Japan announced today that it has emerged from recession, following Germany and France’s announcements last week that their economies also grew in the second quarter. 

Moody’s Economy.com Business Confidence survey shows that confidence has been steadily increasing since March ‘09.

For the first time since September ’08, “Economic Recovery” nudges above “Economic Crisis” in Google Search Volume in early August. 

In addition to this, economic forecasts (WW GDP, US GDP, and EU GDP) point to a recovery over the next 6 months.  A couple of quotes:

• The direction of real GDP is even expected to turn from negative to positive in the current quarter. The academic arbiters of the business cycle at the National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually proclaim that the Great Recession ended sometime this summer.
         Moody’s Economy.Com – July 7, 2009
• The global economy is beginning to pull out of a recession unprecedented in the post–World War II era
         International Monetary Fund, imf.org – July 8, 2009

So, why am I bombarding this blog with various optimistic economic data? Because if we really are pulling out of the abyss, I’m worried that many companies out there are sitting on servers that will not be ready for the increased demand right around the corner.         

John Gantz, IDC Vice President in his keynote speech at the start of this year’s CIO Summit in Auckland was quoted as saying there will be an unprecedented amount of IT-driven change in the next four years.  He projected that there will be a three-fold rise in mobile users and information will grow five-fold, resulting in heightened levels of security and privacy and questions on which data to store or throw away. He also mentioned that the number of interactions between people on networks will grow eight times.

So this got me thinking… Is your company looking to differentiate and go after more market share while your competitors are hunkered down and not investing in the downturn? My guess is that there are a lot of IT managers being asked to support more social media, offer more SaaS, deploy more virtual machines, and support more real time analytics to get a leg up on the competition.  My gut tells me that it will be hard to do all of this with older servers that were put into another year of extended warranty because that felt like the right move when the proverbial economic s**t hit the fan last year. 

It’s critical to be prepared for when the recovery comes, and data points to an economic turnaround happening now – are you positioning your department to own it when it arrives?

Bryce

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Intel's Chief Virtualization Architect Rich Uhlig to discuss the new usage models and virtualization technologies in Intel new Xeon 5500 series platform. Rich and I have been friends and colleagues for several years and the video of our discussion is attached and can be viewed on Youtube. The conversation sparked some interesting questions from my colleagues, friends and children which I thought I would share with a wider audience.

First the questions from my son's (I have three boys...yes this means that my wife has the patience of a saint):

Dad, what is virtualization? Does that mean you can take people and computers and teleport them to new places, like Star Trek? Did Intel invent virtualization? Why do you think it is so cool? When I grow up, can I be virtualized?

My Answer:

Slow down.....slow down...let me try to answer the questions one at a time.

Virtualization is the ability to increase computer, network and storage utilization with multiple operating systems or logical machines, called virtual machines. This allows Dad and his friends to use more of their computers with different applications and devices. Using virtualization allows Dad and his friends to save money, save power and increase efficiency.

Response (My three son's in unison):

Boring! I thought you said your job is cool. Your such a geek......(trailing off and looking at their iPods)

My response:

Guys, hold on...let me explain. Virtualization technology IS cool. While it wasn't invented by Intel, we have worked with an industry of incredibly gifted engineers, architects and designers to create new ways for people to use their computer technology....and the best part is we are only in the beginning. By the time you are an adult you will have the opportunity to use virtualization technology in ways we are only beginning to imagine. Think of virtualization as a journey and evolution of computer technology for Dad and his friends to maximize the use of the computers that we buy/build. Hopefully, with more innovation and computer technology advances you will be able to create a virtualization layer that will allow you and your digital identity to "teleport" to new places in a virtual cloud. You won't be "virtualized" but you will be able to create your digital environment wherever there is a machine that can understand your commands. That is pretty cool. Think of it this way, you can save and play your Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation or XBox profiles on any machine, any where in the world that can download your profile.

Response (from my 13 year old):

You mean I can play EA's Madden Football 24 hours a day with my friends, even when we are on vacation and you want me to see some historic landmark, like the Lincoln Memorial?

My response:

Well...yes but not exactly what I had in mind. (aargh!)

A recent question from my friend from a former job on Virtualization:

I hear the new Intel chip, Nehalem (formerly known as the Intel Xeon 5500 series), is the best product you guys have released in a long time, What makes the product so good, is it the virtualization technology that you work on?

