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 Did Intel IT Build Two SuperComputers?

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:09:27 GMT

In order to deliver to the continued promise of Moore’s Law, Intel’s Information Technology team needs to enable Intel’s Silicon designers with the tools, capabilities and streamlined processes to bring higher performing processors to market every year. The latest generation of 45nm products (ie the Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem) was an especially challenging project for us.

With Intel design computing demand growing an average of 45% year over year coupled with the rich technology capabilities in the 45nm based Nehalem micro-architecture, the computational requirements of silicon tape-out (the last stage of design before manufacturing) represented an approximate 13x increase in increase in demand from prior 65nm processors. Staring at this demand (1.2 million hours of compute demand per day) plus a need to bring products to market faster and more efficiently, our IT team realized we needed to do something different - our standard grid computing solution that was sufficient for earlier stage design work was insufficient for tape-out.

Solution: Intel IT built a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution that currently rank in the Top 500 list of supercomputers (#261, #308, Nov 09) and feature a new parallel storage environment to support our 45nm Silicon tape-out process. The details of this effort are captured in this whitepaper.

In summary, the Intel IT HPC solution employs two of the world’s fastest supercomputers to create the fastest microprocessors helping Intel achieve the following results.

· Completed 45nm tape-out in 10day, less than HALF the time of prior products

· Delivered an estimated incremental value of $44M to Intel

I can’t wait for what tomorrow will bring as Intel IT is already upgrading and evolving this HPC solution to support our future generations of micro-processor designs. Tune in tomorrow at SuperComputing 2009 in Portland where Shesha Krishnapura from Intel IT will present more details on our HPC environment or join us December 8th, 2009 from 10-12am PST for a live chat with Intel IT experts in the Server Room

Chris (twitter)

Germany, France, or the UK: Who Wins for Server ROI?

edward.g.groden@intel.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:41:28 GMT

Most of the time, server ROI is measured on the data center scale, replacing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers with fewer higher-performing and more energy efficient servers.

But...have you ever wondered how much power you could save if you replaced every 4 year old server in an entire country with Xeon 5500 Nehalem-based systems? What about how much CO2 that could be removed for those same 4-year old servers – and number of cars it effectively removes from the road?

Well, wonder no more! Check out this short paper for an eye-opening comparison of the UK, Germany, and France, and how big of an ROI they can realize if the entire country refreshed ALL of their 4-year-old servers. It looks at power savings, land reclamation, and monetary savings in slightly different terms, like how much space can be saved in comparison to the floor area of Notre Dame Cathedral? You’ll need to read on to find out more… J

Additionally, all calculations were done using the Xeon ROI tool, so check it out and come up with some more interesting comparisons based on your city, state, or country data. Be sure to post them here!

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.

Somebody Blew The Whistle on The ‘Nehalem’ Effect

bryce.olson@intel.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:24:19 GMT

There’s a video going around from one of Intel’s top external customers. Before you see this (video linked below) I wanted to position this correctly. I caught up with Mr. X at an undisclosed coffee shop and got his approval to share publicly the messages that we would have rather had him go out with. Those messages are as follows:

Mr. X’s 4 year old servers were a burden on his organization, he spent all of his budget on just maintenance, nothing left for innovation.

He looked at his old infrastructure and determined that replacing them with more powerful-energy efficient servers from Intel was a strategic investment.

The New intel Xeon 5500 based servers provided the opportunity for him to innovate again. He claimed that these new Intel Xeon Processor 5500 (Nehalem-EP) are the best enabler of IT business value that he's seen in years.

They boosted energy efficiency, saved him big $ and extended his facility lifespan – now he doesn’t have to go build a new data center.

He replaced his old servers in a 9:1 ratio (getting rid of 9 old and replacing with 1 new) that enabled him to cut operational expenditures by 90% …And that savings alone is paying for the investment in these new servers in just 8 months.

By strategically investing in IT when his competitors hunkered down and cut spending – he is now positioned to grow faster and gain share as the economic upturn arrives.

