Back at IDF for Day 2 and still wrapping up some exciting news coming out yesterday. I met with Robert Zuber (IBM WW Marketing Manager)and Mike Moreno (Intel) and we talked about how IBM and the DB2 team, along with XEON 7400-series processors achieved this milestone of the Industry's First 1M+ TPC-C result. Here's a video with Robert and Mike in the Technology Showcase.

Check out the official Transaction Processing Council Site for details on the system configuration and full results.

Working in High Tech means that most of us don't ever slow down - if we do, we risk falling behind. As a result, I usually find myself more more stressed than relaxed (just ask my peers or my wife).

So when I find good humor, I like to share. I found this video snippet about virtualization at www.talesofitutopia.com and it put a smile on my face. It is a little scarry that i can relate to more than one of the characters (the boss, the IT guy and even to some extent the JINX). Which character do you relate to?

Virtilization anyone?

Last week, the first part this video series focused on the energy efficiency benefits of 45nm. The 2nd part of this video (below) is focused on the benefits of 45nm for virtualization and the intel processor roadmap including what's next in 45nm processor technology - the Dunnington and Nehalem-EP products

Is this information useful to you? why or why not?

Chris

Following a recent interview I conducted with the Register on a related subject, I was asked to talk more about Intel's current 45nm technology and our roadmap for new technology later this year. Join me in a two part video series where I discuss 45nm and beyond.

Part 1 (below) discusses the technology and benefits that 45nm xeon processors deliver for IT today.

Tune in next week to hear Part 2 - what we have planned for future enhancements to today's xeon products - the Nehalem Processor and Intel QuickPath architecture.

Chris

Part four of three

Hopefully if you are watching this, you have already seen the first three installments I did on surviving data center crisis. A quick recap, the premise ( aka crisis ) is, You are running out of capacity.

According to Green Tech World, TMC 2007 "81% of IT mgrs will exceed capacity for power or space in the next 5 years".

In the first three video segments I spoke to three complementary approaches, that taken together could give you as much as 50X the data center capacity in your existing power and space .

Summarizing:

Data Center Crisis - How to Survive... Refresh with todays advanced high performing servers
Data Center Crisis - Part 2 - Using Virtualization... Virtualize and Consolidate
Data Center Crisis - Part 3 - Getting Dense- Use every Watt

Today I want to address two follow-up questions:

One, Where to go next when I used up all this new capacity?
Two, Who can help me get there?

Step to outside the boxness:

Moving outside the box allows it manager to move work that can be efficiently run elsewhere ( things like email ) outside the data center, and focus on the highest business value or least movable work inside.

As to who can help you get here. The system integrator/IT Outsourcer community offers support in all four strategies I have outlined.

My recommendation is to examine your situation, and your growth projection, and create a plan using all four strategies that will preclude the major capital expense of data center construction. Avoiding that 10 to 50 million dollar capital hit should be a very compelling proposal.

After coming back from IDF a couple weeks ago, I've had some time to go through the mountains of online material, presentations mostly and a few interesting videos. This video is from Pat Gelsinger's keynote address and features Mendel Rosenblum from VMware. Pat and Mendel discuss new technologies in virtualization and demonstrate "Flex Migration", just hit the play button below to view...


This is very interesting for those IT shops with multiple legacy platforms and new generation servers coming online. We will have more discussion on this topic in the future, and so in the meantime, let us know if you have questions on how this could benefit your datacenter.

This is part three - the implication being that it is a sequel to part one and part two. It is. That said, each of the sections have their own messages and may or may not help your data center. The first part talked about the benefits of bringing in the latest hardware. Intel has been delivering performance increases at a pace beyond "Moore's Law". Getting rid of old, slow, inefficient servers can give you 2-12 times the capacity instantly. The second "episode" talked about getting everything you can from each server. Use virtualization and consolidation to make sure your servers are full and busy. The most efficient bus is a full bus ( this is a metaphor, I am talking about the big yellow things carrying students, not the circuitry in the box )

My focus in part three is on density. My operating premise is that the data center manager wants to get everything out of the current data center and avoid, or at least defer, construction of a new data center. If your in the data center construction business, this is not for you.

To get the most out of our data center we want to pack every server we can power into the space. You can do this by executing three actions. 1) Use every watt, 2) Build the right servers, and 3) Optimize HVAC. In many cases twice the servers can be crammed into the existing rack space even without adding power. If you are able to redirect your hvac power savings to your racks, your results could be even better.

So, we potentially got 5x capacity from new quad core servers, 5x capacity from boosting utilization with consolidation, and 2x capacity with higher density. My math says 5x * 5x * 2x = 50x the capacity ( in the same space and power!) video

Whenever I see the word fabric, I immediately think of cloth, which immediately takes my mind to "helping" pick out curtains, which puts me in immanent boredom mode. Pardon the offense to those of you that actually know what color curtains you own, but there are some very cool things happening in data center communication.

Today the boxes in the data center (servers, storage, switches, ...) communicate over some combination of medium and protocols. While some protocols have become less common, (DECnet, Token Ring) there is still a bunch of InfiniBand, Fiber Channel, and Ethernet. Guess what, Ethernet is going to win. Ok, that was an unsupported prognostication,,, but Ethernet has won in every other arena it has entered.

Ethernet is what I really want to talk about today. There are a series of changes happening that allow Ethernet to be cast in the role of data center fabric. The first is simple throughput - 10GB. 10GB has the capacity to support the needs of detached storage. The thing that really makes this possible is a QOS feature called "priority pause". This extension to the Ethernet standard enables Ethernet to support QOS for differentiated services and to minimize or eliminate packet drops.

This new "Ethernet" enables rich SOE ( Storage over Ethernet) beyond iSCSI to FCOE( fiber channel over Ethernet). Intel has open-sourced FCOE software, and the network community is actively discussing the future of Fiber Channel.

Consolidating on 10gb reduces required port counts, and a single protocol reduces server hardware and switch infrastructure. All of this saves energy and simplifies data center wire management. These are good things. The extensions to the Ethernet specs were the result of collaboration between Intel and other industry leaders. This new spec should make it simpler to choose which curtains will go best in the data center

Intel is the leader in the add on server NIC business has great products available in the 10gb NIC space. The Intel NICS, when used on and Intel based platform, also support VMDQ - part of Intel's "Virtualization Technology for Connectivity". At VMworld Intel demonstrated that VMDQ technology in Intel Network Adapters boosted max throughput on a 10gb virtualized connection from 4gb to ~9gb - nearly max theoretical capacity.

You can buy the bits today! There are about 30 different vendors with products in the 10gb space. Clearly this is a ripe area for innovation and entry. The question remains glass or copper - optical or electrical? There are pros and cons for each, and both are supported by this next generation Ethernet. I would love to hear which you are choosing and why.