There is quite a buzz around “cloud computing” architectures these days.  This general term for what Gartner defines as, “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers”, has become a little convoluted. It started out simple enough, but then the term got subdivided into “private” vs. “public” clouds, those architectures which are hosted internally and those which are hosted externally.  Internally we can build virtualized resource pools to run our applications or externally push them outside our data center to be hosting by the likes of Amazon, Google., Microsoft, or AT&T.  Then Cisco thought they should add some additional “clarity” into the mix introducing “virtual private” clouds and “open” clouds, as opposed to “closed”? And then there’s the term “inter-cloud”, and last but not least the “federating trusted private cloud”. Clearly, these are brilliant minds at work, but if you are getting a little confused, not to worry, so is everyone else.  Maybe another good blog between David Smith from Gartner, and James Urquhart from Cisco can help sort it all out for us (http://blogs.gartner.com/david_m_smith/2009/04/10/life-on-the-inter-cloud/)

Whether you are looking at cloud computing as a new compute architecture or simply trying to improve your areas of strategic advantage internally.  Intel technologies continue to be the building blocks that form the foundation of any high performance compute architecture. 

I’m not just talking about Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor, which in its own right, is the most efficient, powerful processing architecture that Intel has developed yet, by far.  I’m talking about all the other Virtualization Technologies (VT) that Intel has developed around the Xeon 5500.  The Power Management components built in with Node Manager, the different P-States of the processor to not only reduce frequencies and power use, but to even go into an over clocked mode for very high utilization requirements.

Intel’s newest 10Gig NIC (http://www.intel.com/Assets/pdf/whitepaper/10GbE_WP_v5.pdf) supports Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) technology.  FCoE allows you to consolidate your SAN fabric and network infrastructure, thus improving efficiencies and reducing complexity and costs.  Intel's IT organization, which keeps our company running also doubles as a test lab and has tested FCoE in-house.  Diane Bryant, Intel’s CIO talks about how they are delivering strategic value by providing these types of solutions that enable Intel's growth and transformation.   Check out the video link where she talks about how (2) 10 Gig NIC’s are replacing (7) 1 Gig NIC’s, and (2) HBA’s per server without reducing quality of service or performance.  Intel is seeing reduced costs by as much as 25% through the subsequent reductions in cabling, ports, switches, HBA’s etc. (http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/comments/intel_cio_supports_unified_fabric_and_fcoe/

So, things might be a little “nebulous” (pun intended) about which “cloud” we’re in, but we shouldn’t be about which technology to use to support it.

Mark

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

Sure, Intel® Xeon® 5500 Series Processors represent a quantum leap forward in terms of both performance and energy efficiency. That has been proven in a number of test results and reviews.  But for your back-end data demanding enterprise app deployments, large scale server consolidation or virtualization of business critical applications, Intel® Xeon 7400 series processors offer outstanding performance and performance per watt in 4-socket servers. So, which platform do you choose, especially when this decision is likely going to be the key determining factor for capital savings, efficiency and TCO for your datacenter infrastructure? Well, you’re read a lot about Xeon 5500 series Nehalem servers over the last few weeks.  Let me share with you some reasons to consider a Xeon 7400 series 4-socket server when you are presented with the choice between Intel’s two best of breed products for virtualization.

4 Socket and above servers (Xeon 7400) are purpose built – just like a large truck: They’re purpose built for your most data demanding enterprise applications like database and ERP, and for large scale server consolidation using virtualization. Large Trucks are also purpose built.  They’re purpose built for hauling large loads over long distances.   Now, you don’t buy a large truck to commute to work in.  You also don’t take your everyday commuter and attempt to haul large loads with it, because if you did you would be significantly undersized (you’ve all seen those cars on the road with rear tires about ready to pop under the weight of a palette of heavy goods tied on top). 

More Resources Matter for 4 Socket MP Workloads:
The apps/workloads listed above benefit from the expanded feature set associated with 4 Socket Xeon 7400 based servers: more processors (4 vs. 2), more cores (24 vs. 8), more memory (32 dimms vs. 18 dimms), more I/O capacity (7 slots vs. 4) and larger cache (16MB vs. 8MB).  These features and what they enable are why MP Server buying patterns have remained stable with IT for the last 5 years and will continue to be stable for the foreseeable future according to IDC. 

