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?

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

Given the increasing costs to power and cool data centers, IT and Facility managers of enterprise and cloud data centers want to maximize capacity utilization and reduce total cost of operations. However this has been challenging given the lack of fine grained instrumentation and visibility into server and rack level power consumption resulting in over-provisioning of racks and costly expansions despite unused capacity.

With Intel® Xeon® 5500 series, we introduced Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager that provides server level power monitoring and policy based power capping. Since power and cooling constraints exist at rack, row, room and PDU level, we also released Intel® Data Center Manager to enable ISVs to realize Node Manager benefits at data center level with reduced investment.

Intel® DCM software development kit (SDK) provides power and thermal monitoring and management for servers, racks and groups of servers in data centers using Intel® Xeon instrumentation. Management Console Vendors (ISVs) and System Integrators (SIs) can integrate Intel® DCM into their console or command-line applications and provide high value power management features to IT organizations.

IT organizations facing power and cooling challenges can benefit from:

• Increased rack density within space, power and cooling constraints through power control
• Reduced capital costs by right-sizing power and cooling infrastructure based on actual power
• Reduced operations costs by eliminating worst-case head-room during provisioning

Intel® DCM features include:

• Built-in policy based heuristics engine maintains group power and dynamically responds to changing loads
• Designed as an SDK to integrate into existing management software products
• Scales to thousands of nodes support in large data centers
• Manages across system vendors through use of standard IPMI and DCMI Power Management support
• Supports integration with Smart PDU meters for servers without Node Manager to provide a unified view

If you are at IDF in San Francisco Sep 22-24, 2009, stop by following sessions to learn more about Intel® DCM and see proof-of-concepts and meet with end users who benefited from this.

• PDCS003 - Cloud Power Management with Intel® Micro-architecture (Nehalem) Processor-based Platforms
• ECTS0004 - Improving Data Center Efficiency with Intel® Xeon® Processor Based Instrumentation

There are also several demos in the showcase area that showcase the technologies from multiple partners.

I will be at IDF co-presenting PDCS003 - stop by after the class with your questions and thoughts about Intel® DCM.
See you at IDF.

--Susmita

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)

1. Improved bandwidth. Up to 9 times memory bandwidth of previous generations
2. Introduction of Quickpath Interconnects to the EX systems
3. Add new RAS features previously seen on Itanium products to Xeon products
4. Significant improvement in performance vs previous generations e.g. Database 2.5xe
5. More scalable platforms through 8 OEMs offering >8S. These platforms are key to manage large databases and for large scale consolidation
6. 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?

Are you a developer writing applications to run on the Solaris operating system?. Are you looking for ways to optimize your Solaris solution on industry standard architecture based on Intel microprocessor? If you answer yes to either of these questions then please read on.

Intel and SUN have been working closely together to optimize the Solaris operating system on the Intel Xeon 5500 processor. Most of you probably know the Xeon 5500 better by its product codename Nehalem. The Xeon 5500 is the the product that fits into 2 socket platforms.

SUN have just published a very compelling quick reference guidethat will assist both Developers and System Administrators looking to optimize Solaris solutions on Xeon based processors. The guide talks about the work that Intel and SUN are doing together, technical descriptions of specific features and capabilities that can be implemented in the Solaris OS to optimize the capabilities of the Xeon.

I have just finished reading this and it is a very compelling paper covering topics such as

- How Solaris takes advantage of Intel Turbo Boost Technology to use available power headroom to deliver higher performance based on workload demand

- How Solaris can take advantage of new Intel Quickpath Interconnect (better known as QPI) and other innovations in the OS to reduce memory latency

- How Solaris performance counters help to better manage workloads

- How Solaris takes advantage of many of the power efficiency capabilities in the processor. Things like Power Aware Dispatched in Solaris enable the processor to stay longer in idle states. In non tech talk this saves power.

Solaris has been a tried and tested operating system for along time for companies running their most business critical workloads. This paper talks about the combination of Solaris and Xeon to deliver improved reliability and availability for these critical workloads. Detail information on predictive self healing, fault management, leveraging Intel Machine Check Architecture and more all included in this paper.

Probably my favourite section is around the developer tools optimizations and the different tools available for developers that want to run and optimize their applications on Solaris and Xeon.

Ok, I'll stop waxing lyrical now. This is a very compelling paper and it does certainly construe that Solaris and Xeon 5500 could be the perfect combination for your Solaris solution. What do you think?

I spend a lot of time thinking about computing efficiency, but there's an interesting statistic that really blows the doors off of what computing represents to the world's sustainability.  According to Gartner, if you measure all of the energy savings that computing can bring to our planet, 2% is from making computing platforms more efficient.  A whopping 98% stems from how we utilize computing resources make how we work and live more efficient.  The sources of this efficiency are vast but many come immediately to mind...telecommunting, design of products via workstations vs. physical prototype models, downloading music via iTunes negating the need to produce millions of CDs.  If more proof were needed you just need to look through the government stimulous package to see how critical the role technology plays in driving more efficiencies across industries.

When we created the Data Center Efficiency Challenge we specifically pointed out that part of this competition would be judged not on the efficiency of the datacenter but on how the datacenter was making the organization more efficient.  To take this notion further we've started a new competition...on JustMeans.com...to spur more discussion on how companies are utilizing technology to re-map the way they do business for an energy-aware 21st century world.  Check it out.

I was thinking about what to write in my next blog and what I could share beyond what I have written previously about Intel Vs RISC in terms of TCO, performance and the customers that are choosing to move.

