Must Read! Virtual Connect for vSphere and Cisco Nexus Documents

The BladeSystem team in HP have just released a couple of great documents on using Virtual Connect and Virtual Connect Flex10 in a VMware vSphere environment as well as discussing interoperability with Cisco Nexus technology. Excellent guides and reference architectures which are a must read if you are a BladeSystem/VMware customer.

Cisco Nexus 1000v on HP BladeSystem: A Reference Architecture for optimal VMware vSphere design using HP BladeSystem (w/Virtual Connect) and Cisco Nexus network infrastructure (click here)

This Technology Brief is designed to better educate the reader on the use of HP BladeSystem (and Virtual Connect) with Cisco Nexus technology. The document reviews all the VMware virtual switch technologies and it specifically addresses the use of VNTag and the Cisco Nexus 1000V vDS. The document is written from a somewhat objective point-of-view and it designed to educate, not sell one technology over another. It reviews how these technologies can be used with each other and it explains how VNTag & VNLink function.

HP BladeSystem Reference Architecture: Virtual Connect Flex-10 and VMware vSphere 4.0 (click here)

The Reference Architecture outlines several configuration scenarios deploying HP Virtual Connect and ESX vSphere technologies. Discussed are some best practices to install and configure virtual connect Flex-10 and VSphere 4 Networking.

New Server Selector and Configurator Tools!

Given the amount of choice and new technologies in the ProLiant G6 range of servers a new server selector tool has been made available to help our customers pick the most appropriate server for their business needs; click here.

Don't forget about the memory configurator tool available here and the power advisor tool available here.

Finally when you have decided what you need, you can use the enterprise configurator tool to build your desired configuration here.

The Matrix is here!

I was at HP Technology@Work in Berlin last week where we launched BladeSystem Matrix.

BladeSystem Matrix is all about bringing together the best in HP technology around servers, storage, networking, power management and infrastructure management into 1 single solution package which includes capacity planning, solution design templates, workflow automation and dynamic power capping.

Imagine being able to drag IT resources such as servers and storage onto a whiteboard and then draw the lines to link them all together and when you are happy with your design click go and it all just happens; imagine being able to offer a self service portal/menu of IT solutions and services to your business.... welcome to the Matrix!

Deploy IT solutions and services in minutes and hours not days or months.

It's just the way IT should be.

Full details available at http://www.hp.com/go/matrix

Check out this overview video

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.

Gartner Server Buying Guide

Some good news for ProLiant & Integrity

· HP Blade System No. 1 Web Server

· HP Blade System No. 1 Application Server

· HP Integrity with Oracle No. 1 Database

Click here for more info >> Gartner's Server Evaluation Model

Future of BladeSystem = Light NOT Wires!

Just read a really interesting article from a NY Times Blog on developments in HP BladeSystem taking place in our HP Labs. Imagine an optical mid plane for Blade servers i.e. no wires just lights; well it might not be as far away as you think - there is already a working prototype!!

Extract
H.P., Intel, I.B.M. and a small group of other companies have their researchers charging after a holy grail of sorts in data centers. They want to create commercial photonics systems that will replace wires as the principal means of moving data between computing systems and between the components in computing systems. An even more daring pursuit revolves around using light to control data on computer chips.

While the cost of such technology proves too great for mainstream use today, the researchers believe they can bring the price down and demonstrate incredible increases in networking performance through photonics. Such breakthroughs should prove crucial to keeping the overall performance of computers increasing at historical rates, since it’s the communications between things like memory, hard drives and processors that often limit hardware designers today.

During a recent visit to H.P.’s labs, I saw the fruits of Mr. Williams’ labor firsthand in the form of an optical mid-plane for blade servers. (I know, I know, it’s the stuff that dreams are made of.)

To read the full blog article click here
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/hps-hunk-of-burning-light/

VMware on HP BladeSystem with Virtual Connect and EVA

HP's Customer Focussed Testing team have just published a great white paper on best practices for running VMware on HP BladeSystem with Virtual Connect and EVA. This is one of our biggest selling enterprise solution stacks right now and this paper tells you, our customers the best way to size it, set it all up and manage it to maximise your investment.

