There are literally thousands of ways a new Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series based server can benefit your business. I’ll spare you the complete list, but let’s start with the major ones. When you ask yourself the following questions about your business and its needs, you may just find that getting a server right now is the right decision for you.

Ultimately, the biggest question is: Can you afford NOT to invest in the newest Intel Xeon processor-based servers in this economy?

Learn more about our new server processors:

• Read this brochure to learn more about the advantages of Intel® processor-based servers for small and medium businesses.
• And talk to your IT solutions provider.

Also, I’d love to hear your best reasons for buying new servers, so I can add them to the list. If you have already made the transition to the new Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, please share you story.

¹Performance increase based on Intel comparison using SPECjbb2005 business operations per second (bops) between four-year-old single-core Intel® Xeon® processor 3.8GHz with 2M cache based servers and new Intel Xeon processor X5570 based server. Intel consolidation based on replacing nine four-year-old single-core Intel Xeon processor based servers with one new Intel Xeon Processor X5570 based server while maintaining SPECjbb2009 performance. Costs and return on investment have been estimated based on internal Intel analysis and are provided for information purposes only. Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance of Intel products as measured by those tests.  Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance.  Buyers should consult other sources of information to evaluate the performance of systems or components they are considering purchasing. For more information, visit www.intel.com/performance/server.

In my blog titled “why buy for the little guy”, I shared that I was in the market for a new home desktop to replace my existing one.  Well, today I spent my 2009 tax refund check on a new computer – an iMac. 

So why the secrecy?  ... The iMac is a surprise for my wife’s birthday.  My wife has wanted a Mac since we left college and I’ve always been a PC guy (grew up with one, always used them at work, etc.) and when I started working at Intel almost 10 years ago, I could not justify a Mac given my corporate loyalties and who was paying the bills.  When Apple adopted Intel architecture a couple years ago, my options were now opened (really my old excuses were not longer valid).  

I’m very excited to install the new iMac as the challenges of my old technology and the limitations and headaches they were giving me will be gone - and I think I’ll finally get some good-guy points with my wife.

Chris

With the introduction of the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series last month, I wrote a blog that discussed that server refresh was an intelligent investment in that it could deliver a rapid payback on investment. For the past few years, I have been working to understand the costs and benefits of server replacement and there are a few conclusions I can draw.

1)      Server Refresh is not new concept.  This approach has existed for decades.  People replace technology as it ages because new software and new technologies enable better business capabilities and as technology ages, the warranty expires and incidence of failure increases. How many of you still have your first mp3 player?

2)      ROI and Refresh Vary. The rate of refresh is a balance of the investment required (purchase, install, removal, validation, etc) and the savings achieved (operational costs, cost avoidance, employee productivity) balanced with the business opportunities available to you (business growth or new business markets, cost of capital, revenue generating investments)

3)      One Size Does not fit all.  Every business looks at financials and opportunities for their business a little differently and calculates their costs and savings differently.

So a few months ago, I embarked with some of my peers, with Intel IT, and industry leading ROI and TCO consultant Alinean, to apply what I have been learning and build an interactive tool to help you model your savings opportunity for server refresh and replacement. 

We identified and were able to model eleven cost and savings categories (both pluses and minuses) in the Server Refresh ROI calculation and make these cost category assumptions able to be included, excluded or modified by you.  You can model and view scenario output real time and print/email reports to share with others.

I invite you to learn more about the tool with this informal how-to-use guide , or better yet, use the tool and estimate how much you could save replacing old servers with new.  Try the new Intel® Xeon® processor-based Server Refresh Savings Estimator today.

You can provide feedback through the tool’s registration process or by responding directly on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you either way.

Thanks, Chris

A part of my job these days is to interact with and track online press content for our server products.  The launch of the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series (codenamed Nehalem) product was a big one.  Big by any standard of measurement (...except for perhaps Geologic time).  I thought I would share with you a peak at some of the metrics we have looked at as an outcome of last week's product launch.

Metrics are always tricky, because the source of the data is always something you can question, and frequently find holes.  But, if you take a bunch of data from different sources, stand back a bit, then look at it with your hands cupped together over your eyes to block the shiny distractions (think big picture), you often get some actionable tidbits out of it.

Something as simple as Pageviews is a metric of success.  The idea is that you are measuring the number of people who look at your page... then you look deeper and find that bots and search sites are also looking at the new content to categorize it, log it, and have it ready for people to search upon.  So, Pageviews are a bit of a can of worms.  Good can, good worms, but not necessarily what you were expecting to find when you opened it.  So, we look at it with some measure of caution.  Again, big picture, you do see some trends that tell a little bit of the story.

