Archive for Technology@Work_2008
March 18, 2008 at 10:29 am · Filed under Technology@Work_2008, blades
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12926_div/12926_div.html
I just visited the HP Blade area, it was very cool, got to see their new Itanium blade, as well as a BL460c - very cool. It was also great to see both the C-Class enclosure and the shorty enclosure (c3000), it was great to see them, as well as the range of blades they had.
I also got the chance to speak with the guys about Blade Workstations and the Blade PC, which was very cool, I still think using something like a Blade PC or Blade Workstation could be a great way of providing the desktop infrastructure, even if we just look at the cost of downtime/the cost of move for the averagetrader.
I also saw the range of HP Proliant servers, including the DL160/180/380s etc, as well as very cool demo from Intel showing power utilization, the difference you can achieve using newer processors and newer lower voltage processors - very cool.
I’m off to watch the announcements for today.
March 17, 2008 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Other things, Technology@Work_2008
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080317xa.html
- HP Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS) – HP AIaaS offers customers access to HP owned and managed data centers that deliver an optimized platform for Microsoft® Exchange, SAP® applications and other critical business applications. Within a matter of hours, customers can rapidly access additional computing power to meet their fluctuating needs. With HP AIaaS, customers can realize improved service levels and convert traditional capital investment into an ongoing operating expense because all assets are owned and managed by HP.
Very cool news. This could be an effective revenue generation vehicle for HP, whilst gaining market exposure. The ability to outsource your business applications whether as a vehicle to allow you to re-design or re-scale your existing infrastructure or as a way to fix your costs, to have a more adaptive infrastructure could be of real value to some businesses, we’ll have to see, do check it out.
March 17, 2008 at 1:04 pm · Filed under Technology@Work_2008
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080317xa.html
- HP Insight Dynamics - VSE – This is the industry’s first software to analyze and optimize physical and virtual resources in the same way. The software helps customers extend the life of their data centers with advanced energy-aware capacity planning. HP Insight Dynamics - VSE will support multi-vendor hypervisor technologies and can reduce costs of common data center tasks by as much as 40 percent. Previewed today and expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008, HP Insight Dynamics - VSE seamlessly plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager, the world’s most popular platform management tool.
- HP Operations Orchestration enhancements – New integrations extend comprehensive automation across all physical and virtual infrastructures. By automating manual and error-prone processes across clients, applications, servers, networks, and storage, these integrations help customers better manage and automate business services. Additionally, these enhancements help customers reduce labor costs, increase service availability and meet compliance requirements by providing auditable, standardized processes.
HP announced two software products to enhance the adta center automation and operational field. They have evolved their VSE tool to aid in the management of physical and virtual servers seemlessly, (it does sound promising, I’ll have to read up more about it). Also they have announced their Operations Orchestration enhancements, which brings a focus on automating activities in the virtual and physical infrastructure, I’ll need to read up more. However, automation of the data center could be a real enabler, being able to provision servers, to migrate work load or instances between physical platforms could enable IT to be more adaptive to the business need, better suited to the ‘on demand’ infrastructure you hear people talk about. Do check it out.
March 17, 2008 at 12:54 pm · Filed under Technology@Work_2008, datacenter
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080317xa.html
- HP Data Center Consolidation services – These include design, transition and support services to help customers reduce the number of their facilities. As a result, customers reduce energy and operating costs while maintaining the ability to support business growth with a robust, flexible infrastructure.
- HP Data Center Virtualization services – The HP virtualization portfolio has been enhanced with new design, support and education services that help customers create a virtual infrastructure from their physical technology assets. This includes virtualization across servers, storage, networks and applications.
As more and more companies reach capacity in their data center, or struggle with upscaling their infrastructure to meet the business needs, HP announces these new services with a focus on helping companies with their consolidation or virtualization projects.
Very cool, and a great way of raising revenue whilst gaining exposure to new markets, and showing how technolog can be an enabler to your business if it’s deployed in the right way.
I wonder if we will see any announcements or advice in terms of best practice or strategy for your virtualization or consolidation project. We’ll need to wait and see.