This white paper contains a set of best practices to deploy VMware ESX 3.5 using HP BladeSystem c-Class ProLiant Server Blades and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) storage, using HP Virtual Connect. The best practices included in this paper will enable customers to realise the benefits of using the virtualisation capabilities of VMware in conjunction with HP server blades, HP Virtual Connect, and EVA, with emphasis on how to combine their functionalities to complement each other.

This paper addresses the following fundamental deployment issues:

• How to configure and deploy a set of virtual machines on the server blade using VMware ESX Server 3.5
• How to deploy HP Virtual Connect technology in a blade enclosure
• How to configure and deploy VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) on an EVA
• How to effectively manage the overall environment, using a combination of HP management tools and VMware vCenter Server
• How to configure and utilize the advanced high-availability features from VMware (VMware High Availability [HA], VMware VMotion™, and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler [DRS]) to deliver and sustain a high-availability infrastructure.

Using the methods and best practices described in this paper will facilitate both the productive planning and the timely deployment of a fully operational VMware ESX Server 3.5 deployment using a combination of HP BladeSystem c-Class ProLiant Server Blades connected to an EVA array via HP Virtual Connect technology.

The guidelines and best practices that follow can ensure the following:

• Proper configuration and deployment of the entire environment, including the VMware environment, HP server blades, the EVA, and HP Virtual Connect technology
• Predictable performance characteristics
• Ease of operation, including the effective use of the advanced HA features

Download Whitepaper Here

The is paper along with many other solution specific best practice documents on Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, SAP and VMware are downloadable from the CFT website on hp.com <<click here>>

About CFT?

Working directly with our customers, HP’s Customer Focused Testing (CFT) team creates innovative solutions that address the operational requirement challenges our customers worry about every day:

• Sizing and configuring your environment to optimize your infrastructure
• Backing up and recovering valuable business information
• Creating a highly available infrastructure

Carefully planned and implemented, our Customer Focused Testing Solutions incorporate HP storage, server and software products to bring you:

• Reduced implementation cost and time
• Predictable results through documented best practices
• Optimized performance across all solution components
• Best possible return on investment
• Increased availability
• Reduced risk

What's New for 2009?

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas and the batteries are fully charged up for the new year! It promises to be a fairly hectic one in the ProLiant and BladeSystem space where we will continue enabling our customers to do more with less. Technologies like BladeSystem, Dynamic Power Management, Virtual Connect, Insight Software together with virtualisation will be key enablers to help our customers deliver a best in class IT service to their business while at the same time reducing costs.

300GB SFF Drive Now Available
If you didn't hear before the Christmas holidays - we now have the long awaited 300GB Small Form Factor Hard Drive delivering high capacity and performance at the lowest energy requirement and greatest reliability.

Here are a few quick facts that our customers will care about

1. This drive provides higher performance than 3.5-inch 15K drives and consumes about 50% less power.
2. This drive is 70% smaller than 3.5-inch drives and reduces cooling costs through tighter packing and better airflow in the cabinet.
3. A 2U SFF 10K SAS solution provides 40% more IOPS and 59% more IOPS/Watt than a 3U LFF 15K solution
4. HP Enterprise drives provide maximum reliability and performance for heavy IO environments and near 100% workloads.

Check out my earlier Blog on Small Form Factor Vs Large Form Factor Drives for more of the benefits of SFF. <<Click Here>>

Server Technology Papers
I have a lot of positive feedback from you on the Technology Papers that our ProLiant and BladeSystem engineering teams publish. The latest edition is now available for download <<here>> and includes such topics as Solid State Drives, Command Line and scripting options for ProLiant Management, as well as an interview with a lead engineer on our AMD based ProLiants. If you like these then the full archive is available <<here>>. Finally if you'd like to search for a particular topic then download this PDF <<file>>.

I liked this one which I just read on iSCSI technology in our ProLiant servers <<click here>>.

These technology publications are now also being made available via Podcasts so if you don't like reading then you can listen i.e. you now have no excuse!!