Ok, now that I’ve had a chance to convey his real messages, you can check out this video.

How does a Real Server improve your life?

keith.e.lauritzen@intel.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:22:18 GMT

I’d like to introduce myself as a product line manager at Intel who has spent almost a decade ensuring we are creating the best servers to solve small business challenges. Part of my role is to influence future generation products and I’d like to learn more about your challenges, needs and desires so I can ensure we address them in our next generation products.

Here is a story I have heard in the past: “Ah geez, What Now? A customer just called to tell me they tried to enter an online order for my product and my web site is nowhere to be found. I am lucky they called, but so much for spending a Saturday at my kid’s baseball tournament! Now I need to drive an hour to my downtown office to restart and possibly fumble with my server. You would think that the desktop system that I am using as a server would just work so I can spend my free time with my family and my work time growing my business.”

I can’t count the number of times I have heard a similar story from customers and colleagues that are trying to grow a small business, manage their own computers and have a personal life. The answer to their problem is simple, buy a real server based on Intel®Xeon® Processors that is designed to keep your business running 24/7. Our latest Xeon processors and chipsets are not only validated to run 24/7, but include features such as support for error correcting code memory and RAID for server operating systems that ensure dependability and differentiate a real server from desktop system used as a server. However, a small business should not care about all this technical jargon. I believe they only care that their server runs 24/7 without failure, enabling them to focus on business growth and life.

What are your small business challenges? I’m all ears.

Keith

Reporting live from the Intel booth at Oracle OpenWorld

jason.t.beane@intel.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:23:43 GMT

At Intel, we not only pack a lot of performance in a small form factor, we also pack a lot of great demos and theater presentations into our booth at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco (South Moscone, booth #1621). We have 5 demos from 5 of our customers—Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun—and 3 other demos showcasing Wind River, Intel’s SOA Expressway product, and last, but certainly not least, Intel’s amazing and upcoming Nehalem-EX processor, which you heard Michael Dell praise in his keynote this morning.

Over the course of the three days of our booth at OOW (Monday through Wednesday this week), we will have over 35 brief presentations that will help you plan your requirements for your next generation data center. They are short and sweet, and you can ask all the questions you want. If you simply attend a presentation and get a few more stamps form our demo stations, you can enter to win one of two netbooks that will be given away at the end of each day.

Outside of our booth, you may find us presenting in various partners’ booths and we hope to see you in a session we are having later today (see info below). We had an amazing session yesterday from resident Intel genius, Steve Shaw. The huge room was filled to capacity. At this other session today we will be giving away a netbook. Here are the logistics for today’s session:

ID#: S309892

Title: Ten Ways to Improve J2EE Application Performance on Multicore Systems

Track: Oracle Develop: Enterprise Java and Oracle WebLogic

Date: 13-OCT-09

Time: 17:30 - 18:30

Venue: Hilton Hotel

Room: Yosemite B

We hope to see you around somewhere at Oracle OpenWorld, but if for some reason we miss you entirely, please visit www.intel.com/server for more info on Intel’s fantastic products. Also, please visit Channel Intel on youtube for some videos from the event.

What a tool! (For finding a first server that is….)

lynne.mccandless@intel.com — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:25:48 GMT

When it comes to your car or fixing something around the house, you know there’s a tool for every job right? Well, it’s no different when you’re considering transitioning from a desktop-based server to a real server. That’s why we created the Server Transition tool for all small businesses. It’s easy to use (a few clicks), and gives you what you need to make a sound business decision.

Now you have a comprehensive tool to understand your server options and how your current system measures up. All you do is select the year you purchased your current system and the tool makes an initial guess at the configuration you have right now. You can make adjustments so it better matches your actual set-up and then, PRESTO! You’ll see how your system stacks up to a real server based on the processor, memory, storage, business applications and form factor. This way, you’re making an apples to apples comparison with quantifiable data. Well, I guess since it’s a desktop versus a server it’s more of an apples to apple pie comparison and maybe even apple pie a la mode….

