Search results matching tag 'BladeSystem'

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' of blade servers decided to get together this year.

Clockwise from the upper left, there's a Dell PowerEdge M1000e, two HP BladeSystem c7000's, a Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900, an IBM BladeCenter-H, and a Cisco UCS 5100.

I'm not sure what these guys are most thankful for; maybe it's their tender admin who cares enough to give them redundant power drops.

New products and solutions built for extreme scale computing environments introduced at Supercomputing 09 conference (SCO9)

Kristie Popp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:01:00 GMT

By Erin Collopy

This week, HP’s high-performance computing (HPC) team lands in Portland for the annual Supercomputing 09 conference (SCO9), where they’ll be meeting with loads of customers, partners, press and industry analysts to discuss the hot new technologies and trends in HPC.

To coincide with SC09, HP announced a whole host of new products and solutions built for extreme scale computing environments, including 2 powerful new ProLiant servers which are on display at the event.

The HP ProLiant BL2x220c G6 is an updated version of the innovative 2-in1 blade server that HP introduced last year. Delivering the compute power of 2 blade servers in the physical space of 1, the BL2x220 is perfect for HPC environments who are not only focused on maximum performance, but who are also often hitting the wall in terms of physical floor space and/or power. It has 33 percent higher memory capacity than the previous generation and delivers excellent energy efficiency.

The first AMD processor based SL-server, the HP ProLiant SL165z G6 uses HP’s innovative “skinless” system architecture built on a lightweight rail and tray design to dramatically reduce capital, facilities and shipping costs while using a fraction of the space normally required within a data center. The SL165z’s ultra-efficient, modular design lowers server power consumption by18% and costs by 10%.

Come by HP’s SC09 booth 1025 at SC09 in Portland this week and be among the first to get hands-on with these hot new servers.

Reduce application deployment times with HP BladeSystem Matrix ISV Solutions

Kristie Popp — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:01:00 GMT

Joe Sullivan

Microsoft Technical Solutions Engineer - APS

With the HP BladeSystem Matrix, you can radically change the way applications are deployed in your datacenter. Matrix provides an integrated platform of infrastructure (server, storage, and network) resource pools which can be dynamically allocated as application services are provisioned. This allows you to quickly adapt to the changing demands of your business and addresses the efficiency and agility challenges facing many datacenters today.

At the center of this new datacenter paradigm are the Matrix application service templates. These templates define the minimum resource requirements for an application deployment. Matrix templates can also include embedded workflow components which allow you to automate post-OS installation tasks such as the installation and configuration of the application. This allows you to rapidly deploy and automate the end-to-end process of provisioning your line of business applications.

With Matrix templates, you can significantly reduce application deployment times, from weeks and months down to hours and days. Application templates also allow you to free up administrator time from the tedious, repetitive tasks of installing and configuring software to more innovative, revenue generating projects. For example, deploying an Exchange 2010 template from the self-service portal requires 5 minutes of an administrator's time as compared to the 8-16 hours that deploying and configuring Exchange manually would take an administrator. And not only do Matrix templates allow you to reduce the time to roll-out application services, they also provide a consistent, reliable, and repeatable process for application deployment.

To assist you in designing and developing templates for your applications, HP has developed and published a number of Matrix templates supporting key Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL. These templates provide a baseline for designing your own Matrix templates and capture recommended best practices for Microsoft application deployments. Several of these templates also include examples of embedded workflows for automating the installation and configuration of Exchange. These workflows provide a framework that can significantly cut down on the design and development time when building your own customized workflows.

Beyond these reference templates, integration into the free HP sizing tools can help you quickly generate Matrix templates based on your specific resource requirements. This can reduce the time to design and develop a service template for your Microsoft applications (like Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010) to less than 1 hour.

Check out the Microsoft application template and workflow packages available today by going to the HP BladeSystem Matrix Template Community site at www.hp.com/go/matrixtemplates. And keep checking back in the future as new Matrix templates are always being added.

Extending BladeSystem Matrix through ISV partnerships

Kristie Popp — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:55:00 GMT

By Karl Paetzel
HP Enterprise Solution Alliances

This week HP announced new investments to extend the value of BladeSystem Matrix through our ISV partnerships. Matrix is HP’s integrated offering of platform hardware, software, and services that delivers a shared-service IT infrastructure. It greatly simplifies the way organizations can deploy resources for business applications.

Because it’s standards-based, Matrix works out-of-the-box for many enterprise business and infrastructure software applications. To make it even easier for customers, we’re working with industry-vertical and infrastructure software partners such as:

· Microsoft

· Oracle

· SAP

· Citrix

· F5

· McAfee

· MicroStrategy

· Novell

· Red Hat

· SAS

· Siemens PLM

· SunGard

· Symantec

· TIBCO

· VMware

Through integration testing, we’re delivering best practice white papers and Matrix ISV application templates. These templates drop into Matrix’s Insight Dynamics provisioning tools and automate best practices for infrastructure on-demand.

ISV solutions on HP BladeSystem Matrix help you to deploy infrastructure faster, manage it more efficiently, and use repeatable solutions. The bottom line is that it saves you money, optimizes your infrastructure utilization, and lets you spend more time on innovation.

Find the latest Matrix ISV solutions at www.hp.com/solutions/matrix. For more detailed technical information about the HP BladeSystem Matrix ISV Solutions, please read Joe’s blog

Three Opinions (But One Counts More)

Daniel Bowers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:32:00 GMT

I saw three new opinions about BladeSystem last week.

