Blog Posts

I’ve spent a fair number of words in the past on the benefits of 10 Gigabit and what it means for the server market.  Through the addition of FCoE and DataCenter Ethernet as well as advanced virtualization features 10 Gigabit seems likely to have its big day in the sun here pretty soon.  But the question is still “When”?

While the proof is ultimately in the raw volumes of 10 Gigabit that ship, and the number of IT users who utilize the higher performance, there are some key reasons to think that 10 Gigabit momentum is accelerating beyond just the numbers* below:

With the popularity of social networking tools becoming more widely used, we've made the decision to expand the Open Port presence in an attempt to not only keep up with what's happening and where people are hanging out but also to connect the members of the Open Port community with each other in new and engaging ways.

That's why we've started a number of social media profiles to connect with interesting people and distribute Open Port content where they are, hopefully prompting them to come back here to Open Port and further engage in the conversation.

To that end you can follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our profile onFriendFeed, see what we find interesting on Delicious and become a fan of Open Port on Facebook.

We hope these profiles will be useful to all of you. Those sites and networks have a ton to offer in the way of two-way conversation, which is why we're using them.

If you're an Open Port community member and are on those networks we'd encourage you to share your profile in the discussion forums so that not only can we connect with you but so that other members of the community can find you there as well.

thanks

Mike (Open Port Community Admin)

Intel’s Gordon Graylish (VP EMEA) shares his views on why now is the right time for investment, innovation and risk-taking and how the new Xeon 5500 processor series is the intelligent choice.

http://intelstudios.edgesuite.net/090407_faster_graylish/index.htm

So, its not clear from this posting whether VMware's "Code Central" was announced or escaped but this looks to be a very valuable repository for sharing vSphere scripts.

I'm a recent convert to the wonders of creating new capabilities through the vSphere SDK. Our team has been using it to prototype some interesting new usages for power aware virtualization that we hope eventually will find their way into the VMWare Distributed Power Management (DPM) tool.

The most interesting usage is what we call "platooning" where different server resource pools are kept in different power states from fully powered on through power capped to standby and full off. Servers are moved from one platoon to the next (and workloads are migrated onto them) based on a set of policies for required application capacity headroom and power on latency as load increases. Our belief is that, by carefully designing these policies, we'll be able to save significant power across the data center without impacting peak throughput or response time of any of the applications.

Unfortunately, we don't have the data to demonstrate this savings yet. That's where the SDK comes in. We're able to prototype the usage, collect the data, validate the feasibilty and, if it never shows up in DPM, still be able to implement it in production.

We're just coming up to speed on the SDK, having completed our first "Hello World" integration with it but we think its going to be a very valuable tool for experimenting and going to production with many new usages. I'm hoping Code Central provides a good source of examples to help bootstrap our development.

Did you know that using an electricity rate of 11.4 cents per kWh provides a simple method of calculating annual electricity cost of any device?

1 watt of power consumption, with an electricity rate of 11.4 cents per kWh, cost $1 per year, assuming power usage remains constant.  Also, as a general rule of thumb, every 1W of device power consumption in a data center requires an additional 1 watt for overhead power (Source: Intel IT). So a device that consumes 1W actually consumes 2W of power at a data center level.

Here's the math:  1 Watt power * 8760 hours per year / 1000 * $0.114 electricity rate per kWh = $1 per year.  This math holds the same for any currency, Euro, Yuan, etc.  11.4 cents per kWh is the crossover point…and as electricity rates increase over 11.4 cents, 1 watt will cost more than a $1 per year. 

The datacenter overhead power, often referred to as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a number which has emerged as the leading metric for data center energy efficiency.

You might say that 1W = $2 annually doesn't sound like much, but start doing the math for 1000 servers that consume 200W in a data center with a PUE of 2.0 which works out to annual electricity cost of ~$400,000 per year.  Now, for every 1 watt the server power consumption is reduced, this would translate into $2000 annual savings.  Note, this is a very rudimentary example, but it is useful to illustrate why customers are really starting to focus on power as one of their key purchase decisions.

If you need energy efficient servers, there are multiple server vendors currently have some exceptional energy efficient products based on Intel(R) Xeon(R) 5500 processors.  And looking forward, we are also actively working on how to reduce power of the processor and at the system level for the upcoming generations of products.

Here’s some good reference on electricity rates:

For United States, state by state electricity rate comparison. 

For Europe, 1st half of 2008 rate comparison by country.