My response:

     Virtualization technology provides increased instrumentation and flexibility for the Intel Xeon 5500 series platform but it is only one a host of fantastic features which make this product the best we have ever released. For Data Center managers, increased efficiency is an every day part of life. Nehalem offers increased performance, increase memory capacity, a new Quick Path Interconnect (which acts like a NUMA switch fabric on silicon, remember that cool product we launched in 1997 at Sequent Computers?) and a 2nd generation of virtualization capabilities that deliver native virtualization instruction capabilities for VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix and a host of Xen providers. It is a truly a breakthrough server product. With this new architecture and design characteristics we are able to meet the needs of a platform of new Virtualization usage models including: Rapid Application Deployment, High Availability, Virtual Desktop Infrastructures and Server Consolidation. It is a very exciting time...

My friend's response:

     Very cool. I miss working on hardware innovations...sounds like you guys at Intel are up to something special. Should I buy the stock?

My response:

     Thanks. Intel is a great place to work and we are doing some very cool product innovations. Do we always have to talk about stock price?

Finally, a recent question from a dear colleague:

     What happens if virtualization technology is deployed on every platform that Intel ships? Won't business and consumers need less devices? Won't users no longer have an insatiable demand for compute, network and storage resources?

My Answer:

    Funny you should ask that question. Rich Uhlig, Fernando Martins, Rick Olha, RK and I have debated this exact question for years. The answer is simple. Virtualization increases demand for more resources than ever before. In fact, until the recent economic downturn virtualization technology was cited by a Citigroup analyst as the key driver to Server growth in 2H 2007. For the first time in over 10 years the markets average selling price was increasing. Why? Because users could do more with every server they purchased. Virtualization actually facilitiates more usages on more application development and production environments than ever before. As we increase the performance of the instruction sets and Intel Microarchitectures we increase the capabilities that virtualization can impact for new usage models, while preserving some the legacy compatibility that users require for 32-bit application workloads. Simply stated, "we can do more with less!"

Next question (by the way this was a skeptical Intel exec.):

     Doing more with less is fine...but what about our volumes for server products? what happens when virtualization is prevalent across all of Intel CPU and Platform offerings?

My response:

    Flexibility and control are critical to all of our customers regardless of form factor. Is there anything worse then buying a new server, PC or handheld and having application compatibility errors? No. Do we really believe the world wants to become software compatibility specialists everytime Microsoft releases a new operating system? What about Dell, HP, Lenovo, IBM, Acer, Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM and HTC? It has taken us over 10 years of research, testing and product development to get here. Virtualization is a "Hot Topic" today and will be in the future because it makes a positive difference in our customers lives both financially and efficiently. Our job is deliver the greatest silicon products the world has ever seen, over and over and over again. Virtualization allows us to do that AND preserve the investments our customers and software partners make in developing their own operating environments. What is cooler than that? Virtualization facilitates innovation, consumption and utilization, our customers are telling us this everyday. Innovation is critical to this process, enabling our software colleagues is a must and opening up the discussion is part of the process.

Her response:

     Well, I guess you are pretty passionate about virtualization?

My response:

     I hope so...that is why you hired me.

Have a listen, enjoy the video and join the discussion of Rich and I. For us, Virtualization is a very Hot topic, that we have thought is Cool for a very long time.

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?

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

I was out at HP Tech Forum last week and had a chance to catch up on all the latest technology advancements with HP and Intel. What I saw was staggering, over 17 new HP-Intel designs, the HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD), and lot's more that I will be sharing with you in coming days as I add more video from the event and help to tell the story if you couldn't be there. First off, I caught up with John McAtee from Intel's HP account team. He was showing a cool demonstration on why now is the right time to invest in XEON 5500 processor series technology. Check out this video and find out how you can start saving in your datacenter today !

If you want more information on how the XEON 5500 processor series can starting saving in the datacenter, check out this ROI Calculator tool. Also, if you are looking for detailed information or are just looking to gain more knowledge, you can always "Ask The Professor" in our Server Learning Center.

Every day in our personal lives, we’re bombarded with “opportunities” to get a better deal.  At the grocery store, we might be able to buy a single item for $2.50 or 3 for $5.00…which then forces us to go thru the mental gymnastics of figuring out how good of a deal it is, and whether or not we really need three 96 oz. bottles of salad dressing.

But there are some opportunities out there for adding a bunch of compute performance are a bit more straight-forward.