Note: I only discuss and cover a few items... there are many, many, many more.

First here are just a few of the landing pages that I personally keep an eye on...

Community sites; 'The Server Room' and its new sub-community the 'Server Solutions Insider' where you are right now.

On Facebook, we have some fan pages: 'The Server Room'  and  ''Intel Xeon 5500 "Nehalem"'

For the Community sites we can use a simple tool like Google Analytics to see Pageviews.  The following shows the pageview trend of 'The Server Room' over a few months.  Again, numbers are not really important as much as the pattern you can see.

Results: Weekend traffic is lower than mid-week, a couple of product launches and the 'buzz' around them drive a fair amount of traffic, and finally that last peak was pretty big compared to anything previous.  All good trends to be aware of.  The next big step is to do something with that information... and that is something to share another day.

For the Facebook pages, we get some nice metrics directly from the admin tools.  Here is some nice trend data on the 'Intel Xeon 5500 "Nehalem"' page

Results: The total number of 'Fans' (dark blue) are growing, but on a daily (light blue) basis, we only see some peaks and not a consistent growth.  Actionable item (assuming we find such a metric as growing Facebook fans of vital importance) is that we look into how to promote the site more, and make it worth people's time to join.  But, you have to look at the forum and the point of it all... not be pushy.  Then decide what to do (if anything) from there.

Now we switch gears a bit and look at some external (non-Intel) sources that we like to keep an eye on.  These are journalist websites and specifically we look for certain articles and product reviews.  The ones that actually test hardware, then give their results and analysis are key to watch since their influence is vital to knowing how well a product might be perceived.  Here are some articles in particular that I found especially interesting (no particular order):

The Tech Report - Intel's Xeon W5580 processors

AnandTech.com - The Best Server CPUs part 2: the Intel "Nehalem" Xeon X5570

The Inquirer - Nehalem proves its server mettle

IT168.com (Chinese Language) - Intel Nehalem-EP处理器首发深度评测

CRN - Review: Intel's New Nehalem Historic, Game Changing

InfoWorld - Test Center: Intel's Nehalem simply sizzles

2cpu.com - Nehalem: Xeon Gets Core i7 Upgrade

Tecchannel (German Language) - Test: Intel Xeon X5570 Nehalem-EP

RealWorldTech.com - Nehalem Performance Preview

Hardware.info (Dutch Language): - Intel Xeon X5570 'Nehalem' test

The Inquirer - Double Nehalem for double power

The metrics you gather from these (as with anything), depends on what you want to measure.  If you simply want to count the number of reviews... ok, there are a 11 (many more are out there).  If you want to look at the number of benchmarks where our product came out on top... ok, a large majority.  If you want to look at the 'tone' of the article... ok, that is very dependent upon the reader's mood (I'm feeling pretty good actually) and even more on the mood of the writer at the time it was written.  So, what do we get from all this?  We take all of these things and give it the 'take a few steps away' view (big picture again).  Hey, it all looks good.  Actionable items... something else to share with you another day.  ;o)

All in all, a lot of good stuff to consume around the launch of the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series (codenamed Nehalem) products.  It is a joy to follow it, a deeper joy to be a part of it, and this product represents a 'new normal' for those of us that interact with the social media aspect of things.

Leave me a note, I would be happy to explore this topic with you more.

- GW

kW of Power.  BTU of Cooling. Square feet of Datacenter Space.  What do they have in common?

Power, Cooling and Space are resources – more specifically, constrained resources that are available to support the delivery of compute capability. As datacenter managers look at their projected compute capacity in the coming years, it becomes clear that these scarce resources will eventually run out – in fact it’s estimated that 70% will run out of power or cooling capacity in the next two years. Adding power or cooling capacity is expensive and there likely isn’t any budget for that, especially in today’s economic environment. If there isn’t budget for adding resources, there surely isn’t funding to build additional datacenter space. So how does IT get past this impasse?

By making more efficient use of the constrained resources with Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500.

