IT@Intel Data Center Blog

Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration

sudip.chahal@intel.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:24:10 GMT

Live migration is an essential technology for an agile, dynamic data center environment based on server virtualization. Until now, it has not been possible, however, to perform successful live migration between servers based on different generations of processors, each with different instruction sets - this limited our ability to implement large resource pools, creating islands of servers and hindering the implementation of advanced data center capabilities.

Combined, Intel VT FlexMigration assist and Enhanced VMotion are designed to overcome this limitation by enabling all servers to expose the same instruction set to applications, even if they are based on different processor generations from a single CPU supplier.

Intel IT and Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, End User Platform Integration, conducted proof-of-concept (PoC) testing of live migration using Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration (Intel® VT FlexMigration) assist and the Enhanced VMotion feature of VMware ESX 3.5U2*. All migrations completed without problems and our testing demonstrated that we can use Intel VT FlexMigration assist for live migration of Intel IT business applications in a mixed production environment. As a result, we can create resource pools that combine servers from multiple generations, eliminating incompatible islands of servers and allowing full implementation of advanced data center capabilities. Accordingly, we expect to standardize on systems with Intel VT FlexMigration assist in the future.

Our recently published IT@Intel white paper: Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration' documents the details pertaining to our tests – the types of systems tested, the workloads used, different scenarios examined and the results.

The paper can be downloaded at Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration

On behalf of our team, I’d like to invite you to view this whitepaper and comment about how you are using or intending to use these technologies in your datacenters and your experiences to-date with these capabilities.

Free Cooling for Data Centers - video and whitepaper

don.c.atwood@intel.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:20:06 GMT

Hi I’m Don Atwood, author of the newly released white paper and video that discusses our proof of concept (PoC) that tested cooling our Data Center with outside air. The topic of humidity control and if this would work in an ultra high humid climate keeps coming up. Most OEM spec’s allow for a wide range of humidity and it’s our belief that this cooling methodology could be used almost everywhere globally. Our only uncertainty comes around trying this near the ocean with high levels of salty corrosive wet air. We know it would negatively affect the servers at some point but the question is how quickly and is it within our refresh timetable. During a trip to ASIA last week I discussed trying a small scale “near the ocean” PoC to test this theory.. Does anyone thing this would add value to your company?

Intel IT 45nm test results

laurie.g.buczek@intel.com — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:48:00 GMT

We wanted to determine whether the adoption of the new Intel 45nm process technology could deliver additional benefits to our data center strategy: Improving virtualization performance while reducing power consumption. Intel IT is using server virtualization to substantially reduce costs associated with underutilized servers such as higher capital, support, maintenance,power and cooling. Watch this video for the recent testing parameters and results found by Rob Carpenter.

For the full details behind the tests and results, read the white paper 45nm Quad-Core Processors for Energy Efficiency

Let us know how you think the 45nm processors would benefit your data center strategy.

Additional white papers on testing we did on the 45nm processors:

Chip Design using 45nm Quad-Core Xeon Processors

Accelerating EDA Application Performance with 45nm Quad-Core Processors

To read the predecessor to the 45nm testing done on the 65nm quad-core, see Rob's blog with video white paper

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The full paperComparing Multi-Core Processors for Server Virtualization

Lastly, a tribute to Rob Carpenter. Without his work, none of this would be possible: Fond Stories Over Coffee: The Passing of a Friend

Intel IT Data Center Efficiency Initiative - Going Green

brently.davis@intel.com — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:57:00 GMT

Like most other companies these days, Intel is facing a growing demand for computing resources. As a result, our computing costs are going up along with that demand. All of these issues prompted us to take a hard look at our data center strategy, to see where we could make it more efficient.

Therefore, we’ve launched into a significant undertaking. We’ve started the process to End of Life (EOL) or consolidate our data centers down to just eight strategic locations. This effort is planned to take us eight years, but we’re working to pull this in sooner. This initiative enables us to reduce costs, improve server and storage utilization, create higher density & more energy efficient data centers, and allows us to keep pace with our company’s rapid rate of innovation. The effort could deliver up to $750M in Net Present Value. View my video blog for more information.

I would be interested to hear your comments, questions and have you share with us what your company is doing to drive efficiency within your data centers.