Search results matching tags 'BladeSystem' and 'datacenter'

Applications Matter - What Affects Server Power Consumption: Part 2

Tony Harvey — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:21:00 GMT

How does the application you are using and what it is doing affect the power consumption of system.

The first thing that everyone looks at when talking about power consumption is CPU utilization. Unfortunately CPU utilization is not a good proxy for power consumption and the reason why goes right down to the instruction level. Modern CPUs like the Intel Nehalem and AMD Istanbul processors have 100s of millions of transistors on the die. What really drives power consumption is how many of those transistors are actually active. At the most basic level an instruction will activate a number of transistors on the CPU, depending on what the instruction is actually doing a different number of transistors will be activated. So a simple register add, for example, might integer add the values in two registers and place the result in a third register. A relatively small number of transistors will be active during this sequence. The opposite would be a complex instruction that streams data from memory to the cache and feeds it to the floating point unit activating millions of transistors simultaneously.

Further to this modern CPU architectures allow some instruction level parallelization so you can, if the code sequence supports it, run multiple operations simultaneously. Then on top of that we have multiple threads and multiple cores. So depending on how the code is written you can have a single linear sequence of instructions running or multiple parallel streams running on multiple ALUs and FPUs in the processor simultaneously

Add to that the fact that in modern CPUs the power load drops dramatically when the CPU is not actively working, idle circuitry in the CPU is placed in sleep modes, standby or switched off to reduce power consumption. So if you're not running any floating point code, for example, huge numbers of transistors are not active and not consuming much power.

This means that application power utilization varies depending on what the application is actually doing and how it is written. Therefore depending on the application you run you will see massively different power consumption even if they all report 100% CPU utilization. You can even see differences running the same benchmark depending on which compiler is used and whether the benchmark was optimized for a specific platform or not and the exact instruction sequence that is run.

The data in graph below shows the relative power consumption of an HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure with 32 BL2x220c Servers. We ran a bunch of applications and also had a couple of customers with the same configuration who wre able to give us power measurements off their enclosures. One key thing to note is that the CPU was pegged at 100% for all of these tests, (except the idle measurement obviously).

As you can see there is a significant difference between idle and the highest power application, Linpack running across 8 cores in each blade. Another point to look at is that two customer applications, Rendering and Monte Carlo, don't get anywhere close to the Prime95 and Linpack benchmarks in terms of power consumption.

It is therefore impossible to say what is the power consumption of server X and comparing it to server Y unless they are both running the same application under the same conditions. This why both SPEC and the TPC have been developing power consumption benchmarks that look at both the workload and power consumption to give an comparable value between different systems.

SPEC in fact just added Power Consumption metrics to the new SPECweb2009 and interesting enoughly the two results that are up there have the same performance per watt number, but they have wildy different configurations, absolute performance numbers and absolute wattage numbers. So there's more to performance per watt than meets the eye.

The first part of this series was Configuration Matters

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.

9 Trends in 2009: What's Hot and What's Not in the Data Center

newtonja — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:30:00 GMT

We can’t let Illuminata, Gartner, IDC and Forrester have all the fun, so we sat down and came up with our own "What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Data Center" list for 2009.

NOTE: This blog post will self-destruct on December 31, 2009 should anyone feel the need to analyze our prognosticating skills in 2010.

1. Power as a resource is HOT. Power as a commodity is NOT. If you knew your old refrigerator in the garage was sucking fifty bucks in juice a month, you’d pitch it or replace it, right? The problem is; you have no idea how much power it costs you. In 2010, you’ll never think about power in the same way. It’s no longer just a spigot of electrons with a bill that goes to the suits upstairs. Power is a precious resource to your data center and a big part of your budget that stands in the way of growth in 2010. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, so 2009 is the time to start measuring your power usage in detail so you understand what you need, what you have and what you’re wasting.

2. TCO is HOT. TCO is NOT. Huh? TCO will be reprioritized in 2009. Take Cost Out is the new TCO. Okay, we don’t want to overplay this one. Of course you want to be as efficient as possible down the road once the 2009 storm passes. However, if you’re ever going to get there, you have to take cost out now. That’s going to mean you have to make tough choices and some big leaps forward in order to put in place an infrastructure that can deliver savings today and be ready for tomorrow. We believe very few stones will be left unturned in 2009 as businesses scourer their data center to find hidden pockets of cost – cables, steps in processes, HA, fibre channel, aging servers, wasted watts, unused A/C – nothing can hide from the new TCO. Those trying to limp through 2009 by patching up some aging technologies will find themselves in world of hurt in 2010.