In the launch announcements and blogs over the course of the last week, you have heard about the cool features and improvements delivered by the Xeon® 5500.   9X the performance of older single core products.  Significantly reduced power consumption at all points of the load line between idle and max utilization.  Interesting nuggets by themselves, but when taken in the context of the datacenter, they are powerful capabilities that IT can use to address their resource constraint issues.  Let’s look as two scenarios at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Scenario 1: Same Compute, Less Resources – Assuming an installed base of single core servers, you can replace the legacy servers with approximately 89% fewer Xeon® 5500 servers – fewer servers take up less datacenter space, consume less power and require less cooling – in fact, now you have headroom to add servers to meet growing compute requirements moving forward.

Scenario 2; More Compute, Same Resources – For those that that crave all of the compute capacity they can get their hands on, deploying Xeon® 5500 servers would increase compute capacity by 9X in the same power, cooling and floor space constraints (again, assuming a single core installed base) and consume approximately 18% less power than the legacy servers.

The kicker is that although it seems somewhat counterintuitive, when you run the numbers it actually makes financial sense to refresh old servers with Xeon® 5500 servers.  We estimate that the power and OS savings associated with Scenario 1 can pay off the investment in as little as 8 months, and those OPEX savings continue for the life of the server.

For both scenarios, Xeon® 5500 also delivers improved energy efficiency with Integrated Power Gates and Automated Lower Power States, which automatically and dynamically adjusts power and performance to the specific needs of the work being done. Throw in system level instrumentation capabilities to report and cap system power, and you can further reduce your operating costs by adjusting the HVAC output to the specific heat output of the servers in real time.

Power, cooling and space resources aren’t likely to start growing on trees, but Xeon® 5500 is a key to enabling a more efficiency datacenter,  to getting more out of every kilowatt, BTU and square foot that are available and to driving Datacenter Efficiency.

The recently introduced Intel® Xeon® 5500 Series Processor, formerly code named Nehalem brings a number of power management features that not only improve on energy efficiency over previous generations, such as a more aggressive implementation of power proportional computing.  Depending on the server design, users of Nehalem-based servers can expect idle power consumption that is about half of the power consumed at full load, down from about two thirds in the  previous generation.

A less heralded capability for this new generation of servers is that users can actually adjust the server power consumption and therefore trade off power consumption against performance.  This capability is known as power capping. The power capping range is not insignificant.  For a dual socket server consuming about 300 watt at full load, the capping range is in the order of 100 watts, that is, for a fully loaded server consuming 300 watts, power consumption can ratcheted down to about 200 watts.  The actual numbers depend on the server implementation.

The application of this mechanism for servers deployed in a data center leads to some energy savings.  However, perhaps the most valuable aspect of this technology is the operational flexibility it confers to data center operators.

This value comes from two capabilities:  First, power capping brings predictable power consumption within the specified power capping range, and second, servers implementing power capping offer actual power readouts as a bonus: their power supplies are PMBus(tm) enabled and their historical power consumption can be retrieved through standard APIs.

With actual historical power data, it is possible to optimize the loading of power limited racks, whereas before the most accurate estimation of power consumption came from derated nameplate data.  The nameplate estimation for power consumption is a static measure that requires a considerable safety margin.  This conservative approach to power sizing leads to overprovisioning of power.  This was OK in those times when energy costs were a second order consideration.  That is not the case anymore.

This technology allows dialing the power to be consumed by groups of over  a thousand servers, allowing a power control authority of tens of thousands of watts in data centers.  How does power capping work?  The technology implements power control by taking advantage of the CPU voltage and frequency scaling implemented by the Nehalem architecture.  The CPUs are one of the most power consuming components in a server.  If we can regulate the power consumed by the CPUs we can have an effect on the power consumed by the whole server.  Furthermore, if we can control the power consumed by the thousands of servers in a data center, we'll be able to alter the power consumed in that data center.

Power control for groups of servers is attained by composing power control capabilities of power control of each server.  Likewise, power control for a server is attained by composing CPU power control as illustrated in the figure below.  We will explain each of the constructs in the rest of this article.

Conceptually, power control for thousands of servers in a data center is implemented through a series of coordinated set of nested mechanisms.

The lowest level is  implemented through frequency and voltage scaling: laws of physics dictate that for a given architecture, power consumption is proportional to the CPU's frequency and to the square of the voltage use to power the CPU.  There are mechanisms built into the CPU architecture that allow a certain number of discrete combinations of voltage and frequency.  Using the ACPI standard nomenclature, these discrete combinations are called P-states, the highest performing state is nominally identified as P0, and the lower power consumption states are identified as P1, P2 and so on.  A Nehalem CPU supports about ten states, the actual number depending on the processor model.  For the sake of an example, a CPU in P0 may have been assigned a voltage of 1.4 volts and 3.6 GHz, at which point it draws about 100 watts.  As the CPU transitions to lower power states, it may have a state P4 using 1.2 volts running at 2.8 GHz and consuming about 70 watts.

