Why migrate? Why now?

There has never been a better time to migrate your proprietary RISC servers running UNIX(R) to Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor-powered Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers running Red Hat(R) Enterprise Linux(R) Why? Four compelling reasons. First, cost, cost, and cost again. This industry-standard platform can reduce your capital expenditures as well as your operational costs for a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Second, choice and flexibility. Because you’re not locked into proprietary technologies, you have substantial choices that keep you nimble and agile no matter how your business needs evolve. Third, simplicity. The Red Hat-Dell-Intel platform just works. And acquiring all the products and services you need from one source–Dell–reduces the complexities of both technology procurement and support.  Finally, performance. In these challenging economic times, migrating from RISC and UNIX to a Red Hat-Dell-Intel solution is an easy and fast way to accomplish more with less, bringing true value to your business.

Power Your Enterprise

Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is optimized for the Intel Xeon processor on which Dell PowerEdge servers are based, you can support your business’s most demanding  challenges. For starters, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 takes advantage of the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series to deliver more than twice the performance compared toprevious generation Intel processors.1 Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux incorporates Intel’s energy efficiency enhancements, such as integrated power gates and automated low power states to support low-latency changes among power states, you can lower power consumption during off-peak times. This has the additional benefit of reducing datacenter cooling requirements. You achieve previously unattainable scalability with support for up to 255 central processing units (CPUs) and one terabyte of memory. And Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports Intel Hyper-Treading Technology to enable advanced parallel computing.

Learn More

To learn more about migrating from a proprietary RISC /UNIX platform to a Red Hat, Dell, Intel solution navigate to http://www.redhat.com/intelligence/, then click on White Papers.

Every day, Intel® technology and platforms help companies solve business problems and challenges. Here are a few of the growing number of stories and reasons for choosing Intel processors and technology.

Winning: Humana – Healthcare product and services company

Humana continues to refresh its infrastructure with more powerful, energy-efficient technologies. For Humana, technology is vital for providing information and a full array of health benefit services to members. To replace an outdated facility, the company worked with Intel to design a state-of-the-art data center with a compact, energy-efficient infrastructure that could deliver flexibility and scalability.

Read about it here

The results:

·          The Intel processor–based virtualized environment helps IT deploy new services quickly and ensure high availability.

·          Humana added 25 percent more servers in 56 percent of the previous space while decreasing data center power consumption by 16 percent.

Winning: Emerson Electronics

Emerson reshapes its IT infrastructure for future growth, consolidating approximately 135 data centers down to four using Intel® technology–based servers

Read about it here

The results:

·          3,600 physical servers are eliminated by virtualizing on Intel processor–based blade servers, for 18:1 consolidation worldwide

·          Power-saving processors help make Emerson’s new global production data center in St. Louis 31 percent more energy efficient than traditional data centers

Winning: Türkiye Finans Katılım Bank

Leading Turkish Financial Institution Drives Better Growth and Services with Intel®Technology. Türkiye Finans Katılım Bank makes use of the online Intel Xeon processor-based Server Refresh Savings Estimator

Read about it here.

The results:

Intel® Xeon® processor-based Server Refresh Savings Estimator¹ sets expectations clearly, predicting 80 per cent reduction in power/cooling requirements, and a 30 per cent increase in system performance already realized. With only 20 per cent of capacity currently utilised, bank has significant headroom for business expansion

Winning: Oracle IT

Oracle uses Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series–based systems with Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager to increase rack density and propel business growth. Refreshing its existing dual socket, quad-core servers on a three- to five-year schedule to increase processing capability and energy efficiency, but had no significant power management in use in the data centers.

Read about it here

The results:

More processing capability can fit within the data center power envelope because Oracle can actively manage power consumption for individual servers and applications.