You can even take the comparison one step further by answering a few usage questions to find a more customized configuration for your business needs. It’s really that simple – a few clicks and you have a recommended server configuration that will deliver greater dependability, productivity and performance to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Now, if only there were tools like that to help my sister find the right guy to date. Maybe that would be more of a tool avoidance tool, if you know what I mean.

Don’t wait, check it out now.

Intel Node Manager Ecosystem Video IDF 2009

todd.christ@intel.com — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:56:09 GMT

The ecosystem is growing...

Sean Maloney's keynote presentation at IDF 2009 highlighted Intel Node Manager. This is the video from his keynote which shows customers from Baidu, BMW, Oracle, and Telefonica, who have been working with Intel on Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager.

Check out the final slide showcasing the OEM/ODM/Console providers and customers using Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager.

From Factory to DataCenter - a retrofit story

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:27:13 GMT

Found this video about how intel IT converted what was a high volume manafacturing facility to a high performance computing datacenter that now is on the top 500 list. Watch Tom Greenbaum, Data Center Operations Manager for Intel IT, provide a description of this retro-fit and tour of the new facility.

Some key facts highlighted in the video

avoided several million $ in facility cost avoidance
landed traditional enterprise environment in raised floor, hot/cold aisle design in one section of facility
landed HPC environmet on existing concrete slab floor which enabled higher density deployment of servers
6M Watt, 10K server capacity (4.7k today)
room to grow for future to support data center consolidation

chris

Submarines, Stealth Fighters and Evolving Needs of Information Security

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:08:46 GMT

New Server Security Technologies Are Coming & Why We Need Them

The other day I had the opportunity to talk with Jeff Casazza and James Green from Intel’s Server Platform Group. The topic? server security. Our conversation was focused on the introduction of some new security technologies that are on their way and why we need them. During our discussion, I found myself thinking back to my days in the US Navy, where security was a core topic of everything we did. The introduction of submarines transformed naval tactics and the stealth fighter changed aviation tactics.

So, why does IT put so much emphasis on information security? … because the cost of a data breech is extremely high. Imagine if a data breech of your IT systems resulted in losing employee social security numbers or customer information – the cost to recover that data (if possible) and the legal costs (penalties from regulatory agencies) is very, very high. Jeff and James mentioned that business models are also exposed if these types of information escapes happen – a company’s brand, business and employee relationships could be at risk given the nature of trust and integrity that circle throughout our business.

Security always ranks high in importance, especially when we feel at risk. As I have transitioned into my new role inside Intel IT, I have found a significant focus on security solutions especially as new threats (for profit attacks), new usages (client / server virtualization, cloud computing) and new collaboration tools (social media) challenge our existing paradigms of information security.

During my discussion, I learned about two technology standards that Intel is implementing for servers that reduce security risks and address the changing nature of information security attacks happening today and expected tomorrow.

Stealth Fighters Attacking Your Data: The nature of security attacks have changed. Previous generation hackers used to target broad wide spread attacks on corporations or the worldwide web trying to disrupt business, gain notoriety with the ability to affect tens of thousands of people. The newer generation attackers are seeking a smaller target .. a single laptop or a single server. These new for-profit attacks are aimed at both industrial (business) or government entities and only need a single penetration into your infrastructure to get enough information to create a serious issue for your business.

Encryption: A solution to defend against the stealth fighter point attack on your data is increased encryption of data. Data encryption is not new. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for communication over the internet, harddisk encryption and enterprise application encryption are all standard methods IT shops use to protect information. Unfortunately, encryption is not free, and I’m not talking about purchase cost .. but rather compute cost. Encryption is a compute intensive process that consumes processing cycles. Intel is planning on introducing new instructions for Advance Encryption Standards (AES-NI) that are intended to dramatically improve the efficiency of encryption in a future version of it’s processor micro architectures.

Submarines Seeking Your Data From Under Your Hypervisor: Much of the anti-virus and security protection that resides on servers and client machines resides and is run through either the Operating System, Hypervisor or Application layer. New malware software and root kits are targeting systems at startup before the hypervisor and/or OS boot up undermining the protection you have at the higher levels of the application stack.

