It has been a little while since I shared some thoughts about moving from RISC due to a 3 month assignment managing the Nehalem-EX product line. One word describes that product, ‘wow’, and the change it will bring to the IT marketplace as we know it. But I’m not here to talk about that….

David Bowie was certainly introspective when he wrote his “Changes” song about his need to constantly look at oneself, previous decisions and the need for frequent reinvention and change. The sentiments reflected within “Changes” can be applied to all aspects of life both personal and business. Reflecting on previous business decisions and looking for newer and better ways to do things should not be seen as the previous decision being wrong, but rather should be rewarded as looking to change and do things better based upon the environment today.

Previous business decisions to deploy your IT solutions on RISC based architectures was most likely the right decision at the time based on the business need, the solutions availability and the architecture available to run that solution.  Some of these solutions are likely due for an upgrade due to changing business needs, a better version of the application now being available or have become to expensive to maintain and support on older server system. It is time to make a change and change is likely to include upgrading to next generation of software solution and choosing a new server system that will perform and work with the software solution.

With the rapid pace of technology innovation and evolution over the last number of years, the decision is not necessarily as clear cut as it may have been in the past.

What I wanted to share with you was some information around how Intel’s Xeon microprocessor has evolved and can now compete with the POWER architecture offered from IBM.  Some of you may say that this is not possible, but Xeon 5500 is getting some attention as shown with information posted on IBM website

Price/performance is a key consideration for database workloads and $ / tpmC is pretty widely accepted as a good rule of thumb. Its good to see that the IBM System x3950M2 (based on the Xeon 7400 processor) has a $1.99 $ / tpmC compared to IBM Power P570  $3.54 $ / tpmC;-)

Xeon 5500 has a performance per socket leadership against a similar class POWER 6 2S system. This can be seen by comparing results at www.spec.orgfor benchmarks such as SPECJbb2005, SPECint-rate 2006 etc. IBM makes reference to performance per core leadership over the Xeon 5500. A fair statement, but most customers look at overall system level performance to do the require task. I guess my key takeaway is that if you are looking for a solution to run infrastructure type workloads and get the best bang for your buck then the Xeon 5500 delivers best price/performance

There is also some interesting discussion around scalability of Xeon Vs POWER6. Xeon 5500 is used in 2 socket configurations, and not in scalable systems. So it seems to be a little like comparing apples to oranges!. Scalable Xeon platforms are available in the market today from both IBM and Unisys. There are also 15+ designs for scalable platforms from 8 OEMs coming with Intel’s next generation scalable Xeon product, Nehalem-EX.  Some good material was shared recently at Intel’s Developer Forum in San Francisco. Look for Mission Critical Server Deployment class at https://intel.wingateweb.com/us09/scheduler/catalog/catalog.jspThis material provides a good overview about how Nehalem-EX provides supportfor high-end computing with a scalable micro architecture, advanced RAS capabilities and how Redhat will support Nehalem-EX scalability. This presentation also shows an example of the innovation of NEC who are developing mission critical Linux solutions based on NEC’s Scalable architecture using Intel Xeon processors.

So is it the time for you to change?. Are existing options like the Xeon 5500 or the Xeon 7400 the right choice for you? Nehalem-EX is coming and I believe will bring a huge change to the marketplace as we know it today.

What do you think?

Register and mark your calendar.  On Sep 23, 10am EDT (New York) / 14:00 GMT / 16:00 CEST (Paris), Red Hat and Intel team will host another webinar, guiding you through the steps to take to migrate your enterprise workload from UNIX/RISC to RHEL/Intel.  The "why" and economics of the migration is now quite evident.  This webinar presents "how" a migration should be carried out.  The time is scheduled best for audience in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, but also works well for those on the east coast of Americias.

In the mean time, Red Hat has written this migration whitepaper that walks you through methodologies of a migration.

Happy migration!  and drive your data center cost down!

Intel's Clayton Craft shows and discusses a HP Z600 Workstation featuring the Intel Xeon 5500 processor at the HP Tech Forum.

Here is another happy customer, YPF Gas, successfully reducing cost by migrating Oracle, SAP, and other workload from multiple proprietary UNIX environments to open, industry standard-based.  The choice was Red Hat Enterprise Linux with virtualization, running on Intel Xeon processor-based servers.  We can see from the number of times the word “cost” is used in also published press release, it is the major challenge for IT mangers and we have solution for it.  YPF Gas declares “now, more than 80 percent of (our) Oracle databases and 90 percent of (our) SAP applications run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with integrated virtualization on Intel Xeon processor-based servers…” 

Also, don’t forget to register and participate in the Red Hat-Intel joint webinar, How and When to Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon processors, tomorrow at 2pm eastern. 

The current economic environment is leading to Customers becoming increasingly aware that there is an economic benefit in migrating from RISC/UNIX environment to Intel platforms. Here at Intel we have seen a significant increase in requests from Customers that are considering this opportunity. There are several paths available to migrate with multiple operating systems supported on the Intel architectures. Customers will decide on their operating system environment, and in some industries we are seeing a demand to move from Unix to Linux. Customers are understanding the TCO and economic benefits of moving and are now focused on ‘when’ and ‘how’ to migrate.  Eoin McConnell and others blogged about this in greater depth. Resources are available from Redhat to assist with migration.  Red Hat and Intel team is responding to that and moving to the next phase of delivering "when" and “how-to.”  Following up two webinars the team delivered earlier (Apr 28 webinar, May 14 webinar), on June 24, at 11am pacific, 2pm eastern, we will be delivering our first "when" and “how-to” webinar putting solution experts from both companies under the spotlight.  Please register, spread the word, and join this webinar:  Register!!! 