The P-states by themselves can't control the power consumed by a server.  The CPU itself has no mechanisms to measure the power it consumes.   This mechanism is implemented by firmware running in the Nehalem chipset. This firmware implements the Intel(r) Dynamic Node Power Management technology, or Node manager for short..  If what we want is to measure the power consumed by a server, looking only at CPU consumption does not provide the whole picture.  For this purpose, the power supplies in Node Manager-enabled servers provide actual power readings for the whole server.  It is now possible to establish a classic control feedback loop where we compare a target power against the actual power indicated by the power supplies.  The Node Manager code manipulates the P-states up or down until the desired target power is reached.  If the desired power lies between two P-states, the Node Manager code rapidly switches between the two states until the average power consumption meets the set power.  This is an implementation of another classic control scheme, affectionately called bang-bang control for obvious reasons.

From a data center perspective, regulating power consumption of just a single server is not an interesting capability.  We need the means to control servers as a group, and just as we were able to obtain power supply readouts for one server, we need to monitor the power for the group of servers to allow meeting a global power target for that group of servers.  This function is provided by a software development kit (SDK), the Intel(r) Data Center Manager or Intel DCM for short. Notice that DCM implements a feedback control mechanism very similar to the mechanism that regulates power consumption for a single server, but at a much larger scale.  Instead of watching one or two power supplies, DCM oversees the power consumption of multiple servers or "nodes", whose number can range up to thousands.

Intel DCM was purposely architected as an SDK as a building block for industry players to build more sophisticated and valuable capabilities for the benefit of data center operators.  One possible application is shown below, where Intel DCM has been integrated into a Building Management System (BMS) application.  Some Node Manager-enabled servers come with inlet temperature sensors.  This allows the BMS application to monitor the inlet temperature of group of servers, and if the temperature rises above a certain threshold, it can take a number of measures, from throttling back the power consumed to reduce the thermal stress on that particular area of the data center to alerting system operators.  The BMS can also coordinate the power consumed by the server equipment, for instance with the  CRAC fan speeds.

With this discussion we have barely begun to scratch the  surface of the capabilities from the family of technologies implementing power management.  In subsequent notes we'll dig deeper into each of the components and explore how they are implemented, how these technologies can be extended and the extensive range of uses for which they can be applied.

Sometimes the next step up is a big one. The Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed “Nehalem”) is one of those kinds of steps.

Over the last few years 10 Gigabit has started to take off, but there have always been some negative mutterings: “Why do I need 10 Gigabit?”, “Why do we need this much bandwidth?” or “My server can’t support 10 Gigabit per second bidirectional traffic anyway.” Despite the volume of 10 Gigabit products shipped, there is still the reality that if you intend to use the entire 20 Gbps (10G both directions) or heaven forbid you try to use 40 Gbps with a dual port product; you will likely be sorely disappointed with the results.

The reason for this is simple. Most current mainstream servers and 10 Gigabit products don’t support the intense usage models needed to drive that much network I/O and they also don’t have the memory architecture to unleash the full potential of dual 10 Gigabit links.

Luckily, that all just changed with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series.

In addition to the great processing improvements that the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series brings to the table, Intel has also introduced our third generation 10 Gigabit product, the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller which provides two ports, and new capabilities and enhancement to the 10 Gigabit product landscape that help unshackle the new processor from its predecessor’s network I/O handcuffs and unleashes blazing performance in a variety of usage models. These improvements, coupled with the new architecture of the Xeon 5500 provide a symbiotic processor-networking combination that makes new usages possible and expands server and datacenter computing by a big leap… not just a baby step.

One of the key changes with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series architecture is a step function improvement in the internal system I/O. The new local memory controller design, faster cache architecture, and support for DDR3 help push Xeon 5500 to be able to support peak memory bandwidth of ~32 Gigabytes, per socket. In a dual socket system this provides for ~64 Gigabytes of bandwidth which is dramatically more than the previous generation server configuration. In addition, the new Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (Intel® QPI) improves the speed both for inter-Processor communication as well as a faster path to the I/O hub. Finally, PCI Express* 2.0 I/O Bus support has been added to improve the entire data path from Processor to the 10 Gigabit Ethernet link.