I will most likely have another post pretty soon as we ramp up some new product announcements which will be keeping me busy - stay tuned and if you find this blog useful you can subscribe by simply entering your eMail address in the subscription box located in the top right hand corner of the blog home page! Until next time...

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 to acquire LeftHand Networks

Sorry for the lack of publishings lately it has been a pretty hectic few months. I am just back from 2 weeks in the US where I was in Las Vegas at VMworld, in Cupertino at the HP Executive Briefing Centre and finally San Francisco where I presented at Oracle World. I am working on a bunch of postings right now so stay tuned for lots of new info, but I just this very minute saw this announcement that I thought I would publish immediately.

It has been announced that HP is to acquire LeftHand Networks for $360 million; helping to expand our virtualisation offerings. LeftHand specialises in iSCSI SANs and helps midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to protect critical business data.

LeftHand's portfolio of products will expand HP's reach in the virtualisation market with software that runs on both existing storage and industry-standard server hardware. LeftHand's software essentially allows a user to create a storage "cloud" connected via iSCSI as an alternative to Fibre Channel.

Check out their web site for further details.
http://www.lefthandnetworks.com/home.aspx

ProLiant, BladeSystem & VMware Training

The HP Education curriculum has been revamped recently and is now available for viewing at www.hp.com/learn/proliant - the main page will show you generic information and any new announcements in relation to courseware and then you simply select your country from the right hand column for the list of courses and dates in your area.

New Training Credits - Day Rate Care Packs
For customers who would like to buy training with their IT solution it is now possible to buy 1 day training credits which are valid against all ProLiant, BladeSystem and VMware trainings. Likewise for our partners it makes things easier if the customer has not yet decided or are unsure as to which specific course they would like to take at the time of purchase. The credits are valid for 12 months allowing the customer to decide later, which course to take.

NEW Portfolio Day Rate HPES Care Packs
HF385E 1 unit quantity = 1 day of public scheduled ProLiant / BladeSystem training
HF386E 1 unit quantity = 1 day of public scheduled VMware training

Totally flexible:
Training can be taken any time during 12 month period
Customer can spend value on any HPES service

For more information visit www.hp.com/learn/proliant and/or www.hp.com/learn/vmware

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.

HP Virtual IT Centre

HP has just launched our new online HP Virtual IT Centre, a uniquely interactive environment designed to showcase our latest technology solutions. The VITC focuses on minimising challenges faced by organisations of all sizes including driving efficiency, managing costs, optimising resources and conserving energy. A combination of video and animation, the VITC allows users quick access and customizable downloads for the following solutions:

• Power & Cooling
• Infrastructure
• Virtualisation
• Unified Management
• Solutions in Action

Click here to visit.

ProLiant & BladeSystem Technology Papers now available to the Public

A huge amount of ISS Technology Papers have now been made available to our customers and partners. This information goldmine was previously only available internally within HP but this is now available to all.

Not only will you have the opportunity to read the latest technology updates from HP ProLiant but you can also read through the archives as well. I highly recommend taking a look at the archive PDF (click here) which has a complete index of the technology papers and then regularly checking the ISS Technology Papers Home page (click here) for new updates.

An RSS feed will allow you to subscribe to this technology newsletter and will be added very soon.

The current edition looks at the following topics

• Enhancing setup and usability in HP Systems Insight Manager 5.2
• Using Virtual Connect and non-Virtual Connect modules in the same HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosure
• Storage HBAs are determined by the storage array provider
• ProLiant management tip of the month
• Interconnect infrastructure in the HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure
• Future-proof your infrastructure with 10 Gigabit networking
• Recently published industry standard server technology communications

HP Insight Dynamics - Data Centre Transformation and Optimisation

I am just back from HP Tech@Work which was held in Barcelona last week. The big news from the event was the previewing of HP Insight Dynamics - VSE. We demonstrated it's capabilities to more than 2,000 enterprise customers at the event.

