The Server Room Blog

'You are not Alone' - When it comes to moving from RISC

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:18:41 GMT

Change is hard, but it can be done and the benefits of change usually outweigh the concerns which were on our minds before we made the change.

When making the change from running your solution on a RISC architecture to running that solution on a Xeon architecture, the biggest concern usually relates to whether that solution will run at the same level as on the previous architecture. I'm not talking about performance specifically, but usually the question is around whether operating systems like Linux, Windows, and Solaris on Xeon will meet your business needs for yourmission critical solutions.

Like the underlying improvements in the microprocessor, I believe that there have also been major fundamental improvements in the operating systems that run on both today's and the soon to come next generation microprocessors (sorry, my obligatory Nehalem-EX advertisement... coming soon in 2010). A decision made many years ago to run your solution on Unix/RISC was made based on comparing all the different variables at that time to pick what was right for your business. At that time you likely decided that your solution would not run on these operating systems, these operating systems were not suitable for your mission critical workloads etc. Probably right decision at that point, but like everything else decisions get revisited based upon the here and now and what may have been the right solution in the past (and right decision) may not be the right solution for your needs now.

I wanted to share some thoughts specifically on Redhat Linux today. Lets take a little look at Redhat Enterprise Linux. Current versions of Redhat can deliver what is required for your critical solutions. RHEL is ready and here are some of the reasons cited by Redhat in recent webinars on this topic and my interpretation of their comments

Hosts real-time global mission-critical infrastructures and operations 24 X 7 - its tried and tested by other Enterprises
Enables 5x9s availability in highly secure environments - pretty important to most critical solutions
Contributes measurable reductions to TCO and enables, agile, standardized, and virtualized infrastructures - TCO benefits through standardization
Has major ISVs on-board with the majority of 3rd party Unix applications have Linux and/or Windows versions available - the ISVs that traditionally delivered applications to you based on Unix, also have versions supported on Linux/Windows
Many customer unique applications are developed with programming languages such as C, C++, JAVA, or J2EE and can be migrated to Linux and / or Windows - your applications can be moved
Hosts most major database systems standard for your infrastructure - all the major databases run and run well on Linux

One of the other things we encounter a lot is around whether the technical considerations to move from one operating system environment are too high to overcome and outweigh the benefits of moving. There are always technical considerations and things that you need to know to move from one environment to another. However you are not alone in trying to understand these technical considerations. Redhat have done a phenomenal job of documenting the challenges of moving from say Solaris to Linux and have developed a great Strategic Migration Planning Guide. This is available on request. In recent webinars Redhat outline some of the things that you need to consider for the following technical categories

- Development Environment; Kernel tuning; Security; Filesystems; Debugging, tracing, Profiling; Command Differences; Deployment methods; Software Management; Virtualization; Application considerations

In addition to the current versions of Redhat running on Intel architecture, we are also working very closely on future versions that will take advantage of the 20+ new RAS features that are planned for Nehalem-EX - more on that in a future blog

You are not alone, resources, tools and expertize exist to help you make that move and reap the business benefits while still delivering to the requirements of your business. Check out Redhat online tools for more information that dives deeper into all the areas for consideration http://www.redhat.com/migrate/solaris_to_linux/

We think Redhat Linux and Xeon are ready to run your mission critical workloads and solutions...What do you think?

Why upgrade your hardware when migrating to SAP ERP 6.0?

ennis.p.skillern@intel.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:10:06 GMT

Why upgrade your hardware when migrating to SAP ERP 6.0? Because it makes simple, practical, business sense that is all. SAP has identified several key reasons why customers are concerned about migration and several among them are as follows:

· Cost, Cost, Cost

o HW infrastructure cost is highlighted as one of the key barriers of migration

· Business Justification

o Is there a compelling business reason to upgrade the hardware?

· Additional risk of business disruption

o Migration of ERP environment is complex enough…how much more risk is there when upgrading your hardware?

From a cost perspective, the perception that hardware is a barrier to migration can be easily overcome. Based on research, the hardware cost as a percentage of the overall migration cost is only about 7%. That means 93% of the cost is in licensing, consulting, etc, etc. HW costs are only the “tip of the iceberg” and the real $ investment lies elsewhere in the equation.

Is there a compelling business reason to upgrade your hardware? Well…frankly, it does not make sense not to do it. One, we showed above that the hardware investment is minimal compared to SW licensing, consulting, service, etc. Two, the hardware requirements of ERP 6.0 are significantly higher than previous versions. ERP 6.0 requires up to 2.5x more CPU performance, 2.5x more memory and 1.5x more I/O! You will need the increased performance and scalability that Intel provides in our microprocessors. While the ERP performance requirements have increased 2.5x, Intel performance with SAP has increased 10X! Oh, btw…energy efficiency does matter and in your new ERP environment you will be able to consolidate servers and save on power and cooling costs. TCO will be significantly reduced and from hardware investment standpoint, you are likely going to recover the cost of the servers in a very reasonable timeframe.

