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)

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.

Three short years ago, this would have taken 32 Xeon 5100 (Woodcrest) servers, accounting for 64U of rack space... this pic is from the upcoming Xeon MP (Beckton) platform with Nehalem-EX processors that many of you have seen at IDF 2009.  This server only takes 3U of rack space... less than 5% of the space of what it could replace.

Sometimes you see a screenshot and it just makes your jaw drop...

Just to give a comparison of CPU density... here's a diagram showing the comparison of 3 year old technology compared to the upcoming Nehalem-EX.  If each of those 32 old servers burns 400W of power - that's 12.8 kilowatts - compared to one server, burning less than 1kW.

What's even more amazing, is that some design wins are based on a 1U server with the same cpu footprint - that's AWESOME!

What are your thoughts on these upcoming multi-core technology improvements?

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.

I'm always looking for good ways to describe to end-users what Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager can relate to everyday activities.  Over the weekend, I was helping a buddy of mine move to a new home, and of course we rented a truck.  While we were driving, we noticed a cool gauge on the dash and a pretty simple sticker describing what it does:

Keep it in the Green - what a simple concept!  Most everyone can relate to the gas pedal in your vehicle directly with gas mileage. If you have a lead-foot, you burn more gas.  But people who want to conserve, and keep it green - use cruise control.

Well, Intel servers can also be managed to optimize the energy consumed by the platform.  Power Optimzed servers using X5500 Series Processors (Nehalem) and the X5500 chipset in conjunction with Node Manager is like cruise-control - you set your "speed" and the servers keep that maximum speed.  It's all managed via P/T states using Intel Datacenter Manager.

Of course, at times the RED ZONE is needed - work needs to get DONE - so you throttle up, kick in the Turbo Boost and release that power cap!  But there are also times when all that energy isn't needed - so you lift your foot off the gas pedal, and set your speed for the work that needs to be done. Intel Xeon based servers can transition to higher/lower power states using technologies like EIST, DBS, and Node Manager.

Keep your eyes on the lookout for more data on Intel and server power management at the Intel Developer Forum 2009

Cloud Power Management with Intel® Microarchitecture (Nehalem) Processor-based Platforms

Check Twitter for more details @IDF and @IntelNews and search #IDF09

* disclaimer: giving credit where credit is due U-Haul owns that sticker and tagline!

One of the recurring themes that I've been noticing from end-users who are testing or evaluating Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager (or Node Manager) - the question is "How do we turn it on or off?"  To put it simply - when you have a Node Manager capable platform - you can simply put it to work and let your power policies decide when to enable/disable the features...

So let me step things back a bit and talk about the technology itself first.  Node Manager is very much like any *T technology that Intel has deployed over the past several years, it's an ingredient - or in this scenario a mix of ingredients that is available at the platform level.  Here are the 'ingredients' that when combined, give you the ability to monitor/manage power, and in some cases monitor thermal events.

• The platform is based on the Xeon 5500 Series Chipset (codename Tylersburg-EP) server board
• Xeon 5500 Series Processors (codename Nehalem EP)
• Node Manager Enabled Firmware with the Manageability Engine
• Server chassis components that meet IPMI 2.0 specifications for monitoring (e.g. thermal monitoring)
• PMBUS Power Supply - this communicates with the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) for platform power usage

For those of you wanting to get your hands on this technology TODAY - check out the Intel Server linueup:

• Intel® Server Board S5500WB (codename Willowbrook) which is optimized for IPDC deployment, and supports IPMI 2.0, Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager, and can also support the Data Center Manageability Interface (DCMI) 1.0 specification.
• Intel® Server Board S5520UR (codename Urbanna) is the mainstream Enterprise platform which support IPMI 2.0 and Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager

Both platforms work in conjunction with Intel® Data Center Manager (Intel® DCM) which is the SDK which provides power and thermal monitoring and management.  This SDK allows group and policy based management for single server, rack, logical group, lab, or whole datacenter models.

Ok - so that reads like a bunch of marketing stuff... but here's the 'guts' of the technology...

When you purchase a Node Manager enabled server, there are a few simple steps to take to set things up to monitor/manage your server.

Most likely you'll need to setup your BMC, Intel provides a CD based implementation to help with this in our servers - it's called the Intel Deployment Assistant.  This lightweight OS bootable CD can setup the most common BIOS settings, check versions of firmware and update them via Internet connection to ensure you have the latest BIOS, BMC, ME and Sensor firmware.  Each OEM will have their own methods but should be similar in function when it comes to setting up the server for monitoring.

The BMC needs an ip address, netmask, and default gateway setup - and according to IPMI specifications - you can also set the administrative (user) access rights if you would like to tighten down security a bit.  Once you have these access points setup - you can utilize standard IPMI commands to communicate with your server or use Intel DCM to really  'visualize' the capabiliites of Node Manager.

Here's a great demo video showcasing some of the Node Manager & Intel DCM use cases:

How many of you have worked with IPMI management before?

The technology that has been around for a while, but now Intel has put automation and policy based management features into the platform - thereby reducing costs, increasing responsiveness to power policies, and also making Xeon Servers more energy efficient than before.  Many of our customers are asking for Node Manager enabled servers - is your OEM on track to deliver?

Recently in our test lab, we experienced a cooling failure... and I wasn't even sitting in the lab to realize it.  In fact, I wasn't in the same state!

With the recent launch of the Xeon 5500 Series servers - I have been testing some use-cases against four of our servers in our lab when I noticed that the temperature was rising pretty drastically in there.  How did I see this?  Using Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager embeddd in our Xeon Servers and using our Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) SDK software interface - the data is presented in a visual format.

In the graph above, the dark colored line is the "front panel inlet" temperature, and in a matter of minutes, the temperature in the lab rose from 71F to 87F - 16 degrees!  What I didn't have setup is the scenario is a power policy that activates on a thermal trip.  Here is how you would setup this policy in Data Center Manager under the Policies section for this rack:

In the event that a thermal event occurred that would cause the room to heat up to 78F (as shown above) - Intel DCM would send the IPMI commands to the platform which in turn would tell the Node Manager firmware to throttle-back the Xeon CPUs to their lowest P-state possible.  This would reduce energy consumed across the systems in the policy group as well as reduce the thermal output of each server.  This would in turn generate less heat across the servers thereby reducing the load placed on an already overheated lab or datacenter.

This gives the server managers more time to gracefully shutdown systems, and/or move the workloads to cooler sections of the datacenter.  If you have ever experienced a cooling failure in the datacenter, it's a usually a frenzy to shutdown machines to minimize heat and/or power utilization overall.  This thermal policy can give you more time before you reach a critical temperature where you start losing components, servers and ultimately - loss of data and productivity.

Using standard the standard IPMI interface, the Data Center Manager SDK and Node Manager on the Xeon 5500 series platform enable power monitoring, power management, and front panel inlet monitoring.   This gives a server/datacenter manager the capcity to measure power usage per server, where you'd have to previously have more expensive power measurement tools.  External power meters cost anywhere from a cheap $15 to spendy $1000 - but now the technology is embedded into the firmware on the machine.

You can learn more about the Xeon 5500 Series Processors on the Intel Xeon website.