First, PC World Latin America announced that the HP BL490c G6 virtualization blade won in the "Best Server" category of the annual PC World Latin America 2009 Awards. These awards honor the "best digital & IT products available in Latin America", and I'm proud to see this virtualization-oriented blade got recognized. (HP's been active in Latin America for a long time -- back in 1968, HP helped in the broadcasting of the Mexico City Olympic Games.)

A second opinion came from a market research company. This one caught my attention when Cisco's Omar Sultan pointed out that Gartner had placed Cisco in the "Visionary" area of Gartner's Magic Quarter for blades, a section also occupied by Liquid Computing. Omar says that category holds companies with of keen insights into blade usage, but as one comment points out, little track record for delivering on that vision.

That led me to the Quadrant itself, where it looks like HP has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. I’d agree with that – it signifies solid vision, along with the ability to deliver on that vision. Obviously one criteria for demonstrated leadership is a satisfied base of users, which points me the third (and most revealing) opinion I saw last week.

Bytemark Hosting, a web hosting provider that calls itself the "nerd-hosting outfit of choice", let HP write a case study about their infrastructure based on BladeSystem. It uses virtualization blades (specifically the ProLiant BL495c), HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, and carvable storage from the SAS-connected HP StorageWorks MSA2000.

But the slots-and-watts of what the guys put together what stood out to me. It's what Bytemark's Peter Taphouse said about the impact of the system. He said BladeSystem’s improved uptime can actually boost the company’s revenue (by as much as 5%), because it delivers an SLA that lets Bytemark reach a new, untapped set of customers.

Now THAT'S an opinion on BladeSystem that's truly eye-opening. It's not that BladeSystem earns awards, or that it helps guide data centers toward the future. It’s that BladeSystem users say it doesn’t just cut costs, but it can also expand the reach of your business.

BladeSystem Firmware Management

Daniel Bowers — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:39:00 GMT

Here's a new BladeSystem best-practices whitepaper on the topic of firmware: HP BladeSystem ProLiant firmware management best practices

It talks about different scenarios for firmware maintenance (like local vs. remote, online vs. offline), and goes over doing whole-enclosure as well as single-component updates.

Some of the highlights:

Always align firmware versions with one of the columns of the HP BladeSystem Compatibility Chart (click on the "Compatibility" tab).
Bare-metal deployment should use the HP BladeSystem Firmware Deployment Tool – Offline for unattended installation and HP Firmware Maintenance CD for attended installations.
Updates to existing servers should use the HP BladeSystem Firmware Update Bundles for Windows and Linux.
Most firmware can be updated with individual smart components, but the recommended deployment tool is HP System Update Manager (HP SUM), which includes a discovery engine and dependancy checkers.

VMware Certification of G6 BladeSystem Servers (ProLiant BL460c, BL490c, BL495c)

Kleinch — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:32:00 GMT

We get lots of questions regarding VMware and what HP servers are certified on the various VMware Operating Systems. They do have a Hardware Compatability List (HCL) and we just wanted to let you know which of the latest G6 BladeSystem Servers are on that list for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0, the latest VMware vSphere Operating System. This is from our VMware alliance team.

"We are pleased to announce that the following servers are now fully certified with VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0.

VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 4 is also certified for these servers.

· ProLiant BL460c G6

· ProLiant BL490c G6

· ProLiant BL495c G5

· ProLiant BL495c G6

For ESX/ESXi 4.0, these servers require a new Broadcom network driver. The link to download the driver is available at VMware’s HCL page http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl (there will be a footnote next to the version with the link to the driver) and soon at our HP.COM certification support matrix. www.hp.com/go/vmware (click on “Certified ProLiants”). Installation information will also be available with the download."

Hope this helps as we work very hard with VMware to certify our servers with their latest Operating Systems. See you at VMworld August 31 - September 3 at The Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Primer on iSCSI and the permutations on BladeSystem

Kleinch — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:10:00 GMT

As iSCSI becomes more popular as an interconnect technology for storage and other devices, we had received a lot of questions as to how, why, what, works with iSCSI and the components of HP BladeSystem.

So, Dan Bowers and Ed McGee put together a primer to help answer a majority of the questions and configurations you may have or want to implement.

I have posted the primer to this community so download it and take a look. Let us know if it helps, hinders, confuses, or what additional things we can help with in this iSCI area.

Managing HP servers through firewalls with Insight Software

Kleinch — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:32:00 GMT

I came across an interesting white paper that identifies possible ways of managing HP servers with HP Systems Insight Manager and Insight Software deployed in the area of the network that is considered more secure than the standard production network. This is not a best practices document. This document provides information that can enable system administrators to create management solutions appropriate for specific computing environments.

Here is the link: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/c-products/servers/management/hpsim/hpsim-53-managing-firewalls.pdf

Installing and configuring HP-related components in Essential Business Server on an HP BladeSystem c3000 chassis

Kleinch — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:53:00 GMT

To fully use the features in the c3000 hardware, you must be able to add and configure software in EBS. This updated customer-viewable document covers installation of SNMP, Support Pack, Management Packs and how to add HP updates into Microsoft® System Center Essentials. See the white paper below.

http://dccappshares01.austin.hp.com/SALES_LIBRARY-PRO/CONCENTRA/Autofed%20Content/UCM/UCM-Concentra/Pub/ucm4AA2-6438ENW/4AA2-6438ENW.pdf