Hitachi injects hypervisor into Xeon blade
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Virtual Virtage IDF Hitachi will continue carving out its own place in the virtualization market with a Xeon-based blade server that includes a built-in hypervisor.â¦
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BEA gets virtualization religion, builds edition of Java virtual machine that runs on VMware's hypervisor.
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Virtualization company hopes to bring on its Apple Mac virtualization expertise software from the desktop to the server market. But do we need another hypervisor?
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Hewlett-Packard has announced four entry-level servers for SMBs, along with updates to its remote management software.The servers are part of HP&#39;s ProLiant 100 series, aimed at companies with 100 to 500 employees. They are all two-processor rack-mount servers, with two 1U machines and two 2U machines. (The 1U refers to the height of the machine and is equal to 1.75 inches.)Rack-mount servers have lost the limelight lately to trendy blade servers, sales of which are growing at a faster clip, and even HP&#39;s vice president of marketing, Paul Gottsegen, who was charged with promoting the new rack-mount servers, advised customers to look closely at blades.&quot;When they see the blades, customers tell us there&#39;s an advantage in cooling, in cabling, in reduced power consumption and overall density, so the rack customers typically transition to blades, it&#39;s just a matter of customers in this market becoming aware of them,&quot; he said.Still, rack-mount servers account for a high proportion of sales despite their slower growth, and smaller companies tend to be more comfortable sticking with what they are used to, said Gordon Haff, principal IT adviser at Illuminata.Two of the HP servers are available now. One is the DL185 G5, a 2U system designed for high-capacity jobs like mail serving and video capture. It comes with up to 14 large-form factor drives and 10.5TB of storage, and it runs on one or two Opteron 2200 processors from AMD. Pricing starts at $1,749.The other machine on sale now is the DL160 G5, a 1U server that can act as a node in a high-performance computing cluster as well as a standard business server. It has two PCI-Express x16 2.0 slots and support for a faster front-side bus, and it runs one or two of Intel&#39;s quad-core 5400 &quot;Harpertown&quot; chips. Pricing starts at $1,399.The other two machines won&#39;t ship for another three months, HP said. They are the DL180, a general-purpose 2U server with three PCI-E slots and up to 12 large form factor drives, and the DL 165, which will be the first rack-mount server that can hold four 3.5-inch disk drives, according to HP. Pricing for those servers was not announced.HP has been doing well in the server market lately. In the third quarter last year, it sold more machines than second-place Dell or third-place IBM, although IBM earned the most revenue, research company Gartner said.Low-end servers are fairly commoditized, and there isn&#39;t a great deal that distinguishes one vendor&#39;s hardware from another, Haff said. &quot;Certainly, there are some differences in areas like management software, but for the most part, it&#39;s about the channels and the partners and what&#39;s offered around the server,&quot; he said.HP announced two Lights-Out management packages for the servers. They allow users to install software remotely and monitor the health of fans, power supplies and other components. A Lights-Out 100i Advanced Pack is $199 per license and a Select Pack is $99. Customers must also buy a Remote Management Card for $219.HP also announced two updated software packages for the machines. They are Citrix Access Essentials, for remote access to applications, and Exchange Server 2007, the latest version of Microsoft&#39;s e-mail server software.
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(InfoWorld) - In 2006, many enterprise IT groups saw the potential in virtualization, rushed to consolidate servers and subsequently propelledÂ VMwareÂ software to a market-leading spot. As 2007 begins, VMware's prices are under attack, just as more CIOs look to virtualization to control server and storage sprawl and tame data center power costs. For starters, VMware rivals XenSource and Virtual Iron Software have launched new open-source alternatives, undercutting VMware on price. Also, new processors, such as IBM's Power 5 and upcoming Power 6 chips, and new operating systems have virtualization capabilities built in, negating the need for some additional software, says Clay Ryder, president of The Sageza Group. Sun Microsystems' Solaris 10 OS includes a virtualization feature it calls Containers. MicrosoftÂ is expected to release a beta version of Windows Virtual Server in the first quarter of 2007 and ship it a year later. That's good news: As virtualization features become part of the hardware or the OS, software providers will have to offer useful extra features, Ryder says, such as automated new software testing or security patch management. Virtual Iron introduced Version 3.1Â of its virtualization platform in December for a license price of $499 per socket--compared to $2,875 per socket for a comparable VMware license. XenSource also introduced new virtualization products at sub-$1,000 prices. Both XenSource and Virtual Iron build their proprietary products on top of the open-source Xen platform for virtualization hypervisors. (A hypervisor lets a computer run multiple operating systems at once.) VMware's products are not based on open source. Meanwhile, middleware vendor BEA Systems is making its own cost-cutting move. In the first half of 2007,Â BEA plans to releaseÂ WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE), a version of its Java application server that includes Liquid VM--a BEA-specific Java Virtual Machine that lets Java applications run directly on a hypervisor without requiring an operating system to be present. This will let users substantially reduce the amount of computer power, lowering the hardware costs per application, says Guy Churchward, vice president and general manager of the Java Runtime Products Group at BEA Systems. Initially, Liquid VM will work only with VMware's ESX Server hypervisor. Analysts advise CIOs planning for virtualization in 2007 to think strategically, not just tactically. "To really make virtualization work you want to do it so end users access capability, not just specific machines," Ryder says. "That's only going to be possible if you take a strategic approach," he says, noting that virtualization needs to be applied to storage, networking and the introduction of new software, not just servers. Mike Williams, CIO for the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), learned a lesson about thinking strategically when he did a virtualization project in 2006. (The DCMA, a federal Department of Defense agency, places contract managers inside companies fulfilling defense contracts for weapons systems, jets, military equipment and parts.) Williams deployed VMware, reducing the agency's number of servers to 160 from 560 and the number of data centers to three from 17. But that move taxed the WAN when all the network traffic converged on the three data centers. His advice: Optimize the WAN first. Still, Williams likes the results. Before virtualization, DCMA replaced about one-third of its 560 servers annually at a cost of about $2 million, Williams says; virtualization cut that expense to $560,000.