But in today’s economy there may be MP customers out there that will want to push the envelope and attempt to deploy lesser expensive 2S systems for traditional 4S solutions. Would doing so pencil out from a TCO perspective? Let’s take a look at two Virtualization usage examples and find out.

Large Scale Server Consolidation: Where almost 2x the memory matters.

In this scenario, IT Manager is dealing with numerous corporate acquisitions across the country prior to the economic downturn, with servers that now need to be consolidated to cut costs quickly.  Goal is to convert 1000 older underutilized 2S servers.  He (she) converts these to 1000 VMs and transfers them electronically to the central Data Center.   He determines that these infrastructure apps when consolidated generally run into memory constraints before they run into processor constraints, so for his candidate solutions he compares a 4 Socket Server with Xeon X7460 processors vs. a new 2 Socket server with Xeon X5570 processors.   He fully loads both systems with 4GB dimms (128GB on 4S vs. 72GB on 2S), and assigns 4GBs memory for each VM deployed (enabling 32VMs per server resulting in 31 new 4S servers vs. 18 VMs per server resulting in 56 new 2S Servers.)

Now, he only propagates the 4S Solution with 2 Xeon 7400 Processors, which allows the IT manager to still use all 128GB of memory on the 4S Servers while paying lower VMWare licensing costs.  Price these systems out on Dell, HP, IBM’s or Sun’s website, and the Xeon X7460 servers will be in the $15k-$20k range vs. the Xeon X5570 based servers will be in the $10k-$12k range (i.e. roughly 1.5x higher for 4S vs. 2S server).  Add VMWare license costs, power/cooling, LAN/SAN cabling, and system maintenance costs and you’ll see the 4S solutions offer a lower cost per VM.

Virtualizing Business Critical Workloads: Where 3x the Processor Cores matter.

In the previous example, we were looking to maximize consolidation ratios.  In this example, we’re looking to achieve predictable high performance for a business critical app.  Solutions like ERP that are put into a virtualized environment perform best when run without oversubscription, where you set the same number of virtual CPUs to equal the number of physical cores available on the platform.  This helps deliver relatively more predictable performance for all VMs and is the way that IT@Intel intends to deploy ERP in a virtualized environment as they begin to test this moving forward (read more about this in the new whitepaper).  In this example, we’ll convert ~100 non-production ERP instances (i.e. the instances used for QA, Dev, and Production break fix).  We’ll assign 2 virtual CPUs and 8GB memory for each instance.  The four-socket Xeon 7400 processor based systems (with 96GB memory) will have a total of 24 cores and will have a list price of about $25k.  This allows us to run 12 Virtual Machines without oversubscription on the MP Servers and enables 100 ERP instances to be consolidated down to about 8 MP (4 Socket) servers.  Since the Xeon 5500 based Servers just have 8-cores, the IT manager decides to avoid oversubscription and deploys 4 virtual machines – consolidating down to 25 DP (2 Socket) servers with 32GB Memory and a list price of about $8k per server.  Include the costs of the hardware, VMware ESX license costs, power/cooling, cabling, and Server maintenance – the MP (4 Socket) solution here would also offer a lower cost/vm than the Xeon 5500 based DP (2 Socket) solution due to having 3x the processor cores on 4 Socket.

When you are deploying your most data demanding enterprise applications and implementing large scale server consolidation, Xeon 7400 based servers represent a very intelligent choice. 

Let me know what you think.

bryce

OK, so we launched the Xeon 5500 processor based servers and workstations a couple of weeks ago. While I don’t have direct quotes of support from Brit, Miley, Susan or any country presidents who have signed economic stimulus into law I am pretty confident that if they were ever actually considering purchasing a server or workstation they would come to the conclusion that the new Xeon 5500 platforms would be their best choice.

I had the privilege of being at one of the thirty seven different worldwide Xeon 5500 launch events. I was on Wall Street and attended the NASDAQ launch event on March 31^st. Based on which data source estimate you look at Financial Services as a whole represents about 20% of the worldwide market for servers. It was also evident when meeting with customers in the NYC area that they are passionate about performance and power consumption. Most of them had received pre-production seed systems and had already done extensive testing prior to this launch event. I have been in Intel’s Server Platform Group for over a decade now and I have never seen so much enthusiasm for a product launch.

