drives.

Today, we see evidence of ProLiant innovation in our newest family of products, the BladeSystem. The approach we took to bring a blade-based infrastructure to life for customers is very much like the drive and ingenuity used to launch ProLiant 15 years ago. It's exciting to see that spirit is still thriving within HP.

I want to hear from you! Tell me what's your favorite thing about ProLiant.

VMworld Views: Day 2

dstrain — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:08:00 GMT

By the second full day of VMworld, I noticed two discernable themes (I'm sure most of you who are at VMworld probably noticed them days ago!).

VMware is really playing up the customer focus. The first thing you notice about the "décor" of VMworld is that there are all of these cartoons of real world customers. Being an HP person, I have to read each name and each company to see if they are HP customers - I'm happy to report that at least 50% of them are ones that I know are HP customers. However, the customer focus goes beyond the cartoons. There are customer testimonials before the general sessions (as well as an arguably more amusing customer video before the HP keynote). I thought the ultimate was that they even brought a customer out on stage to do a demonstration of a new technology. Note to VMware: that is way more interesting to watch than an engineer dragged out of a lab.

The other thing is VMware's focus on "Virtual Datacenter OS" or VDC-OS for short. This is VMware's new way of describing what most customers have finally learned to call "VMware Infrastructure". I know people are often resistant to change - I myself went kicking and screaming from the old "Virtual Infrastructure Node" naming to "VMware Infrastructure", but I attribute that to being old (just ask my kids). In talking to people today, I just don't think that they are buying into VDC-OS, though. In many ways, calling it an OS is selling the technology short. It is very different from what I would consider an operating system, and it has so many other centralized features that one wouldn't expect to see in an OS (certainly OS vendors brand features of that ilk something other than an OS).

One more day of the conference, but it will likely start off slow since people will be at the partying late tonight.

HP Tops TBR Customer Satisfaction Survey

Gordon Casey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Technology Business Research (TBR) recently released its 2Q-2008 x86 Server Customer Satisfaction Study results, and the news is EXCELLENT for HP this quarter.

HP ProLiant achieved the #1 ranking in both the Weighted Satisfaction Index (WSI) and the Overall Satisfaction Rating. The WSI ranking is a weighted customer satisfaction score that considers what is important and how satisfied customers are with each area of customer satisfaction. The overall satisfaction rating is the response from customers when asked “Overall how satisfied are you?”. Together, these two indicators provide us with a quick snapshot of customer satisfaction for each vendor surveyed.

With these results, HP now has sole leadership and no longer shares the #1 position with the competition. HP was the only competitor to demonstrate gains in every category measured by TBR (9 in total). Specifically, the results in Hardware Quality/Reliability, Management Tools, Server Value and Parts Availability were significantly higher than industry averages. TBR identified these four (4) areas as providing a competitive advantage for HP over its competition. HP also scored higher than industry averages in the all-important category of Overall Satisfaction. According to TBR, customer expectations continue to rise as customers seek out new technology advances to counter serious datacenter challenges. Customers are also searching for much more than attractive purchase pricing. Server value incorporates all expectations, incorporating everything from reliability to technical support and management tools. The influence of relationship quality also figures strongly into customers’ perceptions of value. Our focus on delivering the products customers want continues to pay off. For nine (9) consecutive reporting periods, HP has remained ahead of the competition as the brand perceived as most differentiated. Customers continue to recognize the value HP delivers in the ProLiant brand.

And it gets better! Customer Loyalty is another excellent category for HP. For the last seven (7) quarters, HP has held the #1 position in customer loyalty. HP scores in customer loyalty for the last two quarters are the highest scores on record (since 2Q-2005).

One does not have to look far when looking for reasons why HP dominates customer loyalty. Customers recognize differentiated value. One example is in the area of server management. TBR reports that HP customers place management higher in priority than customers of our competitors. Customers expect more from HP and the results show HP has delivered. HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) is a single software tool providing a consolidated view of everything you need to manage your server and it comes with every HP server. TBR also measures customer expectations, customer priorities, and how well a company is meeting those needs. According to the survey, customers consider hardware quality, parts availability, and overall value as the three most important attributes of a server vendor. For customer expectations, scores show HP is meeting customer expectations in every measurable category, and, more importantly, HP ranks #1 in all three areas. HP is focused on these attributes and also sees them as critical to our customers’ success. We continue to drive improvements in these areas by working with our developers, partners, and suppliers to drive quality into every server. As an example, by designing servers focused on customer self repair (CSR) customers have the flexibility to schedule and make a repair at their convenience. Where do we go next? These results have set the bar higher and clearly identified the market leader. Our challenge moving forward will be to accelerate the pace and deliver on the expectations of our customers. We’re committed to doing this – and it is evidenced in our offerings from the last few quarters. HP is listening to customers and delivering servers that reduce power consumption, expands virtualization, and enable success in the most demanding and complex computing environments. I welcome your comments – tell me how we are doing. Are there areas we can improve? Let me know – HP’s focus is on the customer and we need your input.