Following a recent interview I conducted with the Register on a related subject, I was asked to talk more about Intel's current 45nm technology and our roadmap for new technology later this year. Join me in a two part video series where I discuss 45nm and beyond.

Part 1 (below) discusses the technology and benefits that 45nm xeon processors deliver for IT today.

Tune in next week to hear Part 2 - what we have planned for future enhancements to today's xeon products - the Nehalem Processor and Intel QuickPath architecture.

Chris

Part four of three

Hopefully if you are watching this, you have already seen the first three installments I did on surviving data center crisis. A quick recap, the premise ( aka crisis ) is, You are running out of capacity.

According to Green Tech World, TMC 2007 "81% of IT mgrs will exceed capacity for power or space in the next 5 years".

In the first three video segments I spoke to three complementary approaches, that taken together could give you as much as 50X the data center capacity in your existing power and space .

Summarizing:

Data Center Crisis - How to Survive... Refresh with todays advanced high performing servers

Data Center Crisis - Part 2 - Using Virtualization... Virtualize and Consolidate

Data Center Crisis - Part 3 - Getting Dense- Use every Watt

Today I want to address two follow-up questions:

One, Where to go next when I used up all this new capacity?
Two, Who can help me get there?

The answers, it turns out, are related.

Moving outside the box is the 4^th strategy, and like the other strategies, it can be used anytime, in complement with the other three strategies.

Step to outside the boxness:

Moving outside the box allows it manager to move work that can be efficiently run elsewhere ( things like email ) outside the data center, and focus on the highest business value or least movable work inside.

As to who can help you get here. The system integrator/IT Outsourcer community offers support in all four strategies I have outlined.

My recommendation is to examine your situation, and your growth projection, and create a plan using all four strategies that will preclude the major capital expense of data center construction. Avoiding that 10 to 50 million dollar capital hit should be a very compelling proposal.

After coming back from IDF a couple weeks ago, I've had some time to go through the mountains of online material, presentations mostly and a few interesting videos. This video is from Pat Gelsinger's keynote address and features Mendel Rosenblum from VMware. Pat and Mendel discuss new technologies in virtualization and demonstrate "Flex Migration", just hit the play button below to view...

This is very interesting for those IT shops with multiple legacy platforms and new generation servers coming online. We will have more discussion on this topic in the future, and so in the meantime, let us know if you have questions on how this could benefit your datacenter.

This is part three - the implication being that it is a sequel to part one and part two. It is. That said, each of the sections have their own messages and may or may not help your data center. The first part talked about the benefits of bringing in the latest hardware. Intel has been delivering performance increases at a pace beyond "Moore's Law". Getting rid of old, slow, inefficient servers can give you 2-12 times the capacity instantly. The second "episode" talked about getting everything you can from each server. Use virtualization and consolidation to make sure your servers are full and busy. The most efficient bus is a full bus ( this is a metaphor, I am talking about the big yellow things carrying students, not the circuitry in the box )

My focus in part three is on density. My operating premise is that the data center manager wants to get everything out of the current data center and avoid, or at least defer, construction of a new data center. If your in the data center construction business, this is not for you.

To get the most out of our data center we want to pack every server we can power into the space. You can do this by executing three actions. 1) Use every watt, 2) Build the right servers, and 3) Optimize HVAC. In many cases twice the servers can be crammed into the existing rack space even without adding power. If you are able to redirect your hvac power savings to your racks, your results could be even better.

So, we potentially got 5x capacity from new quad core servers, 5x capacity from boosting utilization with consolidation, and 2x capacity with higher density. My math says 5x * 5x * 2x = 50x the capacity ( in the same space and power!) video

Whenever I see the word fabric, I immediately think of cloth, which immediately takes my mind to "helping" pick out curtains, which puts me in immanent boredom mode. Pardon the offense to those of you that actually know what color curtains you own, but there are some very cool things happening in data center communication.

Today the boxes in the data center (servers, storage, switches, ...) communicate over some combination of medium and protocols. While some protocols have become less common, (DECnet, Token Ring) there is still a bunch of InfiniBand, Fiber Channel, and Ethernet. Guess what, Ethernet is going to win. Ok, that was an unsupported prognostication,,, but Ethernet has won in every other arena it has entered.

Ethernet is what I really want to talk about today. There are a series of changes happening that allow Ethernet to be cast in the role of data center fabric. The first is simple throughput - 10GB. 10GB has the capacity to support the needs of detached storage. The thing that really makes this possible is a QOS feature called "priority pause". This extension to the Ethernet standard enables Ethernet to support QOS for differentiated services and to minimize or eliminate packet drops.

This new "Ethernet" enables rich SOE ( Storage over Ethernet) beyond iSCSI to FCOE( fiber channel over Ethernet). Intel has open[-sourced|http://open-fcoe.org/] FCOE software, and the network community is actively discussing the future of Fiber Channel.

Consolidating on 10gb reduces required port counts, and a single protocol reduces server hardware and switch infrastructure. All of this saves energy and simplifies data center wire management. These are good things. The extensions to the Ethernet specs were the result of collaboration between Intel and other industry leaders. This new spec should make it simpler to choose which curtains will go best in the data center

Intel is the leader in the add on server NIC business has great products available in the 10gb NIC space. The Intel NICS, when used on and Intel based platform, also support VMDQ - part of Intel's "Virtualization Technology for Connectivity". At VMworld Intel demonstrated that VMDQ technology in Intel Network Adapters boosted max throughput on a 10gb virtualized connection from 4gb to ~9gb - nearly max theoretical capacity.

You can buy the bits today! There are about 30 different vendors with products in the 10gb space. Clearly this is a ripe area for innovation and entry. The question remains glass or copper - optical or electrical? There are pros and cons for each, and both are supported by this next generation Ethernet. I would love to hear which you are choosing and why.

First the supply side. Looking at the growth projections in compute capacity delivered by Intel based servers ( with 45nm silicon, more cores and more efficiency ( enabling density)), data centers have the potential to increase compute capacity by 40x over the next five years. <pause to let 40x sink in> Yes, I said 40 times the capacity in the same space and power footprint. My initial reaction to this thought was ‘whoa' or better stated ‘whoa with several expletives'. Does this mean Intel, and the rest of the server market, will sell fewer bits? Employment wise I selfishly want the server business to grow.

As I began to explore the other side of the economy - the demand side - I began to relax, maybe even get a bit optimistic / excited. Let's start with the trends. Multiple market indicators show data volumes doubling every year. Of course this is not uniformly distributed, but on average that is a potential 32X increase in data over the next five years. <another moment to ponder what you will do with 32 times as much data>. This alone is probably enough to consume my 40x growth, but when I add the other magnifying trends, it will blow past all my capacity estimates. For example if user population is growing at 10%/year, we boost the 5 year growth in capacity demand to something near 50X, actually 51, but these are all calculations worthy of a napkin. 50x is bigger than 40x, but there is more. I am not sure how to quantify all other factors, like the expanding desire of the business to do more. From the customers I have spoken with I get the sense that most businesses are still pushing IT for more value through faster decisions, faster BI, etc. If this only adds 5% capacity demand per year, we are suddenly knocking on the door of 65x. <another moment to ponder 65x capacity demand> That is 65 times as many transactions! Not 65% more but 65 times more.

So, using all the best bits money can buy, many data center managers will still run out of capacity. The server business still looks good. Whew.

How to meet that capacity gap? Is it time to break ground on new data centers? Maybe, but maybe not... I mention some alternatives here, and plan to keep poking at ‘ways to avoid data center capital'.