Case in point: Dell recently had Principled Technologies compare the performance for the Intel® Xeon® Processor E5520 and E5506 CPUs each running on a PowerEdge R710 server.  Both are 4 core processors, but the E5520 has many advantages over the E5506: 

• higher frequency (2.26 GHz vs. 2.13 GHz)
• faster QuickPath speeds (5.86 GT/s vs. 4.8 GT/s)
• faster memory support (1066 MHz vs. 800 MHz)
• Turbo Boost
• Hyper-Threading support.

Long story short:  Buying a slightly better processor with a server purchase can drastically increase your performance.  So if you are looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server configured with Microsoft SQL Server 2008* and an Intel® Xeon® Processor E5506, for an additional $300 you can get up to 75% more performance by upgrading to an E5520 CPU.  More performance headroom in a similar power envelope, faster QuickPath and memory speeds, Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost functionality – all for $300.  NOW THAT’S A GREAT VALUE!

Check out the summary document for the Dell R710 Principled Technologies performance testing, which also has comparative performance testing for the Xeon® E5540 and X5550 CPUs (also a great value for the money!), along with results for Microsoft Exchange.

NOTE:  System pricing from www.dell.com as of May 13, 2009.  Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability. See the actual Principled Technology report in the following link for complete system configuration

The debate on how to best increase system capacity to accommodate growing applications has raged on for years; “scale up” with more CPU, memory, and I/O, or “scale out” with loosely connected systems.    Scaling out by adding networked systems to increase capacity has been a good economical solution for many IT managers because it allows them to grow by using less expensive, industry standard building blocks.  However, there are some notable exceptions to this line of thought.  One is that the class of applications that require shared memory and large database support are much better suited to run on a single, expandable system that scales up.  These are typically transaction processing, business intelligence and ERP solutions.   Until now, IT managers running applications that require scale-up systems larger than 4 or 8 CPUs have had limited platform choices and most were proprietary and expensive RISC-based servers.

The other problem with the scale out approach is the people, facilities, software and overhead costs and complexity of managing very large numbers of servers, which can grow to a point where the costs outweigh the performance and system cost benefits.  The industry solution to achieving better ROI has been to consolidate multiple scale-out servers onto single industry standard scale-up servers with virtualization solutions.  This is a good solution, but is limited by the number of application loads the IT manager feels comfortable placing on a single server, given the need to maintain peak performance and availability for each application.

Well, it looks like the scale-up, scale-out debate is about to take another turn.  In the server product update Intel gave on May 26th, they talked about new levels of system scalability and choice supported by the upcoming Nehalem-EX processor.  This processor will support systems that scale up to 8 sockets natively (shared memory, without any additional silicon), and up to 16 sockets and higher with node controllers from system manufactures that allow single systems to share memory beyond 8 sockets.   So far there are over 15 different designs from 8 OEMs that offer 8 socket or higher scalability.  But of course, for the class of application where scaling is important, socket count doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s needed for scalable performance.  Thread support, key for transaction processing and virtualization, scales at the rate of 16 threads per socket with 8 cores and Hyper Threading (2 threads per core).  That would be 128 threads for an 8-socket system, and 256 threads for 16 sockets.   And in order to keep those threads fed with data close to the CPU, each processor supports up to 24 MB of shared cache (1.5X current generation Xeon), and an impressive 16 memory slots per socket or 128 DIMMs on an 8-socket system.  In addition, the Scalable Memory Interconnect gives these systems 9 times the memory bandwidth of today’s top Xeon processor.  Finally, four QuickPath interconnect links per socket allow for high-bandwidth sharing of data across the system.

So the net of it is that the industry is going to see a broad selection of highly scalable, next-generation servers that significantly extend the economic advantage of industry standard scale-up solutions for business-critical, large database, and high-end virtualization/consolidation deployments.     I would expect these systems to give IT managers a very cost-effective alternative to the much more expensive and proprietary RISC-based servers they use today.

What are your thoughts?  Mike

Related Topics:

• NHM-EX Press Fact Sheet
• NHM-EX May 26th Press Briefing Video – condensed version
• IBM 8Socket Demo Video
• NHM-EX--A New Standard

Fast Food. Fast Servers. Fast Savings.

A recent customer who worked for the US Department of Defense expressed an interest in using the Intel Xeon Server Refresh Savings Estimator off-line (no internet connection) due to security concerns of using their own internal business data over the internet.

For those of you who may have similar concerns, here is a procedure that will give you access to the ROI estimator on the safety of your own laptop or desktop computer.

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3204