Remember, power is one purchase decision, but it is not the only one.  A rack of servers that consumes less power that does less work isn't an efficient way of deploying servers either.  Ensure that the performance vector is considered.  Intel® Xeon® 5500 processor based servers provid exceptional performance and perf/watt leadership over the competition.

Quick question for you:  How does electricity rate of 11.4 cents per kWh and a data center PUE of 2.0 compare to your data center? 

The computer industry is filled with pundits, speculators, visionaries, salesman, brilliant architects and professors. Each provides invaluable insight into their experience, their intelligence, their alma mater, their ticker symbol, their ego and what’s next. Some win the “what’s next lottery”, others work for years of brilliance in relative obscurity.

Seemingly, a world that has deployed over 1 Billion devices a year for the last 3 years , is incapable of understanding the gravity of a new programming models, a new hardware architecture, a sleek new design that delivers on a vision that Gene Rodenberry thought of in the 1960’s or Da Vinci in the 15^th Century. What is old is new…..and let me tell you why? It will revolutionize the industry (not evolutionize…a term reserved for slower growing industry’s that require government assistant every decade or so…), transform your environment and provide freedoms you had only hoped to enjoy….and we invented it 40 years ago. Does any of this sound familiar?

It should. These are the paraphrased slogans of an industry in transition. Real products matters, product differentiation matters, standards matter, interoperability matters….and shareholders pay for future expectations.

The future of computing…is NOW. The future of the computer industry is NOW. The next generation of computer programming, software architectures and transformational technologies is NOW. As an industry we have finally begun to embrace interface, architectural and software programming standards to usher in a new era of interoperability and scalability. Behind us are the days of “proprietary interfaces” (What does that actually mean other than I am going to sell you some extra accessories that will be worthless in 2 years?), which do not provide a differentiated performance/cost advantage. Gone are the days of developing programming languages that lock-in customers to individual companies, whether vendors innovate or not. These rules of the past are slowly melting away, allowing the entire industry to embrace interoperability and standards at the highest level in history. Industry diversity is healthy and insures that the most innovative and technologically relevant companies will “win” most of the time. Allowing the 1 Billion and the Next Billion customers of the world to enjoy the best interface technology yet developed….each other.  It also provides us with a unique ability to move to the next phase in our dynamic industry’s growth, autonomic instrumentation.

At Intel, we are constantly working to develop the next great performance architecture, filled with new innovative “goodies”, as our Chief Virtualization Architect Rich Uhlig calls them. These “goodies” (a technical term that Rich borrowed from his nephew, I believe) come in the form of virtualization technologies (Intel VT-x, Intel VT-d and Intel VT-c), security technologies (Intel LT-SX), performance technologies (Hyper-Threading, Turbo Boost) and energy efficiency instrumentation (Node Manager and Data Center Manager). Soon they will also include differentiated services in the cloud which facilitate ease of use and growth for a host of vertical industries in need of innovation. The resulting architectures that emerge will be instrument rich, feature capable and as scalable as users are willing to pay for.

Why is this important? Instrumentation matters. As we apply business and personal rules to our growing compute environments it has become increasingly clear that the more tools we make available to users the better informed we are in making decisions. The more disclosure we provide to investors through the use of autonomic programming architectures the more informed they will be of their investing decisions.

How can you day trade $1B in 35 different stocks without clear autonomic controls in your data center, your database, your application and your client devices?

How can you move 450 Million people efficiecntly throughout a country for 2 weeks without autonomic controls on transportation: plains, trains, boats and automobiles, as they do during the Spring Festival in China?

How can you process 1 Billion text messages a day without clear business rules? What happens when these messages are also coming from machines to other machines, modifying databases, applications and clients?

As humans, we must apply guidelines, much like laws,  for our machines to take action when we are asleep, when we are tired, when we are not present, when we are just simply being human….to slow to react to a rapidly changing environment.

The innovators of the computer industry today understand this NOW. We do not need to discuss a vision of 40 years ago without a plan to act NOW. Claiming ideas without action is dishonorable at best, criminal at worst. The innovators of today must build products and services that help solve the problems of today. We do not need to look to 2050 without a plan to act NOW. The visionaries of tomorrow are…..not born. The visionaries of today…can call me in 10 years.

Autonomic controls are in place today, machine to machine computer architectures are here today, scalable compute engines are here today. Are they perfect, no. Are they effective, yes. The design architects, product engineers and systems designers of today need to address these concerns. Autonomic Instrumentation delivers control to the administrator, the user and the developer. Rules engines can be modified to maximize efficiency, minimize consumption and increase productivity. All of these will lead to increase shareholder (read: No just people who buy shares of stock) value across your enterprise, your school, our hospitals, our governments, and your home.