·          Energy savings of 35 percent are projected with Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager, for reduced operating expenses

·          50 percent more servers per rack saves data center space and enables more growth while keeping costs low

Winning: DataPipe®

DataPipe® retains a competitive edge by designing a new facility and refreshing existing data centers with cutting-edge technology that can deliver outstanding processing performance for a broad range of customer applications. Low-voltage Intel® Xeon® processors help DataPipe create a dense, energy-efficient infrastructure for managed IT services.

Read about it here

The results:

                 New Intel Xeon Processors Provide a Foundation for Cloud Computing. With the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, DataPipe is creating

                a robust virtualized server environment, Stratosphere™, for hosting customer applications.     

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?

Nehalem-EX has been in the news quite a bit over the past several months. 

First, in May, Intel described how Nehalem-EX will be at the heart of the next generation of intelligent and expandable high-end Intel server platforms, delivering a number of new technical advancements (Intel Nehalem Architecture, Quick Path Interconnects, 16 threads, 24MB cache, new RAS features like MCA-Recovery, 16 DIMM slots per socket, 128 threads on 8 Socket systems) and boost enterprise computing performance (the greatest gain in generational performance ever seen at Intel.)

Next at IDF in September Intel described how Nehalem-EX would deliver a bigger generational performance improvement than that delivered by the Intel Xeon 5500 processor (including a 3X Nehalem-EX gain in database performance); a large shift in Xeon scalability with over 15 >8S systems anticipated and expandability for the most data demanding enterprise applications, the addition of about 20 RAS capabilities traditionally found in the Intel® Itanium processor family – along with a demonstration of MCA-Recovery. IBM announced their upcoming BladeCenter products that will support 4S Nehalem-EX blades and Super-Micro announced a 1U box, specifically targeted at HPC.  Staying on the HPC theme, Mark Seager from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was also quoted with stating that “Nehalem-EX allows us to invest in science, not the computer science of porting and adapting software to new architectures, but real science.  Nehalem EX is an innovative SMP on a chip solution that provides us access to a “super node” … The result is an astonishing new level of performance.”

And Oracle Open World on October 13^th, the drumbeat for Nehalem-EX continued.  Michael Dell in his Oracle Open World Keynote today discussed how Nehalem-EX will provide a true leap in performance, with up to 9x the memory bandwidth and 3x the database performance vs. prior generation.  And he mentioned that Dell’s unique implementation of the memory architecture will allow the most cost effective scaling, with 4S systems up to 1TB of DRAM (64 Dimms x 16GB Memory sticks) enabling customers to run their entire database in system memory.  He also mentioned that standard based systems are driving new efficiencies with applications like Oracle, where Dell’s data shows Oracle apps run better on x86 vs. proprietary architectures, up to 200% better.  Check out this short video from the keynote and watch what Michael Dell had to say. 

Keep your eyes on the Server Room for more Nehalem-EX news as it comes between now and launch.  And visit the Intel booth at South Moscone Booth #1621 to learn more.

Bryce

In March '09, former Intel executive Pat Gelsinger predicted that Nehalem-based Xeon 5500 servers would become "cash machines" for the IT industry, due to unprecedented power-efficient performance gains that can deliver a very short ROI for IT.  Pat's description of the Xeon 5500 was validated during a briefing with Intel CIO Diane Bryant in San Francisco on October 6^th, as reported in TG Daily.

She discussed the ROI achieved and the impact that a proactive serve refresh strategy has had on Intel’s bottom line, as reported in PC World.  Some of her key points:

·         Intel is expecting up to $250M savings over 8 years, saved $45M in 2008 alone.

·         Despite these results, economy forced Intel to re-evaluate capital spending in 2009.  Found that delaying server refresh would cost us $19M more than continuing.  So we continued. 

·         Getting an average of 10:1 server consolidation with Xeon 5500 in design computing environment and 20:1 virtualization server refresh ratios in Office/Enterprise. 

Did you know that Server Refresh is also the #1 driver of Intel’s Carbon Footprint reduction as well, with an initiative to reduce Carbon footprint by 5% per year.  We are projected to reduce by approximately 4K metric tons (2009) and this server refresh strategy is forecasted to be #1 project to help IT reduce Carbon.