HP Insight Dynamics - VSE is next-generation management software that enables customers to continuously analyse and optimise their IT environments. HP Insight Dynamics – VSE will change the game in both physical server and virtualisation management. It brings the freedom and flexibility of virtualisation to physical servers. It offers the industry’s most advanced real-time capacity planning tool that continously analyses server capacity and power usage based on thousands of historical data points. And it lets administrators manage virtual and physical resources in the same way. It is the world’s first integrated solution to visualise, plan and change physical and virtual resources in exactly the same way.

In addition to changing the game for our customers and competitors, Insight Dynamics – VSE represents a major step forward for our HP ESS Infrastructure Software division. It builds on HP Systems Insight Manager, Insight Control and the HP Virtual Server Environment, the best of HP’s industry-leading infrastructure management portfolio. And it brings them together one integrated solution.

To learn more about HP Insight Dynamics – VSE, please visit the following website: www.hp.com/go/insightdynamics

The Truth about Server Market Share

February 2008 — IDC released a quarterly update to their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, citing market share figures for the 4th calendar quarter of 2007 (4Q07). Here are some of the Q407 highlights...

1. For the 46th consecutive quarter, 11 ½ years, HP ProLiant is the x86 server market share leader in both factory revenue and units [1], shipping 1 out of every 3 servers in this market.

2. HP extended the lead in the blade server market, with a 47.7% revenue share Worldwide, and a 45.5% units share taking share from both IBM and Dell.

In EMEA this market share is well above 50% and closer to 60% which mirrors our performance in the Irish market.

HP grew blade revenue 74.6%, year over year, gaining 5.6 points of revenue market share while IBM lost 3.9 points of revenue share over the same period.
HP grew blade units 54.4%, year over year, gaining 5.6 points of unit market share while IBM lost 4.8 points of share over the same period.
Dell a distant third in blade units and revenue lost 4.0 points unit share and lost 4.9 points revenue share, both year over year.

For the full story please visit hp.com

HP Virtual Connect wins Virtualisation Award

SearchServerVirtualization.com recently announced the winners of its first annual Products of the Year awards, spanning four categories: Virtualization Platforms, Hardware for Virtualization, Systems Management and Data Protection.

HP’s Virtual Connect architecture won Gold in the Hardware for Virtualization category!

This is not surprising as the customer adoption of Virtual Connect has been very high and it is now one of the most popular interconnects in our BladeSystem portfolio.

---EXTRACT---
HP Virtual Connect architectureServer virtualization simplifies server and operating system management in countless ways, but one area that has remained stubbornly resistant to improvement is managing a server's physical hardware -- specifically its network and storage connections. With its Virtual Connect technology, Hewlett-Packard Co. made serious inroads toward alleviating the problem of managing network and storage connections in a virtual architecture and has garnered our judges' vote for Gold.
In a nutshell, Virtual Connect is a novel approach to connecting and adapting server, local area network (LAN) and storage area network (SAN) domains with the aim of reducing cables and minimizing the number of switches IT administrators need to manage.
Available for HP BladeSystem servers, Virtual Connect consists of Ethernet and Fibre Channel virtualization modules that define server connection profiles for each server bay. This profile establishes and maintains Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for all Network Interface Controllers, the World Wide Names (WWNs) for all host bus adapters (HBAs), and SAN boot parameters. When a server is changed, its configuration and connection profile stay constant. When a new server takes its place, the same profile is assigned.
In this way, Virtual Connect decouples servers and the network so infrastructure changes don't require an administrator to make manual changes to LAN and SAN configurations, reducing the time it takes to reconfigure a server from hours or days to a matter of minutes.

Full details can be found on the SearchServerVirtualization web site - >>click here<<.

To learn more about HP Virtual Connect >>click here<<.
Learn More about HP Virtual Connect - Video >>click here<<.
Demo of VMware ESX Host AutoRecovery using HP Virtual Connect >>click here<<.

BladeSystem Updates

First of all let me apologise for not having updated the blog in recent weeks; it has been a really busy end of year and I am only getting time to catch my breath this week before heading off to sunny Houston next week for a technology update on all things ProLiant. You can expect me to be out and about updating (berating) you our partners and customers as soon as I get back with all the latest and greatest info. Bookings are now being accepted :-).

