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.

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 to make it work better for them. We recognize that infrastructure exists for applications, which exist for the business. So we've taken a business and application perspective on how an infrastructure ought to operate.

Deploying an application typically requires an IT architect or team of architects to carefully design the entire infrastructure - servers, storage, network, virtual machines - and then hand off the design to a team of people to deploy, which typically takes several weeks. This length of time is mostly an artifact of the way IT infrastructure is designed. So we decided to change this with BladeSystem Matrix. Now an architectural design is saved out as a template - servers, storage, virtual machines, network, server software image. Then when it is time to provision an application, it's as easy as saying "make it so" - and in a matter of minutes, the Matrix's converged virtualized infrastructure is automatically configured and the application is ready to run. In other words, the way it ought to be.

BladeSystem Matrix is the culmination of several years work at HP - creating an Adaptive Infrastructure that is simpler to buy, deploy and keep running optimally. Applications are easier to provision, maintain, and migrate. We've spent years proving out this architecture, not just in our labs but in real-world environments, with BladeSystem, Virtual Connect, and Insight Software - so we could learn how IT really operates - and more importantly - how it ought to operate.

Some people tell me Matrix's virtualization sounds sort of like a mainframe. Others say that the portal interface reminds them of cloud IT. I guess in a way they are all correct. But unlike those environments, Matrix will run off-the-shelf x86 applications. So I guess I've decided that Matrix is it's own thing.

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Doubling Down

Designing infrastructure the way IT wants to work