In this version of my VMWorld Chalk Talk series, we have Intel's Marco Righini, Virtualization Solutions Architect discussing new technologies for virtualization. Check out his video here.

How do I migrate my solution from RISC to x86 architecture is one of the questions that I get asked a lot these days. It is a very fair question to ask as it is only human nature to want some level of comfort when planning a transition.

There are multiple different paths available to migrate solutions and there are numerous different variables which need to be considered. There is no 'one-size fits all' approach to migration. Factors such as operating system environment, type of workload, whether packaged application and the level of custom code in your solution all come into play when trying to plan out your migration.

So, without writing 'war and peace' (an extremely long novel) I just wanted to share some perspectives and point to some resources in that jungle of resources that might help you navigate your way through a solution migration

Firstly, if your solution is an off the shelf application then moving it from one architecture type to another is a straight forward  porting and recompile process. Contrary to some popular beliefs there is not a whole separate set of application vendors and titles where the applications just run on Unix/RISC combination. Most application vendors have made their products available on multiple different operating systems that run on multiple different architectures. Unfortunately there is no master index or website out there that I have come across that would simplify the process of seeing who supports what application on what operating and what architecture. (let me know if there is something like this). Unfortunately it is a hard grind and requires a visit to each application vendors website to ensure that their application that is part of your solution is supported on your choice of operating system and your server platform of choice.

Luckily, it is not all doom and gloom and hard work. One very useful site around Solaris is the tool on SUN Microsystems website that allows you to check what applications  run on Solaris sparc or Solaris x86.http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/apps/

The last I checked over 80% of applications that run on SPARC also run on x86.

My suggestion if you draw blank here is to approach your application vendor and make business case on why they should support a Solaris x86 version. Likelihood is that the application vendor has a version running on Linux/x86 already, so getting a version to run on solaris/x86 is not a huge engineering effort. Mainly the application vendor will want to see some real demand so they can justify the support model.

There are also some useful guides out there developed by HP, Dell, Intel, SUN, IBM, Redhat, Microsoft and others that are technically focussed on the 'how to' migrate your solution.

Here is just a sample of some of the resources.

• HP www.hp.com/go/sun2hp. Not only does this site have material on SPARC, also contains material on AS400, POWER, Mainframe and other architectures. There is a wealth of information on all the HP options from Itanium to Xeon, Solaris, Linux, windows, HP-UX etc. Technical guides, TCO tools, migration resources etc
  another site that focus on providing migration assistance is www.hp.com/go/migration
• Dell http://www.dell.com/unixmigration. Don't get thrown by the title of the link. Some good content here on how to move an Oracle database and DNS server to Solaris or Linux on Dell system. Also content on why to move and how to get some support
• SUN http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/installationhowto.jsp How to install Solaris 10 on x86.
• Redhat http://www.redhat.com/intelligence/. This site has whitepapers, migration guides, webinars, how Linux compares to unix etc

Lastly migrating custom code is a more challenging project. There are many organizations with significant experience and expertise that offer services to assist in migration projects. Leverage these organizations to help. I know at first blush there may be concerns of the cost of paying for migration services, but look at the bigger picture. In a lot of cases the TCO benefits and improved performance will deliver business benefits that will outweigh the cost of migration in the long run.

Hopefully this is helpful. I would really like to hear what have your experiences have been with migration or what are the challenges that you face as you look forward towards migration?

So, one of the cool things about partnering with Intel on Cisco UCS is that Intel gave us a great platform to innovate with the Intel Xeon 5500 Series.  One area where we did this was to take advantage of Intel QuickPath technology to create our extended memory technology.  This Cisco exclusive technology allows our two socket server blades to access up to 384GB of memory, which provides a number of practical benefits that can radically shift the economics of your server infrastructure.

The first scenario is fairly simple and straightforward--the additional memory allows you to be more aggressive with your server consolidation/virutalization efforts by driving higher VM density on each physical server blade.  Fewer physical servers translates to both lower capex and opex.

To this address this point, some customers have been moving up to increasing the number of sockets per server to gain more on-board memory.  Again, this approach carries a couple of significant caveats.  The first downside is the higher cost of the server blade itself, but the second downside might be even worse: higher software licensing costs associated with the higher socket count.

Finally, the UCS gives you an interesting option where you have more modest workloads.  Because the UCS B-Series blade server supports more physical DIMM slots, customers can use the less expensive 2GB or 4GB RDIMMs if they don't need the full 384GB per server.  For example, you can deliver the same 192GB of memory per server (that is the previous max) using 4GB RDIMMs, which are substantially less expensive than the 8GB RDIMMs, while maintaining full flexibility to upgrade memory if future needs dictate.

To get more details on the Cisco UCS Extended Memory Technology, check out this white paper.