ProLiant G6 Launch Information

We launched the latest generation of ProLiant servers, G6 last week which includes 11 new and updated servers; all based on the Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem EP) CPUs. The Intel 5500 CPUs are designed for our 1P and 2P servers with the 4P Intel ‘Nehalem EX’ and AMD Opteron ‘Istanbul’ G6 2P/4P servers due later this year.

The G6 servers offer hugely increased performance, reduced power consumption, and greater configuration flexibility with 50-100% increase in the amount of RAM per server, common slot power supplies, LOTs (32) of sensors for increased performance per watt, more local disks (e.g. 16 SFF disks in a DL380) and more options for our RAID controllers with 2x performance. All of this means more increased consolidation ratios with more virtual machines per server, more workloads per server, larger databases on less expensive hardware and much more.

As expected there are a lot of materials to support such an important product launch and here are a few of the best resources

1. ProLiant & BladeSystem G6 Portal Page 
2. The Virtual IT Center
3. NEW - Memory Configurator Tool
4. NEW - Power Advisor Tool
5. G6 Technology Overview

Further Details…

Memory Configurator - As stated the G6 servers have a lot more flexibility in terms of server components and in particular the RAM options are numerous. To help you decide what the best RAM configuration is for your server we have made a memory configuration tool available – see link #3 above.

Power Efficiency - As you are now probably aware, in most cases it costs more to power a server over 3 years than it does to procure the server in the first place. HP has always placed a major emphasis on power utilisation in our servers with technologies such as Power Regulator and Dynamic Power Capping. These technologies already allow ProLiant and BladeSystem customers control power usage accurately and intelligently without impacting performance; fitting more servers in the same power budget thereby delaying or postponing altogether expensive upgrades to computer room power and cooling infrastructure.

The power efficiency, management and control has been further enhanced in the G6 range with power supplies tailored for specific workloads leading to massively increased energy efficiency. You can now choose the power supply that best fits the usage profile of the server – again helping to ensure that the server can be operated at it’s most efficient. The new HP Power Advisor tool will help you choose the right combination of components for the workload the server will perform – see link #4 above.

G6 platforms have over 30 sensors that enable us to have a complete picture of the environmental condition within the server. We now have the ability to dynamically modify the fan speed to suit the thermal conditions of different zones within the system and can even turn fans off if they are not required. Compare this with older platforms in which we had 6 or more fans continually running (each using potentially up to 12W) and you start to see how we can dramatically reduce power usage and make the new systems more power efficient.

The combination of increased performance and energy savings are showing dramatic ROI figures with as fast as a 3 month payback compared to 3 year old G4 servers and 9 month payback compared to previous generation G5 servers. The key message here is that the performance and energy savings alone of G6 servers compared to older servers; in particular pre 2006 is so big that the payback for investing in G6 technology is extremely quick and it makes sense to upgrade now rather than later.

Management Tools – Of course the other major cost in IT today is the administration of systems both virtual and physical. In fact the cost of the actual hardware has decreased in the past 10 years but the cost of powering and administering those same systems has increased enormously. The acquisition costs of server hardware accounts for only 10% of the servers total TCO over 3 years. HP Insight Software with the HP Insight Control suite and Insight Dynamics toolset is designed to not only reduce administration costs but also increase uptime and system availability. Check out the demos and webinars here.

Increased Performance -The new Intel architecture provides a significant increase in performance and combined with the additional memory footprint, will enable customers develop more scalable platforms for virtualisation. Early benchmark results indicate that G6 platforms have over doubled virtualisation performance, supporting up to twice the number of VMs per system compared with G5 platforms.

More Disks - Internal storage has also seen a marked improvement – the 1U DL360 G6 now supports up to 8 x SFF SAS/SATA drives whereas the 2U DL380 G6 now supports up to 16 x SFF or 6 x LFF SAS/SATA drives. Both support the use of the new StorageWorks RDX Removable Disk Backup System DL Server Module – a ruggedised SATA disk solution up to 500GB that is designed for continuous data protection and/or backup purposes. The module is available in an external form factor for the DL360 G6 and as an internal module for the DL380 G6. In case you hadn’t heard we now have the 300 GB 10K SFF SAS drive available and also the new 146GB 15K drive is shipping.

2x Smart Array RAID Performance - The new disk capabilities are significantly enhanced by a new generation Smart Array controller family that offers up to 200% greater performance and 100% backward compatibility. The new modular design is the industry’s first to scale from entry RAID solutions, for small and medium businesses, to high end RAID functionality, for larger enterprises, all through the simple addition of hardware and software expansion options.

Servers Overview

HP ProLiant BL490c G6 Server Blade

QuickSpecs - Web

The new BL490c G6 blade server supports up to 144GB memory and 8 internal NICs as standard when used with Virtual Connect Flex-10 interconnects.

HP ProLiant BL460c G6 Server Blade

QuickSpecs - Web

The BL460c G6 and BL490c G6 blade servers both now ship with an embedded dual-port Flex-10 10GbE Multifunction server adapter which provides 2 x 10GbE ports which can be configured as 8 internal NIC connections with Virtual Connect Flex-10 interconnect modules.

HP ProLiant BL280c G6 Server Blade

Web

DL360 G6 and DL380 G6

Web

The DL360 G6 and DL380 G6 are both now capable of supporting up to 144GB of memory and the new architecture enables customers to optimise the memory configuration for a number of different scenarios.