When executed properly, Autonomic controls should be able to deliver 20-25% performance and efficiency increases with each new generation of Moore’s law. In some cases, as in the Intel Xeon® 5500 Series these increases have been over 150% in virtualization performance, these increases will be a combination of software architecture enhancement and silicon optimization. In other cases, it will be through the dedicated hard work of increase instrumentation capability of a processor platform at the same price of the previous generation through energy efficiency and memory controls.

Autonomic controls will also allow end users to avert disasters in our data centers, our homes and in our hands. Autonomic instrumentation design frameworks, allow users to set parameters on data migrations, data backup, security, memory access, power consumption and virtual machine architectures.

For Intel and our new Xeon® 5500 Series processor family, and our recently announced

Intel® Nehalem-EX platform provide the new generation of platform instrumentation. As product developers, designers and architects we should all find a way to increase the tools available to our customers to take advantage of these instrumentation capabilities. I look forward to being able to announce more of these new features as we announce them and help to provide development frameworks for developers, engineers and architects to build new products and services, ushering in the future of autonomic computing innovation…today.

Sunsets can last a while, but in the end the sun will go down.  I talk to a lot of companies and listen to a lot of data center managers.  Customers trust their AIX-Power and Solaris-Sparc platforms.  These are solid platforms and deliver good features and reliability, but, if these managers could get the sense of security, performance, and reliability with Linux / Intel Xeon platforms, they would move tomorrow.  It is simple economics.

The reality is that customers are making this move, and being successful.  The hardware reliability on Intel platforms today is amazing.  Intel recently announced that their next generation of Xeon(Nehalem) EX based servers will support Machine Check Architecture.  This brings high end Xeon X86 servers into the RAS family previously reserved to proprietary RISC & mainframe platforms.  Intel Xeon already eclipses the performance of proprietary RISC processors both on a per processor basis and a per dollar basis.  It is reasonable to say Xeon can deliver better performance, better value, and equal or better reliability.  The only hurdle left is the software.

Linux has come a long ways.  It is no longer a university OS, run by geeky dudes in black T-shirts emblazoned with the quadratic formula.  It is mainstream and solidly supported.  Linux is the primary development and delivery platform for Oracle.  Other OS environments are ports, delaying support and innovation.  Linux is used by major financial companies.  Linux is available in solid and well supported distributions with a 20 year history of enterprise business.  Linux experts are broad community, worldwide, and growing in number.  Linux is economical vs proprietary RISC.

In an era of big budgets and conservative (don’t make any changes) philosophies, businesses will always stick to their proprietary RISC systems.  That era is over.  Sticking to your RISC systems may seem like the safe move, but failing to examine the opportunities for better performance and lower cost with Linux on Intel Xeon platforms is business negligence.  Business negligence is seldom rewarded. 

Performance, Price, Infrastructure, Ecosystem, TCO, RAS – when the decision factors are examined it becomes clear -  we are in the RISC twilight and the sun will set on Sparc-Solaris and Power-AIX.

Based on Intel’s current processor core count and extrapolating from their “Tick Tock” model for scheduled new CPU designs, by 2017 Intel could very well be designing a 20-Core CPU!  Do we need that functionality with so many single threaded applications in the market today?  Maybe not today, but in 8-10 years computing usage models are going to be a lot different than they are now.

Whether virtualization environments will be running on 20-Core Intel processors by then or not, one thing is very clear high end virtual environments will require much more powerful management environments that what we have today.  Management tools that now only look at high level performance metrics will need to look at detailed server component and CPU level power consumption, detailed Core level performance metrics, and managed thermal output.  The more finitely we can manage our virtual elements the greater control we will have at the server, rack, and data center level for optimizing data center virtual server density to the physical limitations of our data center environment.

With VMware’s latest server virtualization version, renamed vSphere, new manageability capabilities that increase the usability and decrease the cost of managing a virtual environment are included.  Although they don’t go to the level I just described, they do provide some nice improvements from version 3.5.  Storage and network optimizations have been added that allow hosts to power down when not needed using their power management (DPM) tool (which is now a fully supported feature and not just “experimental”). VM Monitoring now uses VMware Tools to evaluate individual VM’s and check to see if they are running and Fault Tolerance now ensures continuous availability for virtual machines against hardware failures.