So now to the updates...

Shorty is here
The biggest news in the past month has been the launch of the c3000 BladeSystem or 'Shorty' as we call it in HP. We had over 200 customers and partners at the launch events in Dublin and Belfast and interest since has been huge.

Shorty brings all the benefits and enterprise features of the bigger c7000 model to our SMB customers. It can hold up to 8 servers, storage or Tape Backup devices and is packaged in 6U. It plugs directly into standard wall outlets and is designed to work equally well in computer rooms or offices. It is a unique solution for the market and no other vendor has such an offering for the SMB market. More information on the product can be found at http://www.hp.com/ie/shorty.

You can also take an interactive guided tour of the c3000 at http://www.hp.com/go/smallsiteblades

There are a whole host of end of year BladeSystem and Insight Control Management toolset promotions to celebrate the launch of 'Shorty'. Your local HP reseller has all the information.

As well as the Shorty launch we also launched an 'All-in-One' Storage Blade, the AiO SB600c delivering 1.6TB of shared SAS storage. Check out http://www.hp.com/go/SB600c for more information.

The BL680c server also has arrived which is a quad socket, quad core Xeon server based on the new Tigerton chipset from Intel.

For those of you awaiting the new AMD Quad Core systems they have now slipped to March 2008 when HP will launch a full range of 2 and 4 socket blade and rack servers with the B3 chipset from AMD.

BladeBuilder University II (for HP Resellers)
On 13th November we will hold the BBU II. If you have sold at least one c-Class blade implementation or attended the well received Blade Builder University I in June, then this class is for you. This all new course focuses on business growth (versus selling technology in Blade Builder University I) and delivers modules that shows business partners exactly how to position the technology to our customers with real life examples and templates. More details to follow but places are limited and registration is now open on http://bladebuilderuniversity.com/

That's all for now - I'll post an update as soon as I get back from Texas!

Power and Cooling - HP Labs Technology

Power and Cooling has jumped right to the top of most customers IT agenda and HP has a lot to offer; from the power regulation technologies in our ProLiant and BladeSystem servers all the way up to the dynamic data centre portfolio of solutions. I have already published quite a lot of information in previous postings on this blog regarding power and cooling technology but I have come across 2 new items this week which I felt were worth sharing with you all.

First off we have just released the Insight Power Manager product which is an option for our ProLiant and Blade servers. This gives customers the ability to proactively manage the power utilisation of their servers, implement power policies inc. power capping and measure the actual power savings in € for your entire server estate. >>Click here<< for further information. Other server vendors claim they also offer the functionality to control power but in reality they provide power control as part of the Windows 2003 OS which also needs modification to enable power control; furthermore there is no ability to measure real power savings or implement power policies. If you need more information please just let me know; this is a great HP .

Secondly 'Information Week' did a great piece on what HPs are doing with regard to power and cooling. If you would like to learn more about Dynamic Smart Cooling and see it working real time and hear about our strategy around cooling innovations in the datacenter, watch this video from Chandrakant Patel, HP Fellow, founder of HP Labs' thermal technology research program. You’ll need only 9 minutes to become experts !

To view the blog >>click here<<.
To view the 9 minute video >>click here<<.

BladeSystem Promotion extended to August 31st - Free Enclosure and Switch

HP Ireland are running a cClass BladeSystem end user promotion for the month of July which has been extended to August 31st, 2007. Customers can receive up to €14,500 cash back. Simply populate 50% of the ProLiant c-Class enclosure, include your choice of two interconnect modules and receive the enclosure and one interconnect free.

To support this promotion, purchase the HP Installation and Startup Service for HP BladeSystem in conjunction with your blade bundle and receive an additional €1,450 cashback. For full details of HP Care Pack Services please visit www.hp.com/ie/carepack

The full list of qualifying servers, enclosures and interconnect modules as well as the terms and conditions that apply can be found on http://www.hp.com/ie/freebladeenclosure

Please note that the promotion web site is due to go live on July 12th.