Competition, Comparison, Self Improvement, Benchmarking.

We do them in business. We do them in our careers. We do them in our leisure. ... and if you are like me you like to watch them on TV or live as well. Who is watching Lance Armstrong? or Tiger Woods? or their favorite sports team compete regularly.

IT professionals are no different.  Today, one of the business emhpasis points for IT is energy efficiency.  Now there is a way for you to quickly compare your own IT organization against itself and others.  This IT self-assessment tool takes about 2-3 minutes to complete and will answer these three questions

1. How efficient is your server infrastructure today?
2. How do you compare to your peers?
3. How much more efficient could you be?

The Community Window: Server Efficiency is a tool hosted on the Intel Premier IT Professionals website (http://ipip.intel.com) where registration is free and so is the information and best practices shared by other IT professionals throughout the industry.  Join and conduct your Server Efficiency self assessment today.   Chris

As I've blogged before, my job takes me to many places and I get see all kinds of cool technology when I get there. This example is no exception, I've put together a short video with Steve Cumings of HP showing a tour of the Performance Optimized DataCenter or abbreviated as "POD". Its actually the same size as a standard container for shipping anywhere around the world. These type of assets are vital in time of need such as disaster recovery. Take a look and let us know how you could use this cool technology.

I’m here this week in familiar stomping grounds, the Moscone Center, in San Francisco. Today’s event started off strong with John Chambers keynote address. His speech was very engaging as he wandered through the audience, capturing the attention of nearly 10K attendees. What caught my eye especially was his focus on collaboration and Web2.0. The example he used was the recent launch of the Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) which was launched via online tools such as blogs, telepresence, and flicker, check out this photo:

This shows that the virtual launch reached 10x the audience at 1/10^th the cost! I am really glad to hear that since this is what I do for a living.

John also spoke about some emerging technologies and I found out that Cisco has been working very closely with the Dallas Cowboys on increasing the customer experience. I was a little disappointed to hear John is a Niners fan, but had to expect that coming from a man and a company that was named after San Fran’cisco’, so I give him a break on that one.

It was also very interesting to hear a bit about the history of the Cisco logo, looks like times have changed and so has the logo:

After the keynote, I caught up with John and Kirk Skaugen, Executive Vice President with Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group at the Intel booth where Kirk had a surprise. Intel presented to Cisco and John a XEON 5500 processor series wafer (code named Nehalem).

Here’s another shot with a the XEON 5500 wafer:

I’ll being covering more of the event and participating in social media events during the event. Look for future updates here in the Server Room.

Wm. Hank Lea

Sunsets can last a while, but in the end the sun will go down.  I talk to a lot of companies and listen to a lot of data center managers.  Customers trust their AIX-Power and Solaris-Sparc platforms.  These are solid platforms and deliver good features and reliability, but, if these managers could get the sense of security, performance, and reliability with Linux / Intel Xeon platforms, they would move tomorrow.  It is simple economics.

The reality is that customers are making this move, and being successful.  The hardware reliability on Intel platforms today is amazing.  Intel recently announced that their next generation of Xeon(Nehalem) EX based servers will support Machine Check Architecture.  This brings high end Xeon X86 servers into the RAS family previously reserved to proprietary RISC & mainframe platforms.  Intel Xeon already eclipses the performance of proprietary RISC processors both on a per processor basis and a per dollar basis.  It is reasonable to say Xeon can deliver better performance, better value, and equal or better reliability.  The only hurdle left is the software.

Linux has come a long ways.  It is no longer a university OS, run by geeky dudes in black T-shirts emblazoned with the quadratic formula.  It is mainstream and solidly supported.  Linux is the primary development and delivery platform for Oracle.  Other OS environments are ports, delaying support and innovation.  Linux is used by major financial companies.  Linux is available in solid and well supported distributions with a 20 year history of enterprise business.  Linux experts are broad community, worldwide, and growing in number.  Linux is economical vs proprietary RISC.

In an era of big budgets and conservative (don’t make any changes) philosophies, businesses will always stick to their proprietary RISC systems.  That era is over.  Sticking to your RISC systems may seem like the safe move, but failing to examine the opportunities for better performance and lower cost with Linux on Intel Xeon platforms is business negligence.  Business negligence is seldom rewarded. 

Performance, Price, Infrastructure, Ecosystem, TCO, RAS – when the decision factors are examined it becomes clear -  we are in the RISC twilight and the sun will set on Sparc-Solaris and Power-AIX.

