Archive for December, 2007

http://futuresnews.org/technology/fujitsu-seeks-cut-of-ibm-hp-blade-server-share/

Fujitsu Computer Systems has made significant improvements to its «www.internetnews.com», improving performance and reducing energy consumption.

The improved performance is designed to give users faster access to data, quicker application access as well as more efficient and stable communication between the server blades and other system components. The Primergy BX600 S3 blade chassis features a new midplane that Fujitsu said offers three times the I/O throughput of earlier models.

With interfaces for up to 60 1Gbit Ethernet cables and end-to-end Fiber Channel connections, the system offers speeds up to 4Gbits per second. A big part of the performance story is a new Primergy BX620 S4 blade based on Intel’s latest Xeon 5300 quad-core processor.

The BX620 S4 recently set a world record SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark for dual-socket servers, according to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Fujitsu Computer Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited.

A BX620 S4 blade server running two quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Xeon X5355 processors (8 Cores, 8 Threads) with SAP ERP 2005, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and SQL Server 2005 with 1,870 users resulted in an average dialogue response time of 1.95 seconds.

IDC analyst Jean Bozman said better I/O performance helps makes blade systems in general, and Fujitsu’s in particular, more attractive to enterprise customers. “The I/O throughput is very important for database and line of business applications,” Bozman told internetnews.com. “For any enterprise application where you have to update a database, and that includes multi-tiered applications like CRM and Microsoft Exchange, there’s a lot of I/0 traffic.”

Check out this news about Fujitsu improving its blade chassis which has to be a good thing, this is set to further enhance the Fujitsu blade offering which has to bring more choice to the consumer which has to be a good thing. Will need to read up and find out more.

http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,39169518,00.htm?r=1

Now virtualisation is mainstream, fears about putting too many apps on the same server are evaporating. That just leaves the problem of calculating power consumption, as Stewart Baines reports.

Computing may drive efficiency but the data centres that run business are often far from efficient. Servers haven’t traditionally used all of their spare CPU power, because reliability concerns stop administrators running lots of applications on one box.

The extra energy used for those wasted CPU cycles means that an enormous amount of carbon is burned into the atmosphere unnecessarily. But how much? And more importantly, how much energy - and therefore carbon emissions - can be saved by consolidating servers?

Check out this interesting article about the need to be more energy efficient with the data center and the IT infrastructure. It’s got some interesting comments and examples of how virtualization can save you money in terms of the cost of power, an interesting read.

http://cossacks.org.uk/computers/hp-upgrades-multi-processor-based-servers-with-latest-intel-xeon-chips-3/

Hewlett-Packard on Thursday upgraded its lineup of multi-processor based servers with Intel’s latest 7300 series quad-core Xeon processors.

The upgrades include the rack-based ProLiant DL580 G5 and the ProLiant BL680c G5, which is HP’s first four-processor blade server, «www.hp.com»

Among the enhancements to the DL580 G5 is double the memory capacity of its predecessor, making the new product better equipped for handling virtualization. The BL680c G5 blade also has larger memory capacity for the same purpose.

Very cool, it will be interesting to see if the other vendors follow suit, and what benefits in terms of performance or even performance per watt these new generation of Intel processors bring.

http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/10362-1.html

There is overwhelming evidence that spending on servers is slowing down significantly across a number of market sectors, in some cases by up to a factor of five, according to research conducted by TechNavio from Infiniti Research.

Using TechNavio—a research solution that addresses the spectrum of intelligence needs of IT industry sales and strategic planning teams—Infiniti has identified the trend as the direct result of virtualization deployment and the drive to greener computing.

While the initial pace will be set by large enterprises, the long-term play in green computing is clearly in the small to mid-sized business sector, which typically is less efficient in that they use lower-end servers, and have not gone through server consolidation on the same scale as their larger peers.

Spending on IT is one of those cyclical things and it’s influenced by the markets. It’s easier to get funding or budget for headcount/servers or IT infrastructure when the company is doing well. When the markets are down, or people aren’t feeling quite as positive (’the credit crunch’), IT projects that are deemed unnecessary are often put on hold; particularly when all the economists are trying not to say the r word. It’s not a recession, it’s a slow down, it’s a temporary re-alignment of captial. The IT equivalent of a reboot.

Going forward with virtualization we might find that the demand for servers changes, that’s not to say overnight sales of DL360’s stop, it’s simply that the kind of consumers that bought these servers might find two or three DL380’s running VMWare might be a better bet. But there are still cases where for business, regulatory or even office politcs sake, it’s easier to say “That is your server”, and politely “fill your boots”, the days therefore of the physical server are not numbered, simply the way we buy, provision and use them is. I suspect we might even find that the shelf life, the time we actually keep and use the server lessens as we seek to reduce the hardware support contract and have a fast dynamic infrastructure. Remember, in a virtual world, swapping out a server isn’t the thing that it used to be - I don’t need to do driver pack testing for every platform..

http://www.igovernment.in/site/apac-datacenter-energy-usage-to-touch-16-in-2010/

California: The total world server electricity usage from datacenters in Asia and Pacific region, excluding Japan, will increase from 10 per cent in 2000 to about 16 per cent in 2010, while the US share will decrease from 40 per cent to about one-third over that period.

A study released by AMD, based on the data from industry analyst firm IDC, reveals the shifting patterns in worldwide datacenter energy use across five regions including the US, Western Europe, Japan, Asia and Pacific (excluding Japan) and the rest of the world.

The absolute electricity consumption for servers in the Asia and Pacific region under this scenario would more than double from 2005 to 2010, requiring electricity capacity equal to output from two new 1000 MW power plants.

An article I wanted to highlight how much power data centers require, why therefore we need to look at not only the way we build and run data centers, but also the air flow, the cooling as well as the server configuration. Making a 10% saving in your cooling or power requirements, could represent a significant return on investment, particularly as the cost of power continues to be the significant part of your data center costs.