3. Knowing is HOT. Guessing is NOT. Whether you’re talking capacity planning for your apps and virtual machines, the power and breaker size you need per rack or the storage for your data explosion, using the old ‘rules of thumb’ for quarterly budgets aren't going to cut it in 2009.  Getting better data out of every circuit board that you can then use to take informed action will be critical to justify growth and to help you squeeze the most cost out from your consolidation projects.

4. Packaged infrastructure is HOT. Piecemeal infrastructure is NOT. Sorry IBM, the mainframe isn’t part of this one. We’re talking about pooled and shared infrastructure based on industry standard components. We think you’ll see more packaged infrastructure solutions tailor-made to different applications and environments whether it’s a rack at a time for mega clusters or a unified communication platform for a small branch office. You already see it with ExDS, BladeSystems, PODs, NeoView, NonStop blades; the trend is probably already here but it’s going to really take off in 2009. The idea is simplified delivery, integration and expansion. You just won’t have the time in 2009 to try and figure out how to get widget A to talk to widget B.

5. Unified is HOT. Siloed is NOT. Whether it’s Cisco, Microsoft, IBM or us, the vision of unified infrastructure is clearly our shared goal. We just have different names for it. The only question is how do we make progress in 2009? We know one thing for sure; you can’t get there by forcing the perspective one silo one on another. Network packets won’t unify your infrastructure any more than processor architectures will. The only path to the unification you seek is from the top down starting at business and application services. Understanding and managing in a unified way provides a different perspective on what tomorrow’s infrastructure looks like. When you recognize that, you see that the center of the universe can’t be found inside the network, the storage or the servers. It’s at the business level.

6. Performance per sq ft, per dollar per watt is HOT. Moore’s Law is NOT. The days of chasing the tail of processor performance are quaint, but the new global economic reality will create a whole new class of benchmarks to help you better compare your choices. Whether your issue is space, power or cost, you’ll be empowered in 2009 with a whole new set of much more relevant benchmarks to see where you stand. SPECPower, VMmark and others are just scratching the surface of what will be a renaissance in data center metrics.

7. DAS is HOT. SAN is NOT. Okay, okay. The SAN isn’t going anywhere. But there will be a lot more choices in 2009 that flip the economics of storage on their head and put server admins in more control of their storage needs. Last night I was browsing for some home storage backup and came across a deal for a 1TB home back-up for $149. Buying your first TB in a traditional SAN will set you back $30 to $50k. (Calvin Z's going to kill me). Basically, storage is delivered by drives. Shouldn’t you be able to pile up all the drives you have, DAS or otherwise and carve up that capacity how you see fit? Check out some of the cool stuff we can do now with LeftHand’s innovations and you’ll see what we mean.

8. Virtual infrastructure is HOT. Virtual machines are NOT. Or said another way, “Virtualization is dead! Long live virtualization”. 2009 will shift priorities from optimizing server capacity with virtual machines to looking for new opportunities at the server edge to extend the savings and consolidation to the network, management and storage realms. Virtual infrastructure will be the new mantra and managing it, coordinating it and aligning it to the business will be the key. In 2009 more people will think differently about infrastructure as service and something that you simply carve up and allocate capacity based on your demands. It aligns to you, not the other way around. With this in place, automation starts getting real too!

9. Dynamic Core Utilization is HOT. Multi-core apps running one application is NOT. This one almost fell to runner up status simply because it was a mouthful and a little geeky, but we needed 9 things. Seriously though, the flexibility to adjust core utilization to match a workload has been a long time coming for the x86 world. As 2009 starts to move us beyond quad-core processors, it makes no sense to continue the old, tried-and-true practice of one app per server.

The runners up:

Dynamic Power Capping is HOT. Power Face Plates are NOT. This one can be summarized above with “Knowing vs. Guessing”. The low hanging fruit for reducing power consumption is just about gone. It’s going to take more intelligence and coordination at the rack, row and datacenter level. The ability to reclaim data center capacity simply be allocating only the power you need makes too much sense to not make our list.