March 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Technology@Work_2008, datacenter
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080317xa.html
- HP Critical Facilities services – As a result of its February acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, HP is expanding its Data Center Services offering with three new critical facilities services focused on consulting, design and assurance. The services help customers create scalable facilities that reduce the cost of data center operations through energy-efficient power and cooling technologies contained in space-efficient facilities.(2)
Very cool, these new services in the data center area, should further aid revenue generation and market exposure, being able to consult on the design, implementation and operations of the data center could be an valuable offering, particularly as the data center real estate becomes an ever more important topic of discussion within the enterprise. I’ve got some notes from the announcements and will put them in the comments below.
March 17, 2008 at 12:17 pm · Filed under Technology@Work_2008, rackmounts
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/49205-0-0-0-121.aspx?bodycontentparams=583637-0-0-0-121&ERL=true
Think of the new HP ProLiant DL785 G5 as a power tool for consolidation. The key word is “more”—more sockets, more memory, more I/O power—all designed to help with the drive toward virtualization and consolidation that is tearing through data centers around the world.
As Forrester reports, “Adoption of server virtualization has accelerated dramatically in North America since 2005, with 51 percent of enterprises now using or piloting the technology. In tandem, interest in server virtualization has grown worldwide, with a notable leap in Asia Pacific.” 1
Quick specifications:
8 quad-core processors
256 gigabytes of internal memory
2.3 terabytes of internal storage
11 PCI-e expansion slots
Hot-pluggable redundant power supplies and fans
Advanced ECC memory
System Insight Display, SIM, iLO2, for easy server management
Common ProLiant options and accessories
Very cool, I’ve been wondering if the 8 socket server might come back, I have used the 8 socket servers since the Compaq 8500R to the DL760G2, bringing more choice to the Proliant range in terms of sockets has to be a good thing for the customer.
I wonder if we will see other vendors approach the 8 socket server, it could be ideal for a virtualization or hpc solution, ultimately though it’s going to depend on your application being optimized for multi core/multi socket hardware to achieve the performance improvement. the memory support and PCI-e slots could lend the server to virtualization, or even those HPC solutions if you think about loading it with those mathematics cards for a quants application. I’ll need to read up more about the server in terms of price/energy efficiency.
March 17, 2008 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Technology@Work_2008, datacenter
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080317xa.html
HP today announced a set of products and services designed to help customers transform their data centers from a standalone collection of physical assets into a virtual and adaptive infrastructure designed to rapidly meet changing business needs.
Very cool, as part of this, HP have announced their Data Center Transformation Portfolio, comprising a range of services and products to aid in data center transformation. An area of continued growth in the industry.
This includes software, services and new HP Proliant server, which I will write about later. It was an interesting event and I’ll do posts on each aspect over the next few minutes. Do check out this press release (and press kit) for more information.
March 17, 2008 at 8:31 am · Filed under Technology@Work_2008
So I’m up and ready for the Technology@Work conference which HP are hosting, I wonder what is in store for me today. I will be doing posts throughout the day, to keep you updated on the news. As ever, I’ll also be doing the general news articles as well to maintain the balance.
March 16, 2008 at 11:20 pm · Filed under Other things, Technology@Work_2008
http://h41112.www4.hp.com/events/taw-2008/uk/en/who.html
HP Technology@Work is an enterprise-wide conference designed to deliver thought leadership issues and answers, interactive networking and knowledge-transfer opportunities. In addition, delegates enjoy exposure to a vast spectrum of business and IT decision-making information from HP and its industry partners, across all areas of enterprise products, services and solutions.
I’m attending the HP Technology@Work event and will be covering what’s going on, who I meet and any news from the event. It sounds like a great event and am very pleased to be attending in Barcelona.
If you’re also here, feel free to email me, or if you see me walking about have a chat, I’ll be the one in a grey pin stripe suit with a ThinkPad laptop.
I’m looking forward to the workshops and the demonstrations, I wonder if they’ll have anything in the data center or blade management areas - that would be very cool.