From my discussions with the IT community, their major concern and number one focus area is to prevent business disruption and downtime. This costs companies real and significant money. The fact is that an ERP migration is a complex enough project managing the strategic, functional and technical portions. Adding a server infrastructure change increases fundamental risk. But, the key here is that it is done often and done successfully. Intel IT has published several whitepapers on the subject and communicated “Best Known Methods” to minimize that risk. A quick summary is inserted here:

Challenge:

• Convert Intel’s Worldwide Warehouse Management Software

• Upgrade from SAP* ERP version 4.7 to 6.0, change the DBMS, and perform a Unicode* conversion as well as a hardware upgrade

• Minimize downtime

Benefit to Intel IT:

• SAP ERP 6.0 improves Intel supportability

• Increases ease of integration to SAP NetWeaver* 7.1 Suite

• Provides access to Enhancement Packs and Enterprise Services

• Intel^® Itanium^®-based servers provide access to 128 GB of memory for database and SAP operations and significantly increased performance from true 64-bit processing

Key Results:

• Reduced downtime of upgrade by 50% by using Intel Architecture

In summary, upgrading your server infrastructure when migrating your ERP environment is a very, very complex task, but form a business perspective, it should be fairly easy to see the true benefits from combining the ERP migration and hardware upgrade at the same time.

Calculating ROI – Helping IT Make Informed Decisions

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:06:45 GMT

We created a server refresh ROI estimator tool to help IT managers make sense of the significant OpEx savings they can achieve by making targeted investments in new server hardware. In my previous blog when we introduced the ROI tool back in April 2009, I talked about the capabilities of the estimator and the benefits of server refresh. In the first 3 months, we have had nearly 4,000 users of the ROI estimator and of those users almost 800 users have printed reports to share with others in their organizations. The feedback we have received from users has been very encouraging.

CIO for major US hospital: “This would help my IT staff justify the financial value of the technology investment they are proposing. This has been a barrier to freeing up capital internally”
IT Manager for major US bank: “I used to have regular funding for technology refresh projects. It was a given for my budget. However, with the increased constraints on capital, I now have to justify this type of spending”
Technology Sales Consultant: “This tool helped me work better with my customer to gain a deeper understanding of their server environment and allowed us to jointly identify high ROI investments to improve their infrastructure”

I have also heard many constructive suggestions for improvement. As a result, we have continued to evolve the tool based on feedback from users.

Tool Training – How to Use: We heard that the benefits of using the Savings Refresh Estimator spanned many functional roles, making us realize that the use models for this type of tool and what users were looking for would vary dramatically from person to person. This has challenged us to look at ways to streamline the user interface (something we continue to work on) for different users and analyses. In the interim, we are in the process of developing a video training guide to help users understand how to use the tool to get maximum benefit. We have a pdf training guide today that can help you get started now.

PowerPoint Output: What would we do without powerpiont? J We received feedback on the desire to make the output of this tool more sharable inside IT organizations and with business partners in a powerpoint format as a way to communicate the opportunity and benefits for server refresh investment. So, we now have a powerpoint output option in the reports section that breaks down the benefits of server refresh for a variety of audiences from executive staff to facilities to finance. Everyone inside your business can benefit from server refresh and now you can show them how.

Secure Analysis: We received feedback that many users wanted access off-line either as a way to use in meetings when connectivity was challenged or to protect internal data from exposure online. We now have the ability for you to run the tool on your laptop to support these use models.

More … More … More Functionality. We heard lots of requests and ideas to expand the level of functionality and analysis capabilities. We have to balance scope, complexity Keep these requests coming. The following changes are incorporated into today’s estimator.

Virtualization to Virtualization Refresh Scenario – now included
Virtualization Loading: Can edit and change VM/server new and old
Custom Performance Data – enter you own performance data to better model what you expect to see in your biz
Depreciation Cycle – no longer fixed at 4yrs .. can adjust
Memory Sizing: information added to allow user analysis
Processor Description: allows user to cross reference data to other more familiar terminology.

Accuracy / Approach: We have also heard some feedback challenging us on different ways to look at refresh scenarios, especially as we learn more about how people are looking at and using virtualization and sizing their environments after refresh. Sizing is a very customer-centric and application specific task that is difficult to model in a one-sized fits all. We won’t be able to model every sizing situation, but are planning some future enhancements intended to help you self-evaluate.

I want to thank everyone in the community for their input on this tool and helping us to deliver a better product over time. Keep the ideas coming. Feel free to respond with comments here.

