What’s the process to design an HP blade server?  Find out on my interview with Gary Thome, Chief Blade Architect for HP.  Thanks to the friends at SDR News, I was able to talk with Gary at the HP Tech Forum last month in Las Vegas.  In the video below, Gary discusses the steps it takes for HP to design the next generation blade and he discusses the latest blade servers announced at the HP Technology Forum.

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

One of the biggest things revealed at HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas last month was the introduction of the HP VirtualConnect FlexFabric Module.  According to HP, this new module allows for “one module” to access “any data or storage network” and is a key piece of HP’s Converged Infrastructure.  Thanks to my friends at SDR News, I had the opportunity to discuss HP’s converged infrastructure with the guy in charge of designing HP’s strategy, Doug Oathout,Vice President of Converged Infrastructure at HP.  

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

They make it look so complicated in the movies.  Detailed covert operations with the intent to hack into a casino’s mainframe preceeded by weeks of staged planned rehearsals, but I’m here to tell you it’s much easier than that.  

This is my story of how I had 20 seconds of complete access to The Venetian Casino’s data center, and lived to tell about it.

Now, before I go on, I must apologize to all of the hopeful future visitors of The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.  I have a feeling that security will get tightened down following this story.  So, let me set the stage.  I was asked to attend the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas to blog about the event and cover it via Twitter.  Part of the agenda for the blogging attendees, and the media, was a tour of The Venetian Hotel and Casino’s Data Center.  I jumped at the opportunity.  I always enjoy customer data centers since it gives me the chance to view what “real people” are doing.  Once we landed at the Sands Hotel and Casino, I was fortunate to be part of the first group of 15 or 20 people so we hiked over to the hidden area where the data center was located.  Well, it wasn’t really hidden, just a door that said, “Employees Only.”  We rode up an elevator one or two floors and came out into a desolate barren hallway that gave the appearance of a hospital.  The hallway made a few turns and we came out into a set of office cubicles.  On the other side were the double doors leading to the data center.  No metal barred doors, no retina scans, no lasers – just two plain doors leading into the data center.  I should’ve know this was a sign of things to come.

Quick Venetian Casino Data Center Facts

* 3 Major Data Centers: Las Vegas, Singapore and China
* 500 physical servers in Las Vegas (very little virtualization)
* They use pure Ethernet (IP) for the machines in Singapore; a mix of Serial and IP in Las Vegas 

As we entered the data center, I quickly realized The Venetian was a Dell shop.  Did I mention this was a tour hosted by HP?  After inquiring about the large numbers of Dell servers, the CTO of The Venetian Casino, Steve Vollmer, made it clear that they do use a wide variety of manufacturers for their servers, however they are 100% HP Networking.   Usually when you are given a customer tour by a vendor, like HP, it’s an ALL VENDOR customer – meaning they have HP everything  but this was a “real customer data center” tour.  Kudos to Michael Thacker and the HP Public Relations team on finding a real customer with a mix of vendors’ gear.  Which leads me to how I got left behind.

I’m a server guy – networking gear is out of my expertise, so while the rest of the media and bloggers were interviewing Mr. Vollmer, I started wondering around taking pictures (no video allowed.)  I noticed that all of the physical servers (Dell, IBM and HP) were using the on-board Ethernet adapters only.  Very interesting.  It was mentioned that the casino machines are simply computers, so it makes sense that all of the communication is IP based.  As I wondered around to the last aisle of racks, I came across an HP BladeSystem!  Very cool.  I thought they were stuck on old, aging equipment, but here stood the royal crown (INSERT angelic sounds and bright light here).  Sitting right above it was a Dell M1000e Blade Chassis.  Wow – these guys are true to being a multi-vendor customer.  As I was wiping up the drool off the floor, I heard the door slam to the Data Center.  NOTHING but the whirl of server fans and A/C air blowing around.   Now my first thought was that I was the last person and I’m about to get pulled out by the Network Admin who was on the tour with us.  I turned the corner to find no one.   I was alone!

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Surely I’m not standing in a Las Vegas casino’s data center BY MYSELF – but I was.  Now, many things ran through my head – so many movies have been made about breaking into casinos and here I was in the heart of millions of electronic dollars.  I’d like to be able to conclude this story with some amazing details on how I logged onto the casino servers and transferred money to my offshore account but I can’t.  a) I’m a good person.  I don’t steal, lie or cheat and b) I didn’t have a USB key on me.  The reality is, once I realized I was alone I knew I had to get out of the data center as quickly as possible, so I looked up at the overhead camera, gave a smile and walked out the double doors to quickly catch up to the group heading back downstairs.