Luckily I didn't have to think too long on a Friday morning as a a topic came to mind instantly. There are numerous articles flying around this morning that picked up on the Oracle comments yesterday about how SPARC based systems compare to Intel. Thanks for providing me with an appropriate topic.

So in case you missed it, there was a question and answer session with Larry Ellison. When asked about SPARC, this was the reply "SPARC is much more energy efficient than Intel while delivering the same performance on a per socket basis. This is not a green issue, its an economic issue. Today, database centers are paying as much for electricity to run their computers as they pay to buy computers. SPARC machines are much less expensive to run than Intel machines"

1) SPARC more energy efficient than Intel?  Seriously, in what parallel universe does that exists?

SUN continues to use watts per thread as measure of energy efficiency. The recognized industry standard benchmark for measuring energy efficiency is SPECpowerand I don't see any SPARC based results in the 91 results published. The absence of a result certainly says something very clear to me - no story.

These UltraSPARCT2+ systems get loaded with a lot of memory to deliver the their results, so when you look at overall system power (what people care about) they are not as energy efficient as Intel based systems.

SPECpower is effectively based of SPECJbb-2005 so another way of loking at this is to look at the SPECJbb-2005 results for a 4 socket UltraSPARcT2+ system and a Xeon 7400 system. The 4s UltraSPARCT2+ delivers 693k BOPs while Xeon 7400 is 532kBOPs. So you conclude that SPARC is better than Xeon?. That would be the wrong conclusion

UltraSPARCT2+ system would consume 1525 watts Vs Xeon 7400 at 816 watts. If you look at BOPs per watt (another way of looking at energy efficiency and performance) then you would see that Xeon 7400 is 43% more energy efficient. Doing a similar comparison with Xeon 5400 (I haven't even talked about our latest Xeon 5500, Nehalem) would be up to 77% more efficient than UltraSPARCT2+.

And lastly before I forget to mention the 4s UltraSPARCT2+ had 128GB memory and costs over $150,000for the system, while Xeon 7400 based system had 64GB memory and costs around $32,000.

2) SPARC deliver same performance on a per socket basis?

2S Xeon 5500 has performance leadership over 2S UltaSPARCT2+ across a wide range of benchmarks. Up to 70% more performance and up to 60% lower system cost. 4S Xeon 7400 has price/performance leadership over 4S UltraSPARCT2+, UltraSPARCT2+ results achieved with system loaded with lots of memory that drives the cost up to 3-4Xthat of Xeon 7400 system

3) SPARC machine are less expensive to run?. I can't for the life of me work this one out!.

Hardware systems based on Intel have leading price/performance (read cheaper), lower energy needs (so electrivity bill lower) and any software product with a license per core strcuture is less expensive on Xeon system than an 8 core UltraSPARcT2+ (which also has higher multipler per core)

That's all for now folks. I just wanted to share some data on why I know that SPARC machines are much MORE expensive to run than Intel machines

I'll be up front, I really don't know what Brittany Spears, Miley Cyrus or Susan Boyle would say about moving from RISC to the Xeon 5500 processor!. What I can share is the feedback that I'm getting direct from customers. I'm currently out on the road and have got some real feedback direct from customers on why they are looking at migrating their solutions from RISC  processors to Xeon processors.

Over the past couple of days I have had the opportunity to meet directly with individual customers and hosted a roundtable with several customers to discuss their plans to replace their RISC based infrastructure. The conversation has been very open and frank and has not been about 'should I move' but more focused on 'how do I make the move'. As could be expected the down economy is placing big taxes on the ability of IT organizations to support their business units need for organic growth in a flat to down IT spending environment. A big priority for most of the customers that I spoke with is how to reduce their overall TCO while still meeting the increased demands being placed on IT by their business Partners. Most of the customers are already engaged in active projects to assess moving from RISC or are building their plans to make this migration.

During the roundtable I had opportunity to share the latest Xeon 5500 processor performance comparisons Vs the main SPARC and POWER based solutions out there. There was great rejoicing and joy (ok I'm taking poetic license here) in the roundtable when we share some of the results that we highlighted when we launched the Xeon 5500 processor just over 3 weeks ago. So I want to spread the joy and let you read for yourself the performance and price performance benefits.

We compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top UltraSPARCT2+ in a 2 socket configuration. We took best published results on spec.org and sap (so no funny games at play). The results comparing best UltraSPARCT2+ vs best Xeon 5500 with 1 taken as baseline for SPARC redults were amazing

- 20% better on SAP-SD

- 62% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 69%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 75% better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are offered at approx $11,000 whereas the UltraSPARCT2+ is at $36,000.

Compared the Xeon 5570 processor vs the top POWER6 in a 2 socket configuration gave even more staggering results. At the roundtable today customers were amazed. They keep hearing that POWER 6 has leading performance and more GHz so better performance. Right?. Wrong is the answer and I noticed many customers scribbling down the comparisons. Again taking 1 as baseline for POWER results

- 150% better on SAP-SD

- 190% better java performance for Specjbb2005

- 126%better for integer performance SPECIntrate-2006

- 90%better for floating point performance SPECfprate-2006

But the best bit was the cost competitiveness of the Xeon 5500 solutions. Comparing both solutions with 32GB memory, the Xeon 5500 based solutions are 92% less expensive than equivalent POWER 6 offerings.

I only shared the specific comparisons vs RISC and have not gone into the architectural advancements of the Xeon 5500 processor and how it addresses real business needs that have been flagged to us. There have been lots of other blogs out in cyberspace over the last few weeks on improvements in IO, low latency etc. so you don't need my 2 cents.

I think now is the time to make the move from RISC, what do you think?