Chris

twitter: @chris_p_intel

Cash for Clunkers? Yes – It’s called Server Refresh.

bryce.olson@intel.com — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:32:07 GMT

You’ve seen it on the front pages of the papers lately. The program that offers consumers incentives to trade in older used cars for more fuel-efficient new cars is pushing auto sales into overdrive. The $1B in govt. funding for it was burned through in less than a week. The U.S. House of Representatives rushed through an additional $2B in emergency funds just to keep the program going, but will need Senate approval if it’s going to extend beyond Tuesday August 4^th. My guess is to make a continuation of the program palatable to the U.S. taxpayer, the incentive will need to be cut (from $4500 for a new fuel-efficient car to somewhere in the $1-2k range) but it’s great to seen people buying cars and stimulating part of the economy – while getting older fuel-inefficient cars off the roads.

I saw an interesting article talking about whether a similar program for servers would work…and though I think it’s a creative idea, I’ll argue that Intel and our OEM partners have been offering “Cash for Clunkers” for quite some time now – without any U.S. taxpayer help. How? Through promoting the benefits of server refresh, a strategy that is proving to be one of the most beneficial investments to IT and business. Using the Xeon ROI Estimator I spent 2-3 minutes modeling potential savings by comparing 4-year old 2P Intel Xeon based servers to new 2P Intel Xeon 5500 based servers – and this is what I found:

An investment in one Intel Xeon 5500 based server (~$8.5k including purchase price, migration cost, and software validation) enables up to 10x performance per server, a 10:1 server consolidation opportunity vs. 10 older servers purchased 4 years ago that as an IT manager I can now get rid of. So where’s the cash for the clunkers? Well, I would save over $4k a year in energy costs and over $11k a year in server / software maintenance costs by cutting out the old and putting in the new. The 4-year total savings is about $38k, with a break even period of about 9 months. Not bad…and that doesn’t even take into consideration software licensing costs that I probably can save by cutting down the server count. Try modeling this yourself and check out the new PowerPoint report that you can generate from it – really explains the benefits in a way that the finance and facilities folks will find useful.

I also found this link that explains why Intel IT decided to move ahead with server refresh in 2009 after current economic conditions forced Intel to re-evaluate the strategy. Analysis found that delaying server refresh for a year would increase costs by USD 19 million.

And a refresh strategy also applies to the bigger 4 Socket and above servers as well, as documented in this server refresh brief.

Server Refresh is a strategic investment for IT – the cash for clunkers program that keeps on giving.

bryce

Nehalem-EX will bring a lot to the RISC party

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:17:32 GMT

I wrote a while back about how the Xeon 7400(Dunnington) processor series compared to RISC. Since then I have shared information through other blog posts and sharing content about how Xeon 7400 and Xeon 5500 will compare to both SPARC and POWER.

Xeon 7400 and Xeon 5500 are the current products shipping into the marketplace today. I.M.H.O they offer a pretty compelling alternative from both a performance and TCO perspective Vs SPARC and POWER. But I will not try and repeat all the reasons here

What I wanted to share with you was some thoughts about what the next product to succeed Xeon 7400 will bring to the RISC party. Nehalem-EX is the code-name for our next generation of product designed to serve workloads currently serviced by Xeon 7400 today (i.e. Database, ERP, BI etc). EX btw is what we all would traditionally call MP or multi processor servers

Don't stop reading now, here is why I'm EXCITED about what Nehalem-EX will bring to the RISC party.

My excitement is actually based on real customer discussions about what Nehalem-EX will do for them and why it delivers some new stuff (my code for features and benefits) which they see as a pre-requisite to make the move from RISC to Xeon. For some customers the TCO and performance of products have been enough to convince them to move. For some other customers there are still some checkboxes remaining which I believe Nehalem-EX will address

Here is a snapshot of some of the cool new stuff which is actually convincing customers (from some real deals that I have worked)

Improved bandwidth. Up to 9 times memory bandwidth of previous generations
Introduction of Quickpath Interconnects to the EX systems
Add new RAS features previously seen on Itanium products to Xeon products
Significant improvement in performance vs previous generations e.g. Database 2.5xe
More scalable platforms through 8 OEMs offering >8S. These platforms are key to manage large databases and for large scale consolidation
Mainframe class availability in scalable platforms

For more information check out the press briefing from May. See more the details in the presentation

Nehalem-EX goes into production later this year and I am pretty excited about how it will change the game. What do you think?

Consolidating multiple Unix environments to Industry Standard Xeon

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:01:50 GMT

Running multiple Unix environments across a range of locations adds increased complexity and cost to the IT environment. I came across an interesting case study and wanted to highlight some of the key findings

YPF SAis the largest company in Argentina operating in the Oil and Gas industry. The company has 29 gas plants around Argentina running different Unix environments such as HP-UX, AIX and Solaris.