Taken together, the above improvements are a performance game changer for 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

The chart below** shows the previous generation Intel® Xeon® paired with the previous generation Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller compared to the latest platform using the newest Intel silicon for both processor and networking. Not only is the performance better in 1-4 port configurations, but the performance scales dramatically better to above 50 Gigabits per second of total LAN throughput in a four port configuration vs. *just* 17 Gigabits on the previous generation! A complete platform architecture solution makes this huge improvement possible.

Now, it’s great that Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series coupled with the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet can deliver such raw performance, but there is the forever nagging question of usage model. Luckily, the new headroom breathes new life into both Virtualization and storage over Ethernet usages (both of which I’ve talked about here and here) and provides new opportunities to more efficiently utilize your network link.

Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series allows the vision of consolidation in the datacenter to scale new heights, increasing the number of Virtual Machines (VM) that can effectively live inside a single system enclosure. Each incremental VM will add additional network I/O that is already starting to exhaust a 4 or 8 port single gigabit interface configuration with today’s server capabilities. As more VMs are added in the Xeon 5500 generation, 10 Gigabit will no longer be seen as optional; it will be required. For its part, the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller supports Intel® Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (Intel® VT-c) to improve overall system performance in virtualized server environments. Intel VT- c includes hardware optimizations that help reduce I/O bottlenecks, boost throughput and reduce latency. Components of Intel VT-c include VMDq, and VMDc. VMDc consists of SR-IOV which I’ve covered before, and the ability to support VM mobility; a critical usage model for modern a IT deployment. All together, server systems can support more VMs, more throughput, more flexibility and better performance in a datacenter environment.

Finally, the additional capabilities of the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller product surrounding support for FCoE offloads and full support for the new Data Center Bridging (DCB) standards provide an opportunity for storage convergence over Ethernet in either a datacenter using a Fiber Channel SAN environment or an IT environment more focused on iSCSI. On the performance side of things, iSCSI acceleration along with FCoE data path offloads are supported in the Ethernet controller, and on the processor there is support for the CRC instruction set which insures iSCSI data integrity while minimizing processor overhead.

The ability to converge at least part of the additional storage infrastructure onto Ethernet is just another factor driving massively increased data rates over Ethernet… luckily, the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and the Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller solutions are up to the task.

Over the past few days, there has been a lot of noise around Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and the many other platform components that help it shine its brightest. Improved processing power, memory controller bandwidth, faster and redesigned FSB, and improved 10 Gigabit networking all converge together to provide a fantastic performance, convergence, scalability and power story. Intel’s strong history in the server and processor markets, coupled with over 25 years in Ethernet makes this latest release a natural evolution of technology. Together these capabilities, along with the improved 10 Gigabit features and performance, are helping to transform the datacenter. It will be denser, more power efficient, more performant, and more consolidated with capabilities like FCoE and iSCSI.

As for “Why do I need 10 Gigabit?” We have the answer, and it’s the new Xeon®.

Ben Hacker

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** Source. Intel. Mar 2009. Up to 2.5x performance compared to Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series. Performance result of a bandwidth intensive network benchmark (IxChariot). Network throughput was measured on 64KB I/O size transfers between the test system and multiple network targets. Intel pre-production system with two Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series CPUs (2.93 GHz), 12 GB memory (6 x2GB DDR3 - 1066MHz) vs. Intel Production system with two Intel® Xeon® processors X5365 (3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB), 8 GB memory (8 x 1 GB DDR 2 - 667). Windows Server 2008, stock unmodified installation.

Everyday people are facing exploding volumes of data that they need to manage. As the model size continues to grow, they need to figure out how to maximize the efficiency of data movement and where possible to move processing to data, rather than data to processing. I see this as a constant issue for most of my customers and therefore part of my job is to provide system benchmarks to help people understand how to choose the most efficient platforms for their data-intensive computations. I recently co-authored a technical white paper on Data Intensive Computing that will provide you a bit more insight on this topic. Feel free to download at: http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4154.pdf.

This week Silicon Graphics posted a large number of standard and application benchmarks for the SGI® Altix® ICE platform and the Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series (codenamed Nehalem). You can find both the standard and application benchmarks on http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/ice.

As we ran the benchmarks we were able to achieve superior application performance through a combination of different factors, most important being the innovative memory system of the new Intel processor family and the improved ICE platform network topology and I/O. On the website you will find a variety of application benchmarks including MD.Nastran, LS-Dyna, Abaqus, Radioss, Fluent, Gaussian and NAMD just to name a few.