I won’t rehash the performance benchmarks and performance per watt data. There are many benchmarks, blogs and press articles doing that. What I took away from the conversations was a feeling of optimism from the end users I spoke to. Some people felt that these new products would be what it takes for them to deliver solutions that would give them a performance advantage over their competition. In few markets does that pay off more, and translate almost directly to the bottom line, than in Financial Services. Others felt that these systems would help them continue to add to their existing datacenters without having the need to build a new one. This was due to the performance per watt improvements and the end users ability to replace many old servers and workstations with a few new ones.

Lastly, I think human nature being what it is we are seeing that IT professionals want to work on cool new projects. These Xeon 5500 servers and workstations represent a shiny new toy that IT professionals can use to have a material impact on the bottom lines of their companies. To some degree the same applies to virtualization in that it is disruptive and provides a new cost effective way to deliver legacy solutions and also enables flexibility for future growth. The IT folks that I have met who familiarize themselves with virtualization, new hardware and advanced management techniques (power, systems, virtualization) generally are viewed internal to their companies as leaders with visionary capabilities.

As we all work through this economic morass I am hopeful that with new technology introductions, and a relentless focus on efficiency, we will all emerge with a greater level of capability and a higher degree of flexibility. I also believe IT will emerge as a key asset of differentiation for companies from Wall Street to Main Street and this will place an even greater burden on delivering solutions to meet those unique needs.

What do you think?

Shannon

shannon.poulin@intel.com

For readers of my February Blog, I talked about being so excited that i felt like a kid on Christmas morning when it came to our upcoming Nehalem launch and shared a story about some customers I talked with.  Well I can now give you your presents and a little background on the experience I had back in February.

• The two customers i interviewed were Thomson-Reuters (James Powell - CTO) and Intel IT (Elwood Coslett, Director Engineering Computing).  You can view our discussion at http://www.intel.com/business/xeon/seminar.htm
• You can learn more about the Xeon 5500 capabilities at www.intel.com/business/xeon
• You can gain insights and connect with industry insiders on the next generation of server technology at the new Server Solutions Insider community

Time to play with our new technology toys.

Chris

Our new product, the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series, has ushered in what we at Intel call a new generation of intelligent server processors. Before I wrote this blog I had to look up the definition of intelligence (American Heritage Dictionary):

In•tel•li•gence n 1.a. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. b. The faculty of thought and reason.

In this context, I’d like to discuss two topics. (1) An Intelligent Product (2) An Intelligent Choice

An Intelligent Product: (the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge)

Key technology enhancements to the Xeon 5500 include a suite of new features and capabilities that enable servers utilizing these new processor to serve a wide range of server usages (from basic business to high performance computing) (from single threaded applications to well threaded applications) (from non virtualized to highly virtualized environments) and makes these servers adaptable to the environment you want to deploy it into.

ð       Intel Hyper-Threading Technology is back boosting performance for well threaded applications

ð       Intel Intelligent Power Technology adjusts server power consumption real time to workload

o       Automated Low Power States reduces CPU, Memory and I/O power without impacting performance

o        Integrated Power Gates dynamically turn cpu cores that are not in use to reduce idle power near 10W

ð       Intel Turbo-Boost Technology speeds up your processor when application demands peak

ð       Intel QuickPath Technology provides industry leading server bandwidth (up to 3.5x prior Xeon)

The benefits for IT and Business?

ð       A server platform that can adapt to your application environment allowing you to deploy it in one environment today with the knowledge you can repurpose it tomorrow, if needed

ð       A server platform that can adapt you changing workload demands over the course of a day, saving power when demands are low and better performance when you need it most

Read the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series platform brief to learn about these technologies

Visit this video about the new product and the technologies listed above

An Intelligent Choice: (the faculty of thought and reason)

Economic times are tough and we’re all struggling with spending choices (or not spending) at both a personal and corporate level. However, business spends about 2/3 of their IT budget maintaining existing servers (source IDC). IDC further estimates that 40% of the servers installed today are 4yr+ single core servers with another 40% being 3 year old dual-core. These servers are consuming a lot of valuable resources. With a heavy % of IT budget spent on operating costs, the challenge is that if you cut spending, you are cutting innovation. This limits business competitiveness.

