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?

This week I'm in Portland, Oregon, where I call home. Its interesting for me since this is my first Super Computing conference, and soo far, I'm really impressed, not only by the intense knowledge and the plethera of scientific discovery all around, but also by the fact this conference is so well attended. There -s a huge trade show floor, filled to capacity where you can see everything from genome research to oil and gas exploration, to bio-computing. . It's very cool to see NASA, Oak Ridge Labratory, and many top universities all showing off the lastest in High Performance Computing, some very cool stuff indeed. From the point of view of higher learning and how super computers are changing the world, this is the place to be. Here are a few shots of the Intel booth in case you get a chance to come by and see us.

I'll be capturing some cool videos from the conference and you should keep a look out for these on Channel Intel at YouTube. Thanks for stopping by The Server Room.

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.

If you hadn’t heard, Microsoft* and Intel spent a lot of effort optimizing Windows* Server 2008 R2 (and Windows 7) to improve energy efficiency by reducing system power consumption at idle and under load.  For more details, check out the presentation from the Intel Developer Forum a few weeks ago titled Microsoft and Intel: Innovations in Hardware and Software to Help Deliver New Technology Experiences.  This presentation (and other IDF presentations) can be found at intel.com/go/idfsessions (search for SPCS003 using the session ID number).  There is good information on the operating system optimizations that were done to reduce power consumption.  Slide 22 has an excellent comparison of the power consumption of Windows Server 2003 vs. Windows Server 2008 R2 running on the same Xeon® 5500 series processors. It shows that using WinSrv2008 R2 reduced system idle and peak power consumption by ~60W!!  In addition, Hyper-V* 1.1 now uses the power management features of Intel processors to reduce power consumption during periods of low utilization.  

This is a great time to show your customers the energy efficiency benefits that come with upgrading to WinSrv2008 R2 at the same time they refresh their server infrastructure with Xeon® 5500 based servers.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others

The ecosystem is growing...

Sean Maloney's keynote presentation at IDF 2009 highlighted Intel Node Manager.  This is the video from his keynote which shows customers from Baidu, BMW, Oracle, and Telefonica, who have been working with Intel on Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager.

Check out the final slide showcasing the OEM/ODM/Console providers and customers using Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager.

ENERGY STAR compliance is becoming an increasingly important factor for servers and workstations.

Accurate interpretation of the ENERGY STAR specification can be quite challenging with the ever-expanding scope of rules and regulations that govern platform and component-level design considerations.

Intel recently developed a semi-automated test tool to greatly simplify ENERGY STAR testing of servers and workstations. This tool has the following capabilities:

1. Ability to identify the relevant ENERGY STAR criteria per configuration

2. Automated assignment of ENERGY STAR test conditions and system testing

3. Preparation of system test data for analysis and ENERGY STAR submission

Feel free to stop by my booth at IDF in the Eco-Technology Community for a hands-on demonstration and to learn more.

Jennifer

If you would like to learn about a new power supply technology for reducing server energy usage there is an upcoming IDF session that may interest you. The title of the session is “Cold Redundancy – A New Power Supply Technology for Reducing System Energy Usage”. As you can probably guess from the title, we are calling this new technology “Cold Redundancy”. There has been a lot of research done to figure out ways of reducing the input power of a server when it is in an idle state. After all, an idle server is just a very expensive space heater sitting there doing nothing other than consuming energy and producing lots of heat. This is important because some utilization studies have shown that servers can sit idle for a considerable percentage of the time. So anything that reduces the input power of an idle system will have a very significant effect on the overall yearly energy usage - and ultimately save on operating costs.

This presentation will describe, and demonstrate, the cold redundancy technology we have been working on here at Intel® to reduce system idle power.

One great thing about this new technology is that everything can be kept inside the power supply. No changes to the system software will be needed so the only additional requirement to implement this would be using a power supply that has cold redundancy technology inside it. This will make it easy to integrate into systems in the future because it could become a “plug ‘n play” power supply upgrade option.

Since cold redundancy is a power supply technology, I’ll cover some basic concepts to get things started.

There are two different types of power supplies called redundant and non-redundant which are used in computers.

A non-redundant supply has only a single module which provides all the power needed to keep the system operating. This means there is no backup so if the power supply fails, the system shuts down until the supply is replaced. Desktop computers typically have a non-redundant supply in order to keep the costs low.

Most servers on the other hand, have a redundant type of power supply. That means there are extra (redundant) power supplies in the power subsystem so if one supply fails the server will continue working normally. This is for applications where getting maximum system uptime and reliability are worth the additional cost of putting in the redundant supplies. In a case like this though, the redundant supplies are not really needed until one of the supplies actually fails. The drawback with having the redundant supplies turned on until needed is that the supplies still use a lot of power which increases the system operating costs.

Cold redundancy reduces system idle input power by putting these redundant supplies into an almost off (standby) condition or “cold redundancy” mode, as we call it here at Intel®. Because of how cold redundancy works, the more redundant supplies there are in a power subsystem the more effective it is and the more energy that can be saved. The general idea of powering down redundant supplies is not new, but the problem has always been how to turn the supplies back on fast enough so that system operation is not affected in case of a failure. We have come up with a solution to this problem by developing cold redundancy technology. Cold redundancy has the ability to put the redundant supplies into a standby state to save energy at system idle while still being able to turn them back on fast enough in case of a failure to keep the system operating normally. It really is the best of both worlds, saving energy while maintaining the same system uptime and reliability as conventional redundancy where all the power supplies are running all the time.