YPF SA consolidated their SAP ERP and Oracle DB environment from multiple Unix environments to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization running on Intel Xeon based platforms from IBM System X

Some of the key findings to highlight

Key requirement from Unix Administration Team that "migrating from old RISC/Unix and proprietary servers to open and flexible platforms would pose no risk to the reliability, availability and performance of the systems"
Positive impact on cost and performance; Lowered costs, simplified management and increased compatibility
Reduction in costs especially when compared to license costs of RISC based platforms
Increased performance and availability drove decision to scale with RHEL and Xeon
Ability to leverage Redhat integrated virtualization. Free up internal hardware and technical resources for other projects

I guess the combination of Redhat and Intel deliver the business results that customers are seeking. What do you think?

Solaris and Xeon 5500 - a perfect combination?

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:07:20 GMT

Are you a developer writing applications to run on the Solaris operating system?. Are you looking for ways to optimize your Solaris solution on industry standard architecture based on Intel microprocessor? If you answer yes to either of these questions then please read on.

Intel and SUN have been working closely together to optimize the Solaris operating system on the Intel Xeon 5500 processor. Most of you probably know the Xeon 5500 better by its product codename Nehalem. The Xeon 5500 is the the product that fits into 2 socket platforms.

SUN have just published a very compelling quick reference guidethat will assist both Developers and System Administrators looking to optimize Solaris solutions on Xeon based processors. The guide talks about the work that Intel and SUN are doing together, technical descriptions of specific features and capabilities that can be implemented in the Solaris OS to optimize the capabilities of the Xeon.

I have just finished reading this and it is a very compelling paper covering topics such as

- How Solaris takes advantage of Intel Turbo Boost Technology to use available power headroom to deliver higher performance based on workload demand

- How Solaris can take advantage of new Intel Quickpath Interconnect (better known as QPI) and other innovations in the OS to reduce memory latency

- How Solaris performance counters help to better manage workloads

- How Solaris takes advantage of many of the power efficiency capabilities in the processor. Things like Power Aware Dispatched in Solaris enable the processor to stay longer in idle states. In non tech talk this saves power.

Solaris has been a tried and tested operating system for along time for companies running their most business critical workloads. This paper talks about the combination of Solaris and Xeon to deliver improved reliability and availability for these critical workloads. Detail information on predictive self healing, fault management, leveraging Intel Machine Check Architecture and more all included in this paper.

Probably my favourite section is around the developer tools optimizations and the different tools available for developers that want to run and optimize their applications on Solaris and Xeon.

Ok, I'll stop waxing lyrical now. This is a very compelling paper and it does certainly construe that Solaris and Xeon 5500 could be the perfect combination for your Solaris solution. What do you think?

Nehalem-EX Brings New Economics to Scalable Systems

michael.j.demshki@intel.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:10:42 GMT

The debate on how to best increase system capacity to accommodate growing applications has raged on for years; “scale up” with more CPU, memory, and I/O, or “scale out” with loosely connected systems. Scaling out by adding networked systems to increase capacity has been a good economical solution for many IT managers because it allows them to grow by using less expensive, industry standard building blocks. However, there are some notable exceptions to this line of thought. One is that the class of applications that require shared memory and large database support are much better suited to run on a single, expandable system that scales up. These are typically transaction processing, business intelligence and ERP solutions. Until now, IT managers running applications that require scale-up systems larger than 4 or 8 CPUs have had limited platform choices and most were proprietary and expensive RISC-based servers.

The other problem with the scale out approach is the people, facilities, software and overhead costs and complexity of managing very large numbers of servers, which can grow to a point where the costs outweigh the performance and system cost benefits. The industry solution to achieving better ROI has been to consolidate multiple scale-out servers onto single industry standard scale-up servers with virtualization solutions. This is a good solution, but is limited by the number of application loads the IT manager feels comfortable placing on a single server, given the need to maintain peak performance and availability for each application.

Well, it looks like the scale-up, scale-out debate is about to take another turn. In the server product update Intel gave on May 26th, they talked about new levels of system scalability and choice supported by the upcoming Nehalem-EX processor. This processor will support systems that scale up to 8 sockets natively (shared memory, without any additional silicon), and up to 16 sockets and higher with node controllers from system manufactures that allow single systems to share memory beyond 8 sockets. So far there are over 15 different designs from 8 OEMs that offer 8 socket or higher scalability. But of course, for the class of application where scaling is important, socket count doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s needed for scalable performance. Thread support, key for transaction processing and virtualization, scales at the rate of 16 threads per socket with 8 cores and Hyper Threading (2 threads per core). That would be 128 threads for an 8-socket system, and 256 threads for 16 sockets. And in order to keep those threads fed with data close to the CPU, each processor supports up to 24 MB of shared cache (1.5X current generation Xeon), and an impressive 16 memory slots per socket or 128 DIMMs on an 8-socket system. In addition, the Scalable Memory Interconnect gives these systems 9 times the memory bandwidth of today’s top Xeon processor. Finally, four QuickPath interconnect links per socket allow for high-bandwidth sharing of data across the system.