A new server technology from Intel, called Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel TXT) works to ensure your system can boot up to the secure, protected environment you have deployed through your software stack. In doing this, TXT ensures that your anti-virus software “perimeter” is secure and has not been compromised by a root kit “submarine”. TXT has been available in Client Intel® vPro™ processor technology-based platforms since 2007.

Tune into the upcoming Intel Developers Forum (www.intel.com/idf) to learn more about plans for securing your server’s data and many other technology innovations from Intel.

Chris

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

Are Your Servers Ready for The Economic Recovery?

bryce.olson@intel.com — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:49:25 GMT

Japan announced today that it has emerged from recession, following Germany and France’s announcements last week that their economies also grew in the second quarter.

Moody’s Economy.com Business Confidence survey shows that confidence has been steadily increasing since March ‘09.

For the first time since September ’08, “Economic Recovery” nudges above “Economic Crisis” in Google Search Volume in early August.

In addition to this, economic forecasts (WW GDP, US GDP, and EU GDP) point to a recovery over the next 6 months. A couple of quotes:

The direction of real GDP is even expected to turn from negative to positive in the current quarter. The academic arbiters of the business cycle at the National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually proclaim that the Great Recession ended sometime this summer.
Moody’s Economy.Com – July 7, 2009
The global economy is beginning to pull out of a recession unprecedented in the post–World War II era
International Monetary Fund, imf.org – July 8, 2009

So, why am I bombarding this blog with various optimistic economic data? Because if we really are pulling out of the abyss, I’m worried that many companies out there are sitting on servers that will not be ready for the increased demand right around the corner.

John Gantz, IDC Vice President in his keynote speech at the start of this year’s CIO Summit in Auckland was quoted as saying there will be an unprecedented amount of IT-driven change in the next four years. He projected that there will be a three-fold rise in mobile users and information will grow five-fold, resulting in heightened levels of security and privacy and questions on which data to store or throw away. He also mentioned that the number of interactions between people on networks will grow eight times.

So this got me thinking… Is your company looking to differentiate and go after more market share while your competitors are hunkered down and not investing in the downturn? My guess is that there are a lot of IT managers being asked to support more social media, offer more SaaS, deploy more virtual machines, and support more real time analytics to get a leg up on the competition. My gut tells me that it will be hard to do all of this with older servers that were put into another year of extended warranty because that felt like the right move when the proverbial economic s**t hit the fan last year.

It’s critical to be prepared for when the recovery comes, and data points to an economic turnaround happening now – are you positioning your department to own it when it arrives?

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?

My Journey to the Center of IT

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:56:12 GMT

I have been working in servers for almost 10 years with intel and in the last 4 years, much of my job had me focused on how IT uses server technology to create business value. It was an awesome experience where I learned new things every day from OEMs, Intel's customers, sales force and with social media ... many extended.

During my role as an end user product marketing manager, I found that Intel IT was an extremely valuable source of learning for me to understand the end customer of the products that Intel makes and enables. I also found that end user IT organizations valued hearing how Intel IT was approaching business challenges and deploying technology solutions to create value. So when I was given the opportunity to move into Intel IT and be part of that team and learn from the inside out, my decision was easy.

I'm excited about seeing all aspects of technology (client, server, storage, network, facility, pc companions ... ), how IT aligns to business goals, makes investment trade-offs, implements new projects without disrupting business processes, and a host of other topics. My learning curve is steep and fast (just the way I like it). So as I transition and learn about Intel IT from the inside out, I will continue to share my experiences and learnings as i go

If you'd like to follow along real time on my Journey to the Center of IT, follow me on twitter (@Chris_P_Intel) as I will share the things I find, learn and explore. Let me know if there is something you want to know.

In the mean time, check out the various resources available from IT@Intel including technical / business whitepapers, tools, videos and blogs. Many of these are already on my required reading list.

Chris