There’s a few lessons to be learned here:
1) Real customers use a mix of vendors for their hardware – not just one vendor
2) Always carry a USB key with you – you never know when you need it
3) Don’t waste your time breaking in to a casino – just tour their data center with a large crowd

That’s my story.  Now I just hope I don’t get any calls from the F.B.I…

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

Along with the Intel blade server announcements, Tuesday HP also announced two new AMD based blades, the BL465c G7 and BL685G7.  Although originally viewed as a refresh of their existing AMD blade servers, while at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, I found there were a few interesting facts.  Let’s take a look.

BL465c G7
Before Tuesday’s announcement, HP had 2 Dual CPU AMD blades –  the BL495 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2300) and the BL465c G6 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2400.)  The BL495 had NO hot-plug drives, but maximum memory slots whereas the BL465c G6 offered fewer memory slots but offered hot-plug drives.  The 7th Generation (G7) of the BL465c takes a step toward combining the benefits of the BL495 and the Bl465c G6.  The BL465c G7 is a half-height blade server that has 2 AMD Opteron 6100 CPUs, supports up to 256GB of RAM AND offers 2 hot-plug drive bays. 

If you look at the image of the BL456c G7 on the left, you see only a single hot-plug drive – so where’s the 2nd?  It’s BEHIND the drive you see.  In a very innovative approach, the drives are stacked one behind the other but still “hot-plug” and serviceable without impacting the other drive.  It’s a bit hard to imagine, so take a few minutes to watch my video of the BL465c G7 from the HP Tech Forum EXPO floor (below.)  It’s also important to note this 7th generation server also comes standard with the dual port FlexFabric I/O standard on the motherboard as announced with the additional G7 blade models.

 Here are the specifics of the BL465c G7

• Up to two AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 256 GB of DDR3 memory
• 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Two mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL465c G7, check out HP’s web site.

BL685c G7
The 7th generation of the BL685c provides a 4 socket AMD Opteron 6100.  Code named, “Magny-Cours“, the AMD Opteron 6100 gives a substantial performance increase over the previous generation.  The BL685c G7 comes standard with 32 memory slots which can reach a max of 512GB of RAM. 

Here are the specifics of the BL685c G7:

• Up to four AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 512 GB of DDR3 memory
• (2) 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports per controller
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Three mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL685c G7, check out HP’s web site.

Closer Look at the BL465c G7 and BL685c G7 from HP Tech Forum EXPO

At the 2010 HP Tech Forum press release on Monday, June 21, 2010, new HP BladeSystem products were announced. In the following video, Mark Potter, Vice President of HP Industry Standard Servers, reveals the newest HP BladeSystem products.

As expected, HP announced today new blade servers to their BladeSystem lineup as well as a new converged switch for their chassis. Everyone expected updates to the BL460 and BL490, the BL2x220c and even the BL680 blade servers, but the BL620 G7 blade server was a surprise (at least to me.)  Before I highlight the announcements, I have to preface this by saying I don’t have a lot of technical information yet.  I attended the press conference at HP Tech Forum 2010 in Las Vegas, but I didn’t get the press kit in advance.  I’ll update this post with links to the Spec Sheets as they become available.

The Details

First up- the BL620 G7

HP Proliant BL620 Blade Server

BL680 G7
The BL680 G7 is an upgrade to to the previous generation, however the 7th generation is a double-wide server.  This design offers up to 4 servers in a C7000 BladeSystem chassis.  This server’s claim to fame is that it will hold 1 terabyte (1TB) of RAM.  To put this into perspective, the Library of Congress’s entire library is 6TB of data, so you could put the entire library on 6 of these BL680 G7’s!  

HP BL680 G7 Blade Server

“FlexFabric” I/O Onboard
Each of the Generation 7 (G7) servers is coming with “FlexFabric” I/O on the motherboard of the blade server.  These are NEW NC551i Dual Port FlexFabric 10Gb Converged Network Adapters (CNA) that supports stateless TCP/IP offload, TCP Offload Engine (TOE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI protocols.  

Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module
The final “big” announcement on the blade server front is a converged fabric switch that fits inside the blade chassis.  Titled, the Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module, it is designed to allow you split the Ethernet fabric and the Fibre fabric at the switch module level, inside the blade chassis INSTEAD OF at the top of rack switch.  You may recall that I previously blogged about this as being a rumour, but now it is true.   

 The image on the left was my rendition of what it would look like.   

And here are the actual images.   

HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module

HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port Module

 HP believes that converged technology is good to the edge of the network, but that it is not yet mature enough to go to the datacenter (not ready for multi-hop, end to end.)  When the technology is acceptable and mature and business needs dictate – they’ll offer a converged network offering to the datacenter core.  

What do you think about these new blade offerings?  Let me know, I always enjoy your comments.  

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

(Updated to include links to results)

I’ve had a few questions lately about “the best” blade server to use for virtualization – specifically VMware virtualization. While the obvious answer is “it depends”, I thought it would be an interesting approach to identify the blade servers that ranked in the top 5 in VMware’s VMmark benchmark.  Before I begin, let me explain what the VMmark testing is about.   VMmark enables equipment manufacturers, software vendors, system integrators and other organizations to:

• Measure virtual machine performance accurately and reliably
• Determine the performance of different hardware and virtualization platforms
• Make appropriate hardware decisions for your virtual infrastructure

VMware developed VMmark as a standard methodology for comparing virtualized systems. According to VMware’s VMmark website, the benchmark system in VMmark is comprised of a series of “sub-tests” that are derived from commonly used load-generation tools, as well as from benchmarks developed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC®). In parallel to VMmark, VMware is a member of the SPEC Virtualization subcommittee and is working with other SPEC members to create the next generation virtualization benchmark.

In testing the terms, a “tile” is simply a collection of virtual machines (VM’s) that are executing a set of diverse workloads designed to represent a natural work environment.   The total number of tiles that a server can handle provides a detailed measurement of that server’s consolidation capacity.  The more tiles, the better.  The faster the performance, the better.

THE RESULTS (as of 6/2/2010)…click on the link to open the details

24 Cores (4 Sockets)
HP ProLiant BL685c G6 (Six Core AMD Opteron 8435) running VMware ESX v4.0 – 29.19@20 tiles (published 7/14/2009)
HP ProLiant BL680c G5 (Six Core Intel Xeon E7458) running VMware ESX v3.5.0 Update 3 - 18.64@14 tiles (published 3/30/2009)

16 Cores (4 Sockets)
Dell PowerEdge M905 (Four Core AMD Opteron 8393 SE) running VMware ESX v4.0 – 22.90@17 tiles (published 6/19/2009)
HP ProLiant BL685 G6 (Four Core AMD Opteron 8389) running VMware ESX v4.0 – 20.87@14 tiles (published 4/24/2009)

12 Cores (2 Sockets)
Cisco UCS B250 M2 (Six Core Intel Xeon X5680) running VMware ESX v4.0 Update 1 – 35.83@26 tiles (published 4/6/2010)
Fujitsu BX922 S2 (Six Core Intel Xeon X5680) running VMware ESX v4.0 Update 1 – 32.89@24 tiles (published 4/6/2010)

8 Cores (2 Sockets)
Fujitsu BX922 S2 (Four Core Intel Xeon X5677) running VMware ESX v4.0 Update 1 – 27.99@18tiles(published 5/10/2010)
HP ProLiant BL490c G6 (Four Core Intel Xeon X5570) runningVMware ESX v4.0 – 25.27@17tiles (published 4/20/2010)

THE WINNER IS…
Cisco UCS B250 M2 running VMware ESX v4.0 Update 1 – 35.83 with 26 tiles

Cisco’s Winning Configuration
So – how did Cisco reach the top server spot?  Here’s the configuration:

server config:

• 2 x Intel Xeon X5680 Processors
• 192GB of RAM (48 x 4GB)
• 1 x Converged Network Adapter (Cisco UCS VIC M81KR)

storage config:

• EMC CX4-240
• Cisco MDS 9134
• 1173.48GB Used Disk Space
• 1024MB Array Cache
• 50 disks used on 5 enclosures/shelves (1 with 14 disk, 4 with 9 disks)
• 55 LUNs used
  *21 at 38GB (file server + mail server) over 20 x 73GB SSDs
  *5 at 38GB (file server + mail server) over 20 x 73GB SSDs
  *21 at 15GB (database) + 2 LUNs at 400GB (Standby, Webserver, Javaserver) over 16 x 450GB 15k disks
  *5 at 15GB (database)  over 16 x 450GB 15k disks
  * 1 LUN at 20GB (boot) over 5 x 300GB 15k disks
• RAID 0 for VMs, RAID 5 for VMware ESX 4.0 O/S

As you can see from the information above, the Cisco UCS B250 M2 is the clear winner above all of the blade server offerings.  As you can see, none of the Xeon 7500 blade servers have yet to be tested but when they do, I’ll be sure to let you know.

NOTE: IDC revised their report on May 28, 2010.  This post now includes those changes.