So the net of it is that the industry is going to see a broad selection of highly scalable, next-generation servers that significantly extend the economic advantage of industry standard scale-up solutions for business-critical, large database, and high-end virtualization/consolidation deployments. I would expect these systems to give IT managers a very cost-effective alternative to the much more expensive and proprietary RISC-based servers they use today.

What are your thoughts? Mike

SPARC better than Intel - No it is not and I have data to prove it

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:33:45 GMT

I was thinking about what to write in my next blog and what I could share beyond what I have written previously about Intel Vs RISC in terms of TCO, performance and the customers that are choosing to move.

Luckily I didn't have to think too long on a Friday morning as a a topic came to mind instantly. There are numerous articles flying around this morning that picked up on the Oracle comments yesterday about how SPARC based systems compare to Intel. Thanks for providing me with an appropriate topic.

So in case you missed it, there was a question and answer session with Larry Ellison. When asked about SPARC, this was the reply "SPARC is much more energy efficient than Intel while delivering the same performance on a per socket basis. This is not a green issue, its an economic issue. Today, database centers are paying as much for electricity to run their computers as they pay to buy computers. SPARC machines are much less expensive to run than Intel machines"

1) SPARC more energy efficient than Intel? Seriously, in what parallel universe does that exists?

SUN continues to use watts per thread as measure of energy efficiency. The recognized industry standard benchmark for measuring energy efficiency is SPECpowerand I don't see any SPARC based results in the 91 results published. The absence of a result certainly says something very clear to me - no story.

These UltraSPARCT2+ systems get loaded with a lot of memory to deliver the their results, so when you look at overall system power (what people care about) they are not as energy efficient as Intel based systems.

SPECpower is effectively based of SPECJbb-2005 so another way of loking at this is to look at the SPECJbb-2005 results for a 4 socket UltraSPARcT2+ system and a Xeon 7400 system. The 4s UltraSPARCT2+ delivers 693k BOPs while Xeon 7400 is 532kBOPs. So you conclude that SPARC is better than Xeon?. That would be the wrong conclusion

UltraSPARCT2+ system would consume 1525 watts Vs Xeon 7400 at 816 watts. If you look at BOPs per watt (another way of looking at energy efficiency and performance) then you would see that Xeon 7400 is 43% more energy efficient. Doing a similar comparison with Xeon 5400 (I haven't even talked about our latest Xeon 5500, Nehalem) would be up to 77% more efficient than UltraSPARCT2+.

And lastly before I forget to mention the 4s UltraSPARCT2+ had 128GB memory and costs over $150,000for the system, while Xeon 7400 based system had 64GB memory and costs around $32,000.

2) SPARC deliver same performance on a per socket basis?

2S Xeon 5500 has performance leadership over 2S UltaSPARCT2+ across a wide range of benchmarks. Up to 70% more performance and up to 60% lower system cost. 4S Xeon 7400 has price/performance leadership over 4S UltraSPARCT2+, UltraSPARCT2+ results achieved with system loaded with lots of memory that drives the cost up to 3-4Xthat of Xeon 7400 system

3) SPARC machine are less expensive to run?. I can't for the life of me work this one out!.

Hardware systems based on Intel have leading price/performance (read cheaper), lower energy needs (so electrivity bill lower) and any software product with a license per core strcuture is less expensive on Xeon system than an 8 core UltraSPARcT2+ (which also has higher multipler per core)

That's all for now folks. I just wanted to share some data on why I know that SPARC machines are much MORE expensive to run than Intel machines

When Xeon 5500 series “Nehalem” servers are just not enough…

bryce.olson@intel.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:00:42 GMT

Sure, Intel® Xeon® 5500 Series Processors represent a quantum leap forward in terms of both performance and energy efficiency. That has been proven in a number of test results and reviews. But for your back-end data demanding enterprise app deployments, large scale server consolidation or virtualization of business critical applications, Intel® Xeon 7400 series processors offer outstanding performance and performance per watt in 4-socket servers. So, which platform do you choose, especially when this decision is likely going to be the key determining factor for capital savings, efficiency and TCO for your datacenter infrastructure? Well, you’re read a lot about Xeon 5500 series Nehalem servers over the last few weeks. Let me share with you some reasons to consider a Xeon 7400 series 4-socket server when you are presented with the choice between Intel’s two best of breed products for virtualization.