Intel is driving the creation of not just multi-core CPU’s but the tools that will drive virtualization architecture adoption in the future.  Providing powerful tools that manage power, thermal, and performance to help make our lives as data center operations personnel easier and make the value proposition of virtualization that much greater.  Management definitely will continue to be a key component to determining TCO in the future.  See the following around what Intel is doing around management. (http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ism/sms.htm)

What are the key management tools, in your opinion, that drive virtualization adoption, those “can’t do without” management apps?

Mark

My grandfather was born in the early 1900’s.  By all accounts he was a hardworking man with a strong degree of curiosity.  He passed away in his late 80’s and before he died I remember talking to him about my pursuit of an Electrical Engineering degree.  He nodded politely, asked a few questions and when I helped to fix the electrical outlet in his garage I got the sense that he thought I was heading down the path to be an electrician.  I believe that thought pleased him.  Several years ago I was explaining to my five year old daughter in layman’s terms what I did for a living and what my company made.  I said things like “We make tiny engines that run computers” or “I work with computers that run websites like Webkinz® and Disney®”.  She seemed impressed.  Months later when she was asked by a parent of her friend what her dad did for a living I was a combination of proud and surprised to hear that she replied “They make chips…”  (proud moment) “…and salsa!” (um OK.  I still have work to do).

_

Now the other day she walked up to me and said something like “Dad, I am having trouble getting the Slingbox to work on mom’s iPod Touch.  It is connected to the Internet but the remote does not seem to be changing the channel.  Can you help me?”  Clearly she has made some progress up the technology curve, but it also struck me how far she has come.  Kids these days are surrounded by technology.  In our house alone there are at least the following electronic devices; Oven, Microwave, AppleTV, refrigerator, smoke detector (3), carbon monoxide detector, programmable thermostat, furnace, radio, garage door opener (2), wireless speakers, televisions (3), set top boxes (3), ceiling fans with remotes (3), netbook, Slingbox, Clear wireless router, remote outlet, sprinkler control box, iPod Touch, desktop computer, Wii, iPod shuffle (2), alarm clocks (3), oven timer, electronic light dimmer, cordless phones (4), AV receiver, DVD players (3), VCR, iPod docking station, security system, motion sensor, camcorder, camera (2), USB hub, music keyboard, AV switch, computer keyboard, battery chargers (4), Wii remotes (4), Wii Fit Pad, Wii drums, copier/fax/scanner, computer monitor, AC, Power supplies (4), RFID credit cards (2), washer, dryer, noise canceling headphones, answering machine, internet modem, cell phones (2), handheld GPS, auto GPS and electronic battleship.

_

I am sure I have forgotten several things and I did not count cars or anything at my children’s school.  I am also sure each of the electronic devices in our house has either a processor, microcontroller, ASIC or multiple of each.  Admittedly, the silicon content in our house is probably above average given where I work and the personalities my wife and I have.  But when I think back to my grandfather he had none of these silicon laden items.  I am sure he didn’t care since it is hard to miss something you never knew.  Of the hundreds of pieces of silicon in our house about a dozen or so are smart enough to connect to each other or to “the cloud” in some way.  I put “the cloud” in quotes because it is not only the most over-hyped word of it’s time it is also the best way to articulate what I suspect my children and many others think of the services that they get when all of this stuff gets connected.

_

I can safely say two things are fact. First, my grandchildren will have in their house many more pieces of silicon than I do. Second, they will have more pieces of silicon that can connect to each other and communicate with “the cloud”.  There are many billions of devices connected to the Internet today and that number will grow.  At Intel we are building silicon, and increasingly software assets, that facilitate the processing and movement of data both on those devices and between them. Servers are increasingly becoming an important part of that over-hyped cloud word. My cable company has a cloud delivering me my on demand video content, A social media site allows me to upload pictures into their cloud to share with my friends, someone just used a cloud architecture to develop a perpetual motion machine.  OK, one of those things was false.

_

My grandfather thought a cloud was something in the sky.  My children think it streams video to their handheld device.  What will our great-grandchildren think?

Whenever you make a change to your Out-of-Band configuration settings in SCCM you need to push that change out to your Intel® AMT clients.  Normally you have to go through each of your collections that has AMT systems in it and tell SCCM to manually update the management controller configuration.  It is possible to automate this process using a script that makes WMI calls to the SCCM server, requesting it update the management controllers in your clients.  This can be scheduled as an advertisement to be run automatically.  This package contains documentation that outlines the required security, creation of the update task and an example VBscript.  You can download the package here:

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3399

In order for Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager to provision a vPro system, via bare-metal provisioning, it needs to know its UUID (Also referred to as a GUID), MAC address, short name and FQDN.  This information can be collected into a CSV file and imported into SCCM manually, or automatically by leveraging a script and WMI.  This package will outline the security configuration and point you to resources you can use to create a script to automate this process.  You can get a copy here:

Update 6/25/2009:  An updated version of the script is available at the link below.