IDC reported on May 28, 2010 that worldwide server sales for Q1 2010 factory revenues increased 4.6  4.7% year over year to $10.4 billion in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10).  They also reported the blade server market accelerated and continued its sharp growth in the quarter with factory revenue increasing 37.1% 37.2% year over year, with shipment growth increasing by 20.8% compared to 1Q09.  According to IDC, nearly 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 18.8% of all x86 server revenue.

While the press release did not provide details of the market share for all of the top 5 blade vendors, they did provide data for the following: 

#1 market share: HP increased their market share from 52.4% in Q4 2009 to 56.2% in Q1 2010

#2 market share: IBM decreased their market share from 35.1% in Q4 2009 to 23.6% in Q1 2010.

The remaining 20.2% of market share was not mentioned, but I imagine they are split between Dell and Cisco.  In fact, based on the fact that Cisco was not even mentioned in the IDC report, I’m willing to bet a majority of that  I’m working on getting some visibility into clarification on that (if you’re with Dell or Cisco and can help, please shoot me an email.)

According to Jed Scaramella, senior research analyst in IDC’s Datacenter and Enterprise Server group,  ”"In the first quarter of 2009, we observed a lot of business in the mid-market as well as refresh activity of a more transactional nature; these factors have driven x86 rack-based revenue to just below 1Q08 value. Blade servers, which are more strategic in customer deployments, continue to accelerate in annual growth rates. The blade segment fared relatively well during the 2009 downturn and have increased revenue value by 13% from the first quarter of 2008.”

For the full IDC report covering the Q1 2010 Worldwide Server Market, please visit http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22356410

new link: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22360110

What if you could run a graphics intensive application, like CAD from Chicago, and you were sitting in Atlanta?  What if you could work on a multi-million dollar animated movie feature from the luxury of your home?  These and more could be possible with the HP WS460c G6 Workstation Blade. 

The HP WS460c G6 Workstation Blade technically isn’t a new product.  Inside, it holds similar features to the BL460 G6 blade server.  It’s got the same form, uses the same processors, memory, storage and certain mezzanine cards.  In fact, the mezzanine card is where the difference really lies.  What’s the difference between a “workstation” and a “server”?  Two things: Operation System and Graphics Cards.  Traditionally workstations use desktop operating systems, and require very intensive graphics adapters with dedicated graphic processor units (GPUs) and dedicated graphics memory.  With this in mind, HP designed the WS460c G6 Workstation Blade to both run a desktop O/S and support graphic adapters designed to handle heavy graphic workloads.  HP also designed an expansion unit, called the WS460c G6 Graphics Expansion Blade to enable the WS460c to handle the same full-size graphics adapters as found in workstation desktops.  Let’s take a quick look at the WS460c Workstation Blade first.

Workstation Details
Processor: Up to two (2) Intel® Xeon® 5500 or 5600 Series processors
Memory:Twelve (12) DIMM slots; up to 192GB
Storage Controller:HP Smart Array P410i Controller (RAID 0/1) with optional 256MB or 512MB Battery-Backed Write Cache (BBWC)
Internal Drive Support: Up to two (2) small form factor (SFF) SAS hot plug hard disk drives
Network Controller: Embedded NC532i Dual Port Flex-10 10GbE Multifunction Server Adapter – note the device driver will only support 1Gbps speed and Flex-10 is not supported at this time. Requires 1Gbps only interconnect switches in enclosure.
Mezzanine Support:Two (2) I/O expansion or graphics adapter mezzanine slots to support:
a graphics adapter mezzanine (NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M, FX880M, FX2800M or FX 3600M) or a dual-port Fibre Channel Mezzanine options for SAN connectivity (Choice of Emulex or QLogic) 

Graphic Card Options
Professional 2D & 3D graphics with hardware acceleration via graphics subsystem

• NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M(256MB) graphics single card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M(256MB) graphics dual-card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 770M(512MB) graphics single card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX880M (1G) graphics single card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX2800M (1G) graphics single card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M(512MB) graphics single card kit
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 (4.0 GB) graphics kit – supported on HP WS460c G6 Graphics Expansion Blade only.
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 (1.5 GB) graphics kit – supported on HP WS460c G6 Graphics Expansion Blade only.
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800 (1.0 GB) graphics kit – Supported on HP WS460c G6 Graphics Expansion Blade only.

Supported Operating Systems

1. Windows Vista® Business Blade PC Edition with 1 RDL (Remote Desktop License) 32-bit with downgrade to Windows® XP Professional 32-bit SP2 custom installed can be ordered—Windows XP Pro SP2 is the only operating system that can currently be ordered factory-installed.

2. Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition— This OS is obtained from Microsoft, often through the customer’s volume licensing agreement.

3. Windows Vista Business Blade PC Edition, 32-bit version— Recovery media for this OS is included with the blade workstation.

4. Windows Vista Business Blade PC Edition, 64-bit version— Recovery media for this OS can be obtained from HP.

5. Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 4.5 (and later), 64-bit— This OS is acquired by the customer from Red Hat, while HP provides the required Linux drivers.

6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 (and later), 64-bit— This OS is acquired by the customer from Red Hat, while HP provides the required Linux drivers.

Form Factor
HP ProLiant WS460c G6 and WS460c G6 Graphics Expansion Blade are both half-height server blades that plugs into the HP BladeSystem c3000 and c7000 enclosures.  When the Graphics Expansion Blade is used with the WS460c G6 (shown on the right,) the blade takes up two bays, therefore the maximum density per enclosure would be reduced. As a side note, HP does have a 2nd workstation blade, HP ProLiant xw2x220c Blade Workstation which offers two workstation nodes per blade, however it only has a Xeon 5400 processor, so I don’t see it sticking around unless HP does a technology refresh at which time I’ll post an update.

So, at this point, you may be thinking – there’s a workstation blade, which sits in the HP BladeSystem c3000 or c7000 enclosure, but how do you use it?  This is where the value of HP comes to light.  The HP WS460c G6 Workstation Blade is just a small piece of the overall puzzle.  There are a few other components needed to make it a “complete workstation solution.”  Let’s take a look at what this overall solution looks like.

 In summary, the graphics are compressed at the workstation blade, then sent, over Ethernet, to the client, which then decompresses the graphics signal and displays it on the monitor.  Keyboard and mouse movements are captured and sent back over Ethernet to the workstation blade and the cycle repeats.  (Click on the image for a larger view.)

As you can see, there are some extra pieces required:

1. HP Remote Graphics Software (RGS) - this software handles  compression / decompression of the graphics between the blade device and the client device.  For more on this software, check out this HP whitepaper (Adobe PDF.)
2. A Client device that can work with the software.  While nearly any PC will work, HP recommends the HP gt7725 Thin Client - an HP thin client device with an AMD Turion Dual Core 2.3 GHz processor, 2 GB of memory and 1 GB of flash memory and RGS is factory-installed.

 Advantages of Running Workstation Blades
 At this point, you may be asking, what’s the purpose of running workstations on blades?  Why wouldn’t you just buy desktop workstations?   Well, there are a few reasons to use a workstation blade environment.

• Security – if the workstations are on blades, then the data would reside in the datacenter, where it can be protected from the the risk of security exposures from local drives and USB ports, as well as through system theft or loss.
• Multi-location flexibility – the design of the workstation blade + client device enables the user to be local or remote.  This provides additional unprecedented flexibility of working where you need to be, not where you have to be.
• Multi-user access – the workstation blades can be dedicated to an individual user, or they can be shared across users.  This provides additional flexibility of allowing a single user to have multiple workstations, a feature that is very costly with traditional desktop workstations

Workstation Blade Tour

Let me know your thoughts of the HP WS460c G6 Workstation Blade.  Are you using it, or do you know anyone using it?  What recommendations would you offer to HP for future workstation blades?

I heard a rumour on Friday that HP has been chosen by another animated movie studio to provide the blade servers to render an upcoming movie. To recount the movies that have used / are using HP blades:

• Disney’s A Christmas Carol
• AVATAR
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Happy Feet 2
• Mad Max 4

So, as I look at the vast number of movies that have chosen HP for their blade server technology, I have to wonder WHY?  HP does have some advantages in the blade marketplace, like having market share, but when you review HP with Dell, you would be surprised as to how similar the offerings are:

When you compare the two offerings, HP wins in a few categories, like the ability to have up to 32 CPUs in a single blade chassis – a valuable feature for rendering accomplished with the HP BL2x220c blade servers.  However, Dell also shines in areas, too.  Look at their ability to run 512GB of memory on a 2 CPU server using FlexMem Bridge technology.   From a pure technology comparison (taking out the management and I/O of the equation), I see Dell offering very similar product offerings as HP and I have to wonder why Dell has not been able to get any movie companies to use Dell blades.  Perhaps it’s not a focus of Dell marketing.  Perhaps it is because HP has a  history of movie processing on HP workstations.   Perhaps movie companies need 32 CPUs in a chassis.  I don’t know.  I welcome any comments from Dell or HP, but I’d also like to know, what do you think?  Let me know in the comments below.