4 Socket and above servers (Xeon 7400) are purpose built – just like a large truck: They’re purpose built for your most data demanding enterprise applications like database and ERP, and for large scale server consolidation using virtualization. Large Trucks are also purpose built. They’re purpose built for hauling large loads over long distances. Now, you don’t buy a large truck to commute to work in. You also don’t take your everyday commuter and attempt to haul large loads with it, because if you did you would be significantly undersized (you’ve all seen those cars on the road with rear tires about ready to pop under the weight of a palette of heavy goods tied on top).

More Resources Matter for 4 Socket MP Workloads:
The apps/workloads listed above benefit from the expanded feature set associated with 4 Socket Xeon 7400 based servers: more processors (4 vs. 2), more cores (24 vs. 8), more memory (32 dimms vs. 18 dimms), more I/O capacity (7 slots vs. 4) and larger cache (16MB vs. 8MB). These features and what they enable are why MP Server buying patterns have remained stable with IT for the last 5 years and will continue to be stable for the foreseeable future according to IDC.

But in today’s economy there may be MP customers out there that will want to push the envelope and attempt to deploy lesser expensive 2S systems for traditional 4S solutions. Would doing so pencil out from a TCO perspective? Let’s take a look at two Virtualization usage examples and find out.

Large Scale Server Consolidation: Where almost 2x the memory matters.

In this scenario, IT Manager is dealing with numerous corporate acquisitions across the country prior to the economic downturn, with servers that now need to be consolidated to cut costs quickly. Goal is to convert 1000 older underutilized 2S servers. He (she) converts these to 1000 VMs and transfers them electronically to the central Data Center. He determines that these infrastructure apps when consolidated generally run into memory constraints before they run into processor constraints, so for his candidate solutions he compares a 4 Socket Server with Xeon X7460 processors vs. a new 2 Socket server with Xeon X5570 processors. He fully loads both systems with 4GB dimms (128GB on 4S vs. 72GB on 2S), and assigns 4GBs memory for each VM deployed (enabling 32VMs per server resulting in 31 new 4S servers vs. 18 VMs per server resulting in 56 new 2S Servers.)

Now, he only propagates the 4S Solution with 2 Xeon 7400 Processors, which allows the IT manager to still use all 128GB of memory on the 4S Servers while paying lower VMWare licensing costs. Price these systems out on Dell, HP, IBM’s or Sun’s website, and the Xeon X7460 servers will be in the $15k-$20k range vs. the Xeon X5570 based servers will be in the $10k-$12k range (i.e. roughly 1.5x higher for 4S vs. 2S server). Add VMWare license costs, power/cooling, LAN/SAN cabling, and system maintenance costs and you’ll see the 4S solutions offer a lower cost per VM.

Virtualizing Business Critical Workloads: Where 3x the Processor Cores matter.

In the previous example, we were looking to maximize consolidation ratios. In this example, we’re looking to achieve predictable high performance for a business critical app. Solutions like ERP that are put into a virtualized environment perform best when run without oversubscription, where you set the same number of virtual CPUs to equal the number of physical cores available on the platform. This helps deliver relatively more predictable performance for all VMs and is the way that IT@Intel intends to deploy ERP in a virtualized environment as they begin to test this moving forward (read more about this in the new whitepaper). In this example, we’ll convert ~100 non-production ERP instances (i.e. the instances used for QA, Dev, and Production break fix). We’ll assign 2 virtual CPUs and 8GB memory for each instance. The four-socket Xeon 7400 processor based systems (with 96GB memory) will have a total of 24 cores and will have a list price of about $25k. This allows us to run 12 Virtual Machines without oversubscription on the MP Servers and enables 100 ERP instances to be consolidated down to about 8 MP (4 Socket) servers. Since the Xeon 5500 based Servers just have 8-cores, the IT manager decides to avoid oversubscription and deploys 4 virtual machines – consolidating down to 25 DP (2 Socket) servers with 32GB Memory and a list price of about $8k per server. Include the costs of the hardware, VMware ESX license costs, power/cooling, cabling, and Server maintenance – the MP (4 Socket) solution here would also offer a lower cost/vm than the Xeon 5500 based DP (2 Socket) solution due to having 3x the processor cores on 4 Socket.

When you are deploying your most data demanding enterprise applications and implementing large scale server consolidation, Xeon 7400 based servers represent a very intelligent choice.

Let me know what you think.

bryce

The time is right now to move from risc

eoin.j.mcconnell@intel.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:16:31 GMT

I'll be up front, I really don't know what Brittany Spears, Miley Cyrus or Susan Boyle would say about moving from RISC to the Xeon 5500 processor!. What I can share is the feedback that I'm getting direct from customers. I'm currently out on the road and have got some real feedback direct from customers on why they are looking at migrating their solutions from RISC processors to Xeon processors.