My grandfather was born in the early 1900’s.  By all accounts he was a hardworking man with a strong degree of curiosity.  He passed away in his late 80’s and before he died I remember talking to him about my pursuit of an Electrical Engineering degree.  He nodded politely, asked a few questions and when I helped to fix the electrical outlet in his garage I got the sense that he thought I was heading down the path to be an electrician.  I believe that thought pleased him.  Several years ago I was explaining to my five year old daughter in layman’s terms what I did for a living and what my company made.  I said things like “We make tiny engines that run computers” or “I work with computers that run websites like Webkinz® and Disney®”.  She seemed impressed.  Months later when she was asked by a parent of her friend what her dad did for a living I was a combination of proud and surprised to hear that she replied “They make chips…”  (proud moment) “…and salsa!” (um OK.  I still have work to do).

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Now the other day she walked up to me and said something like “Dad, I am having trouble getting the Slingbox to work on mom’s iPod Touch.  It is connected to the Internet but the remote does not seem to be changing the channel.  Can you help me?”  Clearly she has made some progress up the technology curve, but it also struck me how far she has come.  Kids these days are surrounded by technology.  In our house alone there are at least the following electronic devices; Oven, Microwave, AppleTV, refrigerator, smoke detector (3), carbon monoxide detector, programmable thermostat, furnace, radio, garage door opener (2), wireless speakers, televisions (3), set top boxes (3), ceiling fans with remotes (3), netbook, Slingbox, Clear wireless router, remote outlet, sprinkler control box, iPod Touch, desktop computer, Wii, iPod shuffle (2), alarm clocks (3), oven timer, electronic light dimmer, cordless phones (4), AV receiver, DVD players (3), VCR, iPod docking station, security system, motion sensor, camcorder, camera (2), USB hub, music keyboard, AV switch, computer keyboard, battery chargers (4), Wii remotes (4), Wii Fit Pad, Wii drums, copier/fax/scanner, computer monitor, AC, Power supplies (4), RFID credit cards (2), washer, dryer, noise canceling headphones, answering machine, internet modem, cell phones (2), handheld GPS, auto GPS and electronic battleship.

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I am sure I have forgotten several things and I did not count cars or anything at my children’s school.  I am also sure each of the electronic devices in our house has either a processor, microcontroller, ASIC or multiple of each.  Admittedly, the silicon content in our house is probably above average given where I work and the personalities my wife and I have.  But when I think back to my grandfather he had none of these silicon laden items.  I am sure he didn’t care since it is hard to miss something you never knew.  Of the hundreds of pieces of silicon in our house about a dozen or so are smart enough to connect to each other or to “the cloud” in some way.  I put “the cloud” in quotes because it is not only the most over-hyped word of it’s time it is also the best way to articulate what I suspect my children and many others think of the services that they get when all of this stuff gets connected.

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I can safely say two things are fact. First, my grandchildren will have in their house many more pieces of silicon than I do. Second, they will have more pieces of silicon that can connect to each other and communicate with “the cloud”.  There are many billions of devices connected to the Internet today and that number will grow.  At Intel we are building silicon, and increasingly software assets, that facilitate the processing and movement of data both on those devices and between them. Servers are increasingly becoming an important part of that over-hyped cloud word. My cable company has a cloud delivering me my on demand video content, A social media site allows me to upload pictures into their cloud to share with my friends, someone just used a cloud architecture to develop a perpetual motion machine.  OK, one of those things was false.

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My grandfather thought a cloud was something in the sky.  My children think it streams video to their handheld device.  What will our great-grandchildren think?

I have been watching the social chatter today about the latest Top500 supercomputing list and seeing companies, manufacturers, application vendors and even countries compete for mind share of this most recent list on twitter.

However, as I read about and explored this list, the things that jumped out at me were not the who’s number one, two, three … or who grew what number of spots ... but rather the trends that have occurred over time. These trends have not happened in the last 6 months or the last 6 years but instead over the course of nearly a decade of innovation

1)      Today, the #10 posting (a cluster using the 3-month old Xeon X5570 processor (Nehalem-EP)) delivers the same FLOPS performance capability equal to the entire June 2000 TOP 500 computers list. (see below)

source: http://www.top500.org/lists/2009/06/performance_development

2)      Also, the emergence of multi-core intel-based servers complemented by affordable open-source software solutions have enabled a transformation of how supercomputing performance is delivered. Intel based servers have gone from nearly “0” to nearly “400” over this decade.

source: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/images/IntelTOP500history.jpg

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?