If you are interested in learning more, the session number is ETMS001 and will be presented at the fall Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on September 22^nd at 10:15 AM in room 2006 of the Moscone Center. This session will be a combination of lecture and live demonstrations. We decided that having a couple of demos during the lecture would help make the concept more understandable and the presentation more interesting as well. One thing to keep in mind about this session is that we will not be discussing theoretical possibilities or projects planned years in the future but real products that will be available soon. The live demonstrations use a production ready cold redundancy enabled power subsystem that is being integrated into a product Intel® plans to release in the 4^th quarter of this year. It doesn’t get much more real than that.

The demonstrations will show how the control logic works and what power and energy savings are actually possible. This will be done by measuring the AC input power to a four module power subsystem and running the same output load profile with and without cold redundancy enabled. By comparing the two input power graphs the advantages of implementing this new technology can be immediately seen and quantified. I think you will find this to be a very interesting and informative session but then I’m probably biased just a little bit. J

Hope to see you there,

Andy

Presenters:

Viktor Vogman – Power Architect

Andrew Watts – Test Automation

In spite of significant gains in server energy efficiency, power consumption in data centers is still trending up.  At the very least, we can make sure that the energy expended yields maximum benefit to the business.  A first step in managing power in the servers in a data center is having a fairly accurate monitoring capability for power consumption.  The second step is to have a number of levers that allow using the monitoring data to carry out an effective power management policy.

While we may not be able to stem the overall growth of power consumption in the data center, there are a number of measures we can take immediately:

· Implement a peak shaving capability.  The data center power infrastructure needs to be sized to meet the demands of peak power.  Reducing peaks effectively increase the utilization of the existing power infrastructure.

· Be smart about shifting power consumption peaks. All the watts are not created equal.  The incremental cost of generating an extra watt of power during peak consumption hours is much higher than the same watt generated in the wee hours of the morning.  For most consumer and the smaller commercial accounts flat rate pricing still prevails.  Real time pricing (RTP) and negotiated SLAs will become more common to put the appropriate economic incentives in place.  The incentive of real time pricing is a lower energy bill overall, although the outcome is not guaranteed.  In pilot programs residential consumers have complained that RTP result in higher electricity costs.  With negotiated SLAs the customer can designate a workload to be subject to lower reliability; for instance, instead of 3 9’s, or outages amounting to about 10 hours per year, the low reliability workload can be designated as only 90 percent reliable, and can be out on the average of two hours per day.

· Match the electric power infrastructure in the data center to server workloads to minimize over-provisioning.  This approach assumes the existence of an accurate power consumption monitoring capability.

· Upgrading the electrical power infrastructure to accommodate additional servers is not an option in most data centers today.  Landing additional servers at a facility that's working at the limit of thermal capacity leads to the formation of hot spots, this assuming that electrical capacity limits are not reached first with no room left in certain branch circuits.  Hence measures that work under the existing power infrastructure are to be preferred over alternatives that require additional infrastructure.

For the purposes data center strategic planning it may make economic sense to grow large data centers in a modular fashion.  If the organization manages a number of data centers, consider making effective use of the existing data centers, and when new construction is justified, redistribute the workloads to the new data center to maximize the use of the new electrical supply infrastructure.

Intel has built into its server processor lineup a number of technology ingredients that allow data center operators optimize the utilization of the available power system infrastructure in the data center.

Newer servers of the Nehalem generation are much more energy efficient, if only because of the side effect of increased performance per watt.  These servers also have a more aggressive implementation of power proportional computing.  Typical idle consumption figures are in the order of 50 percent of peak power consumption.

Beyond passive mechanisms that do not require explicit operator intervention, the Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager (Node Manager) technology allows adjusting the power draw of a server and trade off power consumption against performance.  This capability is also known as power capping.  The control range is a function of server loading.  For the Intel SR5520UR baseboard on the 2U chassis, the server will draw about 300 watts at full load and its power consumption can be rolled down to about 200 watts.  The control range tapers down gradually until it reaches zero at idle.

For power monitoring, selected models of the current Nehalem generation come with PMBus specification compliant power supplies allowing real-time power consumption readouts.

The Node Manager power monitoring and capping capability apply to a single server.  To make this capability really useful it is necessary to exercise these capabilities collectively to groups of servers, to add the notion of events and a capability to build a historical record of power consumption for the servers in a group.  The additional capabilities have been implemented in software through the Data Center Manager Software Development Kit developed by the Intel Solutions and Software Group.  An additional Software Development Kit, Cache River allows programming access to components in servers and server building blocks produced by the Intel Enterprise Products Server Division (EPSD), including the baseboard management controller (BMC) and the management engine (ME), the subsystems that host or interact with the Node Management firmware.  EPSD products are incorporated in many OEM and system integrator offerings.

Data Center Manager implements abstractions that apply to collections of servers:

·  A hierarchical notion of logical server groups

·  Power management policies bound to specific server groups

·  Event management and a publish/subscribe facility for acting upon and managing power and thermal events.

·  A database for logging a historical record for power consumption on the collection of managed nodes.

The abstractions implemented by DCM on top of Node Manager allow the implementation of power management use cases that involve up to thousands of servers.

If this topic is of interest to you, please join us at the Intel Development Forum in San Francisco at the Moscone Center on September 22-24.  I will be facilitating course PDCS003, "Cloud Power Management with the Intel(r) Xeon(r) 5500 Series Platform."  You will be the opportunity to talk with some of our fellow travelers in the process of developing power management solutions using Intel technology ingredients and get a feel of their early experience.  Also please make a note to visit booths #515, #710 and #712 to see demonstrations of early end-to-end solutions these folks have put together.