Over the past couple of days I have had the opportunity to meet directly with individual customers and hosted a roundtable with several customers to discuss their plans to replace their RISC based infrastructure. The conversation has been very open and frank and has not been about 'should I move' but more focused on 'how do I make the move'. As could be expected the down economy is placing big taxes on the ability of IT organizations to support their business units need for organic growth in a flat to down IT spending environment. A big priority for most of the customers that I spoke with is how to reduce their overall TCO while still meeting the increased demands being placed on IT by their business Partners. Most of the customers are already engaged in active projects to assess moving from RISC or are building their plans to make this migration.

During the roundtable I had opportunity to share the latest Xeon 5500 processor performance comparisons Vs the main SPARC and POWER based solutions out there. There was great rejoicing and joy (ok I'm taking poetic license here) in the roundtable when we share some of the results that we highlighted when we launched the Xeon 5500 processor just over 3 weeks ago. So I want to spread the joy and let you read for yourself the performance and price performance benefits.

We compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top UltraSPARCT2+ in a 2 socket configuration. We took best published results on spec.org and sap (so no funny games at play). The results comparing best UltraSPARCT2+ vs best Xeon 5500 with 1 taken as baseline for SPARC redults were amazing

- 20% better on SAP-SD

- 62% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 69%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 75% better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are offered at approx $11,000 whereas the UltraSPARCT2+ is at $36,000.

Compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top POWER6 in a 2 socket configuration gave even more staggering results. At the roundtable today customers were amazed. They keep hearing that POWER 6 has leading performance and more GHz so better performance. Right?. Wrong is the answer and I noticed many customers scribbling down the comparisons. Again taking 1 as baseline for POWER results

- 150% better on SAP-SD

- 190% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 126%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 90%better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are 92% less expensive than equivalent POWER 6 offerings.

I only shared the specific comparisons vs RISC and have not gone into the architectural advancements of the Xeon 5500 processor and how it addresses real business needs that have been flagged to us. There have been lots of other blogs out in cyberspace over the last few weeks on improvements in IO, low latency etc. so you don't need my 2 cents.

I think now is the time to make the move from RISC, what do you think?

Estimating Your Savings From Server Refresh

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:08:52 GMT

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

Am I making the right choice with 4S+ Xeon 7400 servers?

adesh.gupta@intel.com — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:49:55 GMT

With 2S Xeon processors delivering outstanding energy efficient performance, I get many questions from customers on “what about the Dunnington-based Servers”, “would it make sense for me to continue to use 4S servers in my IT/Enterprise”, “am I making the right choices with Dunnington” and so on.

The answer is a yes, even considering our 2S Nehalem-EP based servers expected in Q1 2009.

Customers make choices based on their business requirements – whether the new platform would be able to meet their IT needs. And in making such a decision in today’s economic context, there is temptation to use a 2S server as it is costs less. However, the choice of the server platform should not be dictated by the price alone; there are other more important considerations that you have to look into before deciding on the right choice.

One of our customers in banking had a very interesting problem – the system should be capable of delivering a user-acceptable response time while maintain headroom for growth. And the customer was keen to use virtualization running his workloads. With these key parameters (among others) in mind, we sized both 2S and 4S servers for the customer. And it turned out, that both the 2S and 4S servers were able to meet the response time, but the 4S server could deliver the “headroom for growth”. The headroom was based on the bank’s projected business growth in the next 12-24 months, their existing datacenter facility (space, power, cooling) and opportunity to further consolidate applications in a virtualization environment. The bank could have easily settled on a multiple 2S servers running in a virtual pool, but when you factor in “headroom for growth” considerations, the 4S+ Xeon 7400 servers still deliver the performance scalability and expandability that is needed today and tomorrow.

The bank finally settled on ten 4S servers and ten 8S servers. These servers had the unique capability to scale (4S to 8S to 16S) within the same OS footprint (while keep costs under control) and also deliver the performance headroom for the bank’s further needs.

In doing the above exercise for the bank, simple guidelines emerged – a) select the right architecture that scales in the future, b) look at established OS/App technologies such as virtualization to consolidate the environment, c) make decisions based on “your workload” running on the new servers and use published benchmarks as indicatives only.

Let me know what you think – share your views.

Inverting Moore’s Law Means Big Cost-Savings for IT in 2009

bryce.olson@intel.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:05:41 GMT

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a prediction, popularly known as Moore's Law, stating that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years. Intel has kept that pace for nearly 40 years. For IT, this translates into a roadmap that enables IT to buy new servers that cost roughly the same as the previous server but performs so much better. Compare Intel’s 4 Socket MP server performance introduced in 2006 (Intel Xeon processor 7000 series) to today’s server introduced in 2008 (Intel Xeon 7400): 3x more performance throughput as measured by SPECint*_rate_base 2000*, 2.4x more ERP users as measured by SAP-SD* and 2x more database transactions as measured by TPC-C*.

