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?

It’s not just about energy-sipping systems—it’s also about your storage footprint

Most of us are familiar with the concept of green IT: increasing energy efficiency across the enterprise to trim costs and optimize resources. While you hear a lot about servers helping to reduce energy usage, not as much is said about storage. Intel and the storage industry are working together to provide green storage solutions, too.

For the storage community, every system has to be cost-effective as well as performance-driven, which means energy efficiency is a key consideration. It starts at the processor level, where the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series is extending the boundaries of energy efficient performance.

Many storage system providers have picked up on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series since it was introduced last March. For example, the HP StorageWorks XP10000* Disk Array and 3000 Enterprise* Virtual Array are based on the new processors. Schooner Information Technology appliances leverage quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 processors and half a terabyte of Intel® X25-E flash memory. The bottom line for the Schooner appliances is an 80 percent decrease in power and cooling requirements versus ordinary servers.

But green storage isn’t just about power consumption at the processor or system level. An equally important green strategy is to reduce the overall storage footprint, and a number of technologies are available to help IT organizations implement this strategy.

Virtualization is driving huge data center energy savings by greatly reducing the number of physical machines in the data center. As Bob Fine, director of product marketing at Compellent, pointed out at the 2009 Storage Networking World conference last spring, many large enterprises realize that they’re approaching a cap. “They can only get a certain amount of power in their data centers and see virtualization as a way to reduce their power requirements,” says Fine. “Instead of building new data centers, they can stay in the ones they have, saving millions of dollars in the process.”

Many IT managers tell Intel that storage can be a big gating factor when it comes to scaling virtual environments. The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series uses Intel® HT Technology within each processor core, doubling the number of threads that can be processed at the same time. This option permits more efficient workloads and enables storage servers to virtualize more applica­tions. Intel HT Technology is also more energy efficient than traditional threaded processing.

Compellent and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), both users of the Intel Xeon processors, recommend reducing the storage footprint in other ways as well. “Limit the amount of content you need to store by using technologies like data deduplication,” advises Asim Zaheer, vice president of product and competitive marketing at HDS. “Also, don’t have wasted capacity or wasted systems—that’s where tiered storage and virtualization come into play.” 

Compellent’s Fine sees tiered storage as especially important when using expensive disk resources like solid-state drives (SSD). By limiting SSD to the top tier, a company could save on drive costs and increase storage efficiency. “Only the active data would sit on SSD, and all the inactive data would go onto a tier-three SATA drive,” says Fine. “Since SSD drives are about 10 times the cost of Fibre Channel, it’s very important to gain those kinds of efficiencies.”

Isilon Systems, another user of Intel processors, has a pay-as-you-grow model for its clustered storage products that makes it easier to avoid over-provisioning and wasting power. If a customer needs to add more performance, Isilon can provide nodes with Intel processors and memory, but no storage. If the customer requires capacity only, Isilon sells nodes with just disks. In addition, Isilon uses ColdWatt power supplies, which it says are about 30 percent more efficient than traditional power supplies.

As Intel works with the storage industry to deliver more energy-efficient and high-performance storage solutions, we’d like to know what IT organizations are doing to implement green storage technologies in the data center. If you work in IT and have fresh perspectives to make your organization more efficient, you’re invited to share your ideas  here.   

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.

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.

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?

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.

Sun has recently published a whitepaper that discusses how the Solaris OS will take advantage of the next generation Intel Xeon processor (codename Nehalem-EX) for expandable servers (4 sockets & greater).  Sun with over 20 years of experience in larger socket, core & threading capabilities is working to have the Solaris OS be ready to take advantage of the features & new capabilities of “Nehalem-EX”.  The three areas of collaboration for Solaris & Nehalem-EX are around  scalable performance; advanced reliability and energy efficiency between the specific features in Solaris and the next generation Intel Xeon processor.  Read this recently published whitepaper

I’m a bit late in relaying my thoughts from Intel’s Developer Forum (IDF), but there was definitely some excitement around virtualization and high performance networking that I wanted to get the word out about!