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3067

Non-x86 RISC architectures, Power or SPARC, have been used in high end business critical virtualization solutions for a long while now. These come with a vertical stack of solution including the hardware, software, manageability tools and services provided by one vendor. This often leads to lock-in to the proprietary virtualization solution and services, and can be expensive from an end user perspective.

There are reasons why companies that can afford RISC based solutions have subscribed to it. This has been mainly due to Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) features, scalability and dedicated resources for quality of service (QoS) and isolation.

The world of virtualization however has significantly changed in the last 5 years. x86 based hardware and software products today offer well accepted and high performance virtualization solution. With the eminent availability of highly scalable and resilient Nehalem-EX products with 16-threads per socket and extensive RAS capabilities in the near future, the line between an expensive RISC solution and x86 based virtualization solution could blur further.

From an end user’s perspective, Nehalem-EX could provide sufficient capabilities that they have come to expect out of a RISC based virtualization infrastructure. Looking at it:

• Hardware partitioning of Nehalem-EX platform would be possible. Along with this OS virtualization and full commercial hypervisor support for logical partitioning already exists on Xeon processors.
• Nehalem-EX hardware infrastructure allows software ecosystem to deliver capacity on demand. For example extra CPU capacity can be dynamically added as needed. Moreover VM migration and policy based load balancing capabilities that already exist in commercial hypervisors complement this and provides IT easy methods to manage capacity at the datacenter level.
• Memory can be dedicated by not oversubscribing the available physical memory.
• CPUs can be dedicated by creating CPU affinity.
• Dedicated I/O assignment is possible using VT for Directed I/O. It can also restrict DMA access from devices to certain areas in memory, increasing isolation and system reliability.
• Single Root IO Virtualization feature would be available as part of Intel VT for connectivity in the networking devices. This allows a single NIC to be shared amongst multiple VMs directly, while isolating the traffic from a NIC queue to a VM for better reliability. Per VM bandwidth allocation can also be supported.
• Nehalem EX adds virtualization feature that could help increase VM performance in a processor oversubscribed environment with high system utilization.
• Nehalem-EX will add new reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) such as Machine Check Architecture (MCA) Recovery that allows error detection, error recovery and VM isolation.
• Inherent power technologies in the CPU, Turbo mode, and Dynamic Power Node Manager for system wide power capping all deliver IT the essential keys to balance power and performance.

While Nehalem-EX measures up to the infrastructure needs, it also enables horizontal solution that would allow customers to take advantage of best of breed software from the virtualization ecosystem thus reducing lock-in. This could result in faster innovation leading to an array of choices for business critical virtualization.

Based on http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh042808-story03.html, a Power virtualization solution with Power6 based 4 Socket P550 box (~$93,000) and PowerVM Enterprise Edition for large system ($1,969 per core, with $220 per year on the maintenance) will totally cost an enterprise $109,000, just in one server acquisition.

While pricing of NHM-EX 4S system is not available, approximating a cost using current 4-Socket Intel server pricing and commercial VMM software would suggest that Intel based solution could cost at-least 50% less in just infrastructure. Other savings like not requiring specialized RISC based hardware, services, solution and staff would add to the lower cost of ownership in the long run.

Given the economy and Nehalem-EX features, would it not make sense to take RISC out of your investment?

I have been watching the social chatter today about the latest Top500 supercomputing list and seeing companies, manufacturers, application vendors and even countries compete for mind share of this most recent list on twitter.

However, as I read about and explored this list, the things that jumped out at me were not the who’s number one, two, three … or who grew what number of spots ... but rather the trends that have occurred over time. These trends have not happened in the last 6 months or the last 6 years but instead over the course of nearly a decade of innovation

1)      Today, the #10 posting (a cluster using the 3-month old Xeon X5570 processor (Nehalem-EP)) delivers the same FLOPS performance capability equal to the entire June 2000 TOP 500 computers list. (see below)

source: http://www.top500.org/lists/2009/06/performance_development

2)      Also, the emergence of multi-core intel-based servers complemented by affordable open-source software solutions have enabled a transformation of how supercomputing performance is delivered. Intel based servers have gone from nearly “0” to nearly “400” over this decade.

source: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/images/IntelTOP500history.jpg