Now, introduce a global economic downturn into the mix and suddenly IT is forced to cut costs and projects (i.e. delay or cancel upgrades and non-revenue generating projects). New articles start popping up from magazines like the Economist that take Moore’s Law and propose flipping it on it’s ear: instead of products providing more performance at roughly the same price, provide products that offer the same performance as IT is already experiencing, but now at a lower price. Call it “inverting Moore’s law” where IT takes the dividend it provides in dollars vs. extra performance.

So here’s something to think about: You can also “invert” Moore’s Law by making new targeted IT investments today that offer attractive payback scenarios tomorrow - giving you similar performance but at a much lower cost. With mortgage rates dropping, you may have already benefited from a rapid payback in your personal life (i.e. I recently refinanced a house down from 7% to 5.25% 30-year fixed rate that I had continuously made additional principle payments for. The ~$5k up front investment (i.e. closing costs) will be “paid back” to me after 5 months due to monthly mortgage payment savings.

Here is a server refresh example that explains how you can also get an attractive payback for your IT department.

Oracle Database Refresh: Let’s next look at a hypothetical example of an IT department running current Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on 12 servers purchased in early 2006 (dual-core Intel Xeon 7041 based servers introduced in 2005) and assess the total cost of ownership difference in moving to new servers. We’ll assume the IT manager is paying per processor licensing fees for Oracle Database. We’ll compare the old server equipment to new 4-core Xeon 7440 based servers that offer up to ~3x more database performance (Xeon processor 7400 Series come in flavors of 6-core and 4-core versions). This should enable consolidation ratios of 3:1, enabling the IT manager to reduce from 12 servers to 4 new servers.

First the new investment: 4 New Xeon 7400 based servers at roughly $20k each = $80k. Add another $5k for Network, Server Maintenance and Install Costs. Remove ~$2k in tax implications associated with the expense in year 0. Total investment ~$83k.

Next, let’s look at the savings: The IT Manager is paying $41.8k yearly on Oracle maintenance/support costs x 12 dual-core MP servers today, that is $501k. The 4 new quad-core servers will have larger Oracle database maintenance/support costs because of the core count ($83k x 4 servers = $334k) but this will still result in $167k SW savings each year (difference between $501k and $334k) which my calculations show about $669k savings over 4 years. Moving from 12 to 4 servers also reduces about $72k in network, server maintenance, and utility (power/cooling) costs over 4 years as well. In addition to all of these costs savings over 4 years, my calculations show that the original investment of ~$83k has a payback of 9 months.

Targeted IT investments today can offer attractive payback scenarios and cost savings tomorrow - giving you similar performance but at a much lower cost. Let me know what you think?

"Live From" VMWorld Europe 2009

william.h.lea@intel.com — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:02:49 GMT

For those of you on tight travel budgets, you're in luck. I'll be blogging here about the VMworld Europe 2009 Event. We are on location this week in Cannes France, where movie stars are everywhere, well not really, but check out this shot on the side of my hotel:

Day 1:

Ok, now that I have your undivided attention, let's talk about what's happening at VMworld Europe 2009. Paul Maritz, President & CEO of VMware kicked off the event this morning in the Louis Lumiere Grand Auditorium. Seems this is the same spot where the stars gather for the annual Cannes Film Festival. Anyway, nice place and Mr. Maritz started off talking about where virtualization technology has been and where's it going in 2009. First, The Problem: Rising complexity and tight IT budgets....

Next, Mr. Maritz described for us a new product from VMware, vSphere, which addresses the overall Datacenter cloud computing foundation....

Looking ahead to 2009, VMware sees vSphere as the Virtual Datacenter OS, a foundation for your internal & external clouds...

If you want to check out the full keynote, click here: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/europe2009/agenda/keynotes/1. Check back for more updates on VMworld Europe 2009......

Day 2:

Ok, so Day 2 is wrapping up and with all the new capabilities of ESX 4.0, vSphere, many will want to talk about virtualizing apps that previously were in the "It's too complex to virtualize" catagory. With Intel continuing to innovate on new hardware virtualization features and next generation cpu architecture around the corner, the question is "Can all applications be virtualized?". Check out Jim Blakely's Blog here: http://www.vmworld.com/thread/2490 inside the Intel Virtual Booth on VMWorld.com. I'm sure Jim would take the challenge if you think you have an application that is too complex or traditionally un-virtualizable.

What's really amazing about VMworld is how open the discussions are how much VMware wants to share with the industry and the eco-system as we like to call it. Today's schedule was kicked off by Dr. Steve Herrod, CTO and Sr. VP of R&D at VMware, you can view his keynote here: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/europe2009/agenda/keynotes/2.

The Intel booth was busy today again with chalktalk sessions from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, & VMware. I'll be posting these sessions soon as I get a better upload connection. Here's one photo for those who are curious how the Intel booth looks...

I'll be back tomorrow with more from VMworld Europe 2009, stay tuned...