In the past I’ve shared some details about SR-IOV and the advantages you can gain by being able to present virtual LAN hardware to each Virtual Machine (VM), effectively avoiding the Hypervisor when presenting virtual devices to each VM.  The advantage of being able to do this is clear:  The less interaction in the networking stack there is from the hypervisor, the less processing overhead is required for the system process the data.

That’s all good because if you have a dual 10 Gigabit adapter, you can segregate those two physical pipes into perhaps 16 virtual pipes that get exposed to 16 VMs.  By segregating these LAN pipes at the hardware level with SR-IOV instead of using Hypervisor switching, the performance gains in both CPU utilization as well as maximum total throughput can be very large.  There were several demos at IDF with various configurations, but reductions in CPU utilization of 40% were possible coupled with dramatic improvement in throughput!

But there is unfortunately one minor complication that I didn’t mention in my last post on the topic of SR-IOV.  There is the little fact that when VMs move between physical boxes (a usage that is highly desired and commonplace these days) you run into some problems with this SR-IOV capability.  When the hypervisor owned the network hardware abstraction, the performance was worse, but the functionality was better because you could seamlessly migrate from one box to another and the virtualization application would handle the details.  But with SR-IOV, a new layer needs to be added so that the direct hardware connection between the VM and the LAN hardware can be moved to a new box.

The really exciting part of IDF demos that I saw was the demonstration not just of the SR-IOV functionality on multiple hardware and virtualization configurations, but that these demonstrations also showed updated software from two virtualization vendors allowing mobility of the VMs while supporting SR-IOV! 

There was a demo on Dell systems showing this fully functional SR-IOV implementation with Citrix’s Virtualization suite.  There were two separate demonstrations on Dell systems, with VMWare displaying their new Network Plug-In Architecture (NPIA) solution that allows for the migration of SR-IOV connected VMs seamlessly between servers.

For those hungry for more detail, I’ve included the three SR-IOV demonstration videos here:

The first is the Citrix demonstration on Dell and Intel hardware of SR-IOV with VM mobility:

These next two are two videos are demos on Dell and Intel hardware with VMWare and their NPIA software implementation.

Each virtualization demo shows the massive performance benefits under various workloads when moving from Hypervisor based LAN segregation to SR-IOV implementation.  But most importantly, each demonstration proves out the capability to migrate VMs between physical hardware.  The only system hardware requirement is that the server itself supports VT-d.  If the networking hardware in the newly migrated-to box supports SR-IOV you get better performance, and if not, the solution falls back on the legacy Hypervisor virtualization.  Backwards compatibility is maintained!

I didn’t get firm details on when this full support for SR-IOV and migration will be available in Citrix and VMWare’s releases, but the demos looked pretty clean, and hopefully these suites will be available soon with this new functionality.  The LAN and Server hardware ecosystems are ready today, and it looks like the software vendors are just around the corner.  Virtualization momentum continues!

While virtualization was the big takeaway for me from IDF, there were also several other interesting demos for us networking hounds.  I’ve linked a couple videos of them below for anyone still thirsting for more of the latest networking technology and performance details!

The first video is a demonstration of Intel’s 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet-based adapter card with Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support.  Storage and Ethernet together at last!

The second video is a demonstration of Intel’s NetEffect 10 Gigabit Ethernet card publishing 1 million messages per second in a simulated NYSE floor trading scenario.  Oh yeah, only 35uS of latency.  That is fast.

So although I am two weeks after IDF, I hope some of you got a little taste of the networking excitement that took place.   Industry wide, hardware and software vendors alike are delivering ultra high performance low latency applications for the financial services industry, as well as mainstream performance increases for virtualization.  The performance and technology beat moves forward.  Exciting times!

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Ben Hacker