Staying on the green IT theme, the newest ally for IT to help drive carbon-reduction and energy cost savings is the energy utilities.  A prime example of this is the Energy Trust of Oregon, who offers cash incentives to motivate Oregon businesses to make energy saving investments.  Intel gained access to a $250K incentive from them as a result of energy savings gained by replacing older servers with newer, more energy-efficient servers in our data centers. If you are replacing older servers with modern energy-efficient Xeon 5500 based servers and you haven’t had this conversation with your utility yet – please do so.  You may be eligible for utility incentives for energy savings that can lower your operating costs and reduce the impact of your business on the environment.  To estimate the energy savings associated with server refresh, go to www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator. 

You’re going to hear more about these “cash machines” in the very near future…stay tuned!

Bryce

…on my way to a customer meeting, and the thought dawns on me about why the car I’m getting into is a relatively new, clean 2008 compact car and not a 1966 Chevy Impala, which probably has enough steel to dramatically distort the earth’s local magnetic field.  Well the reasons are fairly simple:

• Newer cars are more reliable and require less maintenance - cars in the shop don’t make the rental car agency money, and don’t make customers happy if they break down
• Newer cars are typically more fuel efficient - that ’66 Impala’s gas mileage might be quoted in gallons per mile J
• Newer cars typically fall under a manufacturer warranty

As with rental cars, servers aren’t much different.  It’s all about keeping your business running smoothly, minimizing your operating costs, and keeping your customers happy.  While I’m guessing not many of today’s data centers have the server equivalent of a ’66 Impala in them, there are probably a bunch ready to be removed from the rental car fleet.

Think about it on your next business trip, and check out the benefits of refreshing servers that are only 3 or 4 years old with the Xeon® ROI estimator tool (link:  www.intel.com/go/xeonestimator).

About Hugh Mercer: I am a sales development manager in Intel’s Enterprise Solution Sales group. One of my responsibilities is working with Intel’s Server Platforms Group to indentify, develop and highlight success stories around Intel’s server platforms and technologies.

Every day, Intel® technology and platforms help companies solve business problems and challenges. Here are a few of the growing number of stories and reasons for choosing Intel processors and technology.

Winning: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH)

Leading German university turns to Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series for high-performance computing

Read about it here

The results:

·          Implemented small server farm. Intel Xeon processor series performed more powerfully than RISC architectures.

·          2010 scale out. In 2010, the university plans to implement some 400 more systems with over 20,000 cores powered by the upcoming Intel Xeon processors code-named Nehalem EX

Winning: Alvotech

Alyotech turns to Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series to deliver insightful design improvements

Read about it here

The results:

·          Alyotech benchmarked the new processor, developed on 45nm Hi-k next generation Intel® Core™ Microarchitecture, and increased performance by 65 percent over the previous generations, dual-core servers

Winning: Atos Origin

Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series helps Atos Origin lower total cost of ownership of its data centre environment.

Read about it here.

The results:

• Atos Origin compared the performance of      the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series with four cores to that of the previous-generation      with just two cores. It found, on average, 2.4x greater      transaction throughput running a web server, 1.75x running a database server and 1.25x running an email      server.

Winning: Business and Decision Group

Business and Decision Group powers forward with huge virtualization project underpinned by the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series.

Read about it here

The results:

• Early results showed that      with the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series they could gain virtualization rates      of 20:1 and with a processor load slightly below 55 percent.
• Power consumption was reduced by approximately 30 percent compared to the previous generation of processors.

Winning: Onkosh.com

Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series boots performance of unique Arabic search engine Onkosh.com

Read about it here

The results:

·          Onkosh.com already witnessed an increase of around 20% in performance. This performance increase was possible due to the new micro-architecture with Intel Turbo Boost

·          Onkosh.com is now able to grow about 300% in terms of the ability to crawl and parse new Arabic content automatically discovered on the World Wide Web.