Converged Fabrics are HOT. Silo’d I/O traffic is NOT. Talk about an oldie but a goody, this one might start to make it over this hump this year. Aggregation of I/O to a single physical layer ushers in a whole new opportunity to simplify and cut big costs. See most of the bigger trends we mentioned above and you see that this one is key.

Industry standard gear for Telco is HOT. Telco-only gear is NOT. Ah, one of the last bastions of proprietary gear. This one has been predicted so often, it fell to runner-up. But the slow march continues and we think 2009 will speed things up a lot as more telcos start to see the benefits of gear like blades and standard rack servers on their balance sheet.

Battery back-up at the rack is HOT. UPS rooms are NOT. Nice idea that just doesn’t make as much sense as folks thought. Hogs of data center floor space, budget and that nasty little 10% loss in efficiency make this one at least worth of the runner-up list.

Blades are HOT. Mainframes are NOT. Give me a break. We are the HP Blade Team. It just wouldn’t be an IT hot/not list without one little jab at poor Big Blue. ;-)

We’d love to hear from you. Tell us what you think about this list and share what’s on your HOT and NOT to-do list for 2009.

Games vendors play . . . with power efficiency claims

Gary Thome — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:13:00 GMT

These days, server power efficiency is top of mind for everyone. Five years ago, most customers had no idea how much power a server used. Now, everyone knows - it's a lot. In some cases, customers are making power consumption the primary criteria for vendor selection.

So why is it so dang hard to get a straight story on exactly what options are the most power efficient?

In our experiences with power measurements, we found lots of ways to the results get skewed; whether intentionally or accidentally. We honestly try to avoid them, but here are some of the dirty little secrets a lot of vendors don't want you to know about their power testing results. Consider these red flags next time someone spends lots of money in the Wall Street Journal to post a big claim with lots of fine print on power savings.

Lab Queens

One easy way for vendors to skew power results is to cherry-pick low power components. Processors (even those in the same power grade) and memory DIMMs tend to consume significant power and can have wide variances in power consumed from one part to another.

We call units built by cherry-picking components "Lab Queens".

Generally, these do not represent what a customer might actually be able to purchase. Here's an example where we tried to avoid this scenario; the systems compared on this competitive power report on our website uses the exact same processors and DIMMs on all units tested, thereby eliminating differences due to component variances. It would have been easy to create a Lab Queen and bump the results higher, artificially.

Configuration Errors

Peak power efficiency for a given system always requires the "best" configuration. Memory power is mostly a function of DIMM count, and not capacity. Therefore, to achieve minimum power, the minimum number of DIMMs should be used to realize the desired memory capacity.

If you see a comparison where the DIMM count is different or not mentioned, you might notice the strong odor of dead fish.

On the infrastructure side of the equation, a blade system can be configured with varying numbers of fans and power supplies. Obviously some configurations will produce better power efficiency than others. For instance, 4 power supplies run more efficiently than 6, assuming that 2+2 power redundancy delivers adequate power for a given configuration. The most power efficient configurations though won't always be generated by a competitor when publishing a comparison. Honestly, there are such big differences here that an apple to apple comparison is tough. Only an HP BladeSystem dynamically throttles fan speeds based on demand across the different cooling zones in an enclosure.

Environmental Differences

The voltage level and room temperature can cause variances in the power supply efficiencies and the speed the system fans must run. Consequently it is important that when comparing servers to verify that these parameters are held constant. I once heard a story of an engineer setting up a box fan to blow air on his servers to try to reduce the fan power of the blades.

Obviously he wasn't planning on counting the power from the box fan!

Remarkably, there are published benchmarks that allow for external cooling to be deployed and not counted as a part of the system power.

Gaming the Benchmark

Any benchmark a vendor publishes is necessarily narrow in what it measures. When looking at a published benchmark, you should consider how close the benchmark mimics your applications. If the benchmark is similar to your applications, the results might be relevant to you. If not, then you might do best just to ignore them. Also, some benchmarks are very loose on configuration requirements, making it very easy to "game them" and making the results all but totally useless. One benchmark that is broadly published in the industry falls into this category.

Where to go from here?

At this point, you are probably thinking "Wow! This is much more complicated than I really thought!" And you are right. Benchmarking fairly is very tricky business, even if you are trying to be fair. The best results you can get are the ones you measure yourself. In my next blog post, I'll comment on some of the techniques and challenges with measuring power yourself.