Other models include the DL370 G6 the #1  2P server in VMware benchmarks, the ML370 G6, ML350 G6, ML150 G6, Dl160 G6 and DL180 G6.

If you liked this summary why not subscribe to this blog - check out the subscription link in the right hand column. ProLiant_Irl is also now on Twitter - follow us as www.twitter.com/ProLiant_Irl

Special thanks to my colleague Mike Harpur for his input in this posting.

Launch Update November 2008

Todays ProLiant & BladeSystem launch is no ordinary product launch. Today we are announcing one of the most innovative technologies ever seen with Virtual Connect Flex-10.

Virtual Connect Flex-10 is the world's first technology to divide and fine-tune 10Gb Ethernet network bandwidth at the server edge. It carves the capacity of each 10Gb Ethernet connection into four NIC ports and adds the unique ability to fine-tune each one to adapt I/O speed for virtual server channels and workloads. That means our customers can add 4x more NICs per connection, consolidate equipment 4 to 1 and save up to 63% in network costs.

In case this isn't clear enough let me spell it out; with a single c7000 blade enclosure full of HP BL495c Half Height blades (16) using Virtual Connect Flex-10 translates into 4 fully populated Dell enclosures or 6 fully populated blade enclosures from IBM to provide the same amount of I/O. Each half height ProLiant server blade now supports up to 24 NICs using HP Flex-10 technology.

HP BladeSystem is winning in terms of power efficiency, management efficiency and purchasing savings of server and networking equipment by a great distance compared to our immediate competition.

Futher information available at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/virtualconnect/index.html

Forrester Research gave their reaction to this product announcement on their blog 'The View from Forrester Research' in a posting by James Staten who sees Virtual Connect Flex-10 'Addressing virtualization’s achilles heel', check it out here... http://blogs.zdnet.com/forrester/?p=121

In addition to Flex-10 we also announced a range of even more power efficient components for the cClass BladeSystem including the BL460 G5 server, 2400W Power Supplies which provide 90% efficiency at 8% load and the new Dynamic Power capping functionality. Combining these technologies will reduce an enclosure power requirements by approx. 704W which equates to a 24% reduction in power for a typical configuration of BL460 G1 servers. Check out the updated Thermal Logic page for a guided tour and further information...
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/whats-new-thermal-logic-11-2008.html


Outside of blades there is also the new ProLiant DL385 G5p with the latest AMD Quad Core CPUs codenamed 'Shanghai'. This server is tuned specifcally for virtualisation providing double the RAM (up to 128GB), support for 16 Small Form Factor Disks or 6 Large Form factor Disks (6TB of internal storage), up to 6 PCIe slots and 4 GbE NICs as standard compared to the existing DL385 G5.

Check out the product home page <here>, the product presentation <here> and the podcast <here>

Finally we also launched the next version of the iLO (Integrated Lights Out) Management software Version 1.7 with new advanced remote management functions.

For details on all products launched click on any of the links below

» HP Smart Array P700m Controller
» HP NC532m Dual Port 10GbE Multifunction BL-c Adapter
» HP T750 G2 UPS, HP T1000 G3 UPS and HP T1500 G3 UPS
» HP ProLiant DL385 G5p Server
» HP ProLiant DL185 G5 Server
» HP Integrated Lights-Out 2 (iLO 2) v1.70
» Windows Small Business Server 2008
» Windows Essential Business Server 2008

HP ProLiant & BladeSystem Launch Information May 2008

May has been a very busy month for the HP ProLiant server divison with one of our biggest product launches in quite a while. Highlights of the launch include the launch of our new 8 socket Quad Core ProLiant DL785, new and updated Insight Control management software including HP Insight Dynamics, a new range of scalable modular PDUs, low power memory, and a new range of CPUs from both Intel and AMD for our G5 ProLiants.

Summary
More demands are being placed on the technology infrastructure each day. Companies are being asked to instantly react to ever changing business environments and their IT needs to be able to follow and deliver no matter what demands are placed on it.

IT is faced with controlling this change with fewer resources while driving the business to new growth and profitability. The first step to reaching this goal is to connect business technology with IT, making your infrastructure become more adaptive. HP offers a new class of management software to continuously analyze and optimize your infrastructure. With the new HP Insight Dynamics – VSE, customers can cut operational costs and adapt their infrastructure as their business grows. Customers can tackle the toughest IT projects and top business priorities in previously unimaginable ways with Insight Dynamics – VSE capabilities such as HP Logical Server Capability, Real-time Capacity Planning and Unified Control of Physical and Virtual Resources.

Whether servers are housed in an IT closet or a corporate data center, nearly every organization faces IT sprawl, resulting in under used server resources. In order to alleviate this problem, HP is introducing a new 8-socket HP ProLiant DL785 G5 Server. Think of the HP ProLiant DL785 G5 as a consolidation workhorse. The key is to do more with less—more sockets, more memory, more I/O power—all designed to help with the drive toward virtualization and consolidation. The DL785 G5 offers support for 8 Quad-Core AMD® Opteron® processors, 256GB of memory and 11 PCI-e I/O slots. With this highly-scalable feature set, this server is an ideal choice for growing enterprise class database, consolidation and virtualization environments seeking to get more compute power at a lower total cost.

Full details of the lauch can be found here.