Winning: BMW

Migration to Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series lowers total cost of ownership and increases flexibility

Read about it here

The results:

·          BMW Group is deploying Dell PowerEdge* servers powered by the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, which will replace a RISC-based infrastructure that has much higher costs, lower performance and less flexibility

·          This allowed BMW Group to increase the workload to more than 80 percent and to significantly decrease the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Winning: Société d'Exploitation des Transports de l'Agglomération Orléanaise (SETAO)

SETAO turns to Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series to strengthen and build on its service offerings.

Read about it here

The results:

·          Thanks to the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and VMware hypervisor, SETAO is now able to provide mainframe-class quality of service and ensure easy deployment of new virtual machines and applications while reducing total cost of ownership.” Olivier Parcollet, Chief Technology Officer, SET

·          SETAO estimated that it could save approximately 40 percent on energy costs due to the higher server consolidation ratio and greater CPU energy consumption management.

I have a confession to make… Last year was my first IDF. Ever! I had no idea then, that this year I would end up being responsible for a whole track, and sponsoring the Virtualization Community zone. I was lucky that Jake took ownership of the community zone. He assembled a great line-up of demos, from a variety of companies. It should be great, go see!

But this blog is about the Enterprise Cloud track. I set out to make it to represent a theme, rather than a collection of loosely related sessions. In my view, this required a mix of depths – an overview session to explain the concepts alongside deep technical sessions. I also thought it would be a great opportunity to gather some industry leaders beyond Intel to talk about Enterprise Cloud vision and the opportunities it presented for the developers community.

“What is this guy talking about” you must be asking yourself. “What is Enterprise Cloud? Not more hype?!” Well, I think of Enterprise Cloud as a very real vision of the place where actual IT needs meet the aspirations of the Cloud Computing hype.

The Cloud hype is based on some pretty impressive efficiencies that several companies are being told to have achieved. These companies did so by designing custom application to run in their data centers. In some of these cases the data centers and the hardware in them were even custom architected and designed to run these applications. IT wants to gain similar efficiencies. But IT can’t throw away all the legacy applications…

In comes Enterprise Cloud, where IT evolves to gain the efficiencies, without losing the legacy investments…

In the Enterprise Cloud track we’ll cover some of the key technologies that are required for this to happen.

We’ll start with an overview (session ECTS001) on Tuesday at 10:15, where Dylan and I will do an overview of key technology areas: virtualization and performance, Data Center efficiency, evolution of I/O, and security, and why they are critical for the evolution of IT. What will follow are several in-depth sessions that will cover those very topics:

·         ECTS002 – will focus on Intel® Trusted Execution Technology and explain how application can protected in the Enterprise Cloud environment. Check this out in Jim's blog

·         ECTS003 – will cover enhancement for encryption processing in upcoming CPUs. Leslie gives a really great overview in her blog

·         ECTS004 – will talk about technologies to improve Data Center efficiency. David covers one of those technologies here and check out his other blogs as well.

·         ECTS005 – is an in-depth review of Intel’s technologies for virtualization, and will be presented by Intel Fellow Rich Uhlig.

·         ECTS006 – will discuss evolution of I/O, which is necessary to enable IT to gain the desired efficiencies. RK gives an excellent preview in his blog here

·         We also have a Q&A session on Tuesday evening (ECTQ001) to allow an open unscripted conversation with all the track presenters who will be around on Tuesday.

·         Finally, we have a VERY exciting panel (ECTP001, on Tuesday at 5pm). Jake Smith from Intel will lead a discussion with some true industry thought leaders from Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft, Sun, and VMware. The Theme of the panel is “Enterprise Cloud – technologies, usages, and opportunities for the developers community”. This should be an exhilarating hour!

Along with a couple of labs this should a great track. See you at IDF… it all starts tomorrow!!!