What is the option? …. Server Refresh. Compared to installed single core Xeon servers, these new Xeon processors enable up to 9x performance per server, a 9:1 server consolidation opportunity (with flat performance), lowering operating costs by an estimated 90% and delivering an estimated up to 8 month payback on investment. That means that an investment in a new server today can pay for itself in less than a year, helping you to self fund more innovation or helping to boost the bottom line of your organization. If your environment is dual-core based, the opportunity is about a 3:1 consolidation opportunity.

               Download this pdf to understand the 8 month estimate

View a video demonstration highlighting the 9:1 consolidation and 3:1 consolidation

In summary the Xeon 5500 series is an intelligent product in it’s capability to adapt to both it’s application and user environment and an intelligent choice for IT investment delivering an estimated up to 8 month payback – much better than you can do in the stock market, bank or many other projects.

I think that this is the right product at the right time.  What do you think? ... I'd like to hear your reactions.

Chris

Ever since Johnny Carson introduced his Top Ten format on the Tonight Show, I have found myself a big fan of this format. (Note: I guess the origin of the top 10 format may not have been new with the Tonight Show but it was my first exposure – I guess I date myself some ).

Many times the top 10 format is fun and entertaining, however, my topic today is a little more serious. In January of 2009, I found Tech Republic’s “10 Reasons To Purchase New Hardware During A Recession” on a ZDNet Blog

As I spend my days talking IT managers around the world, many of these items resonate with me and whether you are investing to support continued daily business operations (existing hardware is a limiter for you), to improve IT efficiency (reduce operating costs of aging install base) or to business competitiveness (offer new services before your competition does) … many of these Tech Republic Top 10 reasons (see below) were at the heart of their investment strategy.  

So before you cut your IT budget in response to economic conditions, consider if purpose driven IT investments might deliver you a competitive advantage by enabling you and your company to do more with less.

Tune in next few weeks for a my two part series covering the benefits of IT investments in specific business environments

ð      Small – Medium Business: Why Buy for the Small Guy?

ð      Large Enterprise: Why Buy for the Big Guy?

PS: Do you have a favorite top 10 (personal or business)?

Chris

Last Sunday concluded the Amgen Tour of California bike race which, for those who don’t follow cycling, was a 9 day road race through California covering 780 miles.  The eventual winner, Levi Leipheimer, won by only 36 seconds in overall time to the number two finisher!

Now, you may ask, “What does cycling have to do with virtualization?”  Well, many customers believe that the VMM or core virtualization software, in itself, is what “virtualization” means.  It is true that the VMM is the core and most obvious part of virtualization, but all the supporting components around virtualization: management, security, automation, provisioning, reliability, performance, etc. are what actually allow it's users to achieve the ROI they’re expecting and the reduction in TCO from implementing this new paradigm.  If your looking for a start to trying to determining the ROI of a virtualization implementation with Intel take a look at Intel’s ROI Estimator. (http://www.intel.com/technology/virtualization/technology.htm?iid=tech_vt+tech) .

When I watched my first bike race, I didn’t get it.  Cycling seemed an individual sport, each rider trying to ride the course, on his own, with the fastest time, in a large group of riders.  Now I realize that what cycling really is, is a team sport. Each team is comprised of a complex network of riders, each with different roles.  Levi’s team, “Team Astana”, like all teams, has a large support staff that you don’t see, comprised of coaches, strategists, mechanics, etc.  Everyone has a role to play in trying to get just one team rider over the finish line the fastest.

The supporting components of virtualization that play key roles in providing virtualization’s true value include a network of software and hardware components.  On the hardware side, Intel’s latest 6-Core Xeon 7400 CPU, improves performance by as much as 50% from previous generation processors (http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon_mp/summary.htm?iid=products_xeon7000+body_benchmarks). It pays to have a fast machine.  Much like Levi’s high tech roadbike. (http://www.intel.com/technology/virtualization/).  

In future BLOGs I'd like to try and help answer the following questions:

• How Intel is taking advantage of the advances in virtualization management, and how is this impacting operational efficiencies?  What are your experiences with virtualization management?
• What are the best strategies/Best Known Methods (BKM’s) for implementing and using management with server virtualization?
• How can an integrated lifecycle management approach help in our virtualization implementations?
• What have you seen with the role of automation in reducing costs?

I look forward to passing on the BKM’s I am discovering in the areas of virtualization management as I consult with Intel customers around the world. . .and, I may throw in a few additional cycling tidbits because as you all now know: cycling and virtualization are surprisingly parallel!

Mark