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Hewlett-Packard has announced that it would add Cisco's double data rate InfiniBand-based server fabric switches to HP's Unified Cluster Portfolio, and that HP BladeSystem c-Class servers are now supported with Cisco's InfiniBand host driver software.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard launched a server based onÂ Intel's new Tigerton quad-core Xeon processorÂ Thursday, battling IBM for customers who run data-intensive business applications like enterprise resource planning and virtualization software. HP announced the rack-based ProLiant DL580 G5 and the blade-shaped ProLiant BL680c G5, each using four of Intel's Xeon 7300-series chips. Compared to HP's current ProLiant servers with dual-core versions of the Xeon or AMD's Opteron chips, both new servers are designed to better support virtualization, allowing users to handle their applications with a smaller number of servers than they need today, the company said. The announcement comes less than a week before AMD is expected to launch its own quad-core server chip, called Barcelona. HP, SunÂ and other vendors are expected to use that processor in a range of new platforms for similar markets. In the meantime, Intel is enjoying increased popularity for its Tigerton chip. IBM also chose the Xeon 7300 chip to upgrade its server lineup, combining the processor with its own X4 chipset instead of Intel's Clarksboro chipset. IBM announced the System x3950 M2 server on Wednesday, also touting its virtualization abilities. IBM designed the server for fast-growing businesses so it can easily scale up for larger deployments, such as data centers and ERP or CRM applications from providers like SAP and Oracle, said Jay Bretzmann, manager of product marketing for IBM. Compared to systems based on its X3 chipset, IBM will add memory and an internal USBÂ interface for loading embedded virtualization software. "As cores started multiplying, the need for memory started growing, particularly in the virtualization space. So we offered a low entry price point and head room to grow," Bretzmann said. Together, those improvements will allow users to get greater utilization out of their servers instead of having the computers sit idle while waiting for new jobs, he said. "There are so many applications that really scale. Databases are the flagship; if you write a database that doesn't scale well, you're not going to be in business for long. But virtualization allows you to load multiple OSes and achieve the flexibility and utilization that are key for quad-core technology," he said. IBM intends to keep its X4 chipset in the market through 2009, then offer a fifth-generation version by 2010, he said. IBM plans to launch the System x3950 M2 server at high volume in the fourth quarter. HP is selling the DL580 for $9,219 and the BL680c for $9,669. IBM will announce pricing for the System x3950 M2 when it is shipped, in the fourth quarter.
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The Hitachi Ultrastar 10K300 Fibre Channel drive will be offered in the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), and the Ultrastar 10K300 SCSI drive will go in HP&#39;s ProLiant servers and StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) family, the vendors said
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While Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM are the recognized leaders of the X86 server market, one player has surprisingly begun to gain ground.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBMÂ in the market for blade servers. Beginning Tuesday, HP is set to begin delivering Virtual Connect, a management tool for its BladeSystem c-Class servers to more easily add blade servers to a network. Using Virtual Connect, which the company announced in June 2006, an enterprise can set up its data center network infrastructure ahead of time and then more easily add, subtract, change or move around servers as needed. Currently, enterprises deploy switches in their datacenter networks to connect servers to storage appliances. They're relatively cheap, but each of those switches is one more piece of hardware on the network that administrators need to manage, said Mark Potter, vice president of HP's BladeSystem business. Another alternative is to install a "patch panel," which doesn't require any separate management but is very expensive to deploy. Adding servers is also very time-consuming and requires the involvement of a company's server manager, network manager, storage manager, and others, Potter said. What should be a 30-minute task can sometimes take hours or even days. One HP customer told Potter it once took 58 days. "You know when they give you a number like 58 days that they've measured it and they're not happy about it," he said. Virtual Connect is built in to the datacenter infrastructure when it is first created. Then new servers can be simply plugged in and turned on. "We can wire up the infrastructure one time, physically, and basically walk away," Potter said. "Then the server admin can add, replace, and change servers on the fly without ever impacting the networking admin or the storage admin." Virtual Connect is hardware and middleware that sits between the blade server and the network switches that connect to storage. Virtual Connect for a network using Ethernet switches carries a starting list price of $5,699. For Fibre Channel networks, it starts at $9,499. Also Tuesday, HP is set to begin shipping a new blade server, the ProLiant xw460c (list price: $4,329), which HP describes as the first workstation blade for the c-Class blade product line. Virtual Connect is a unique solution to a data center headache, said Gordon Haff, principal analyst with Illuminata. "Virtual Connect does not eliminate [the work of configuring a network]. It still might take three or four weeks to do all that," Haff said. "But the idea is that you can basically do it once." Figures released Feb. 21 by Gartner show that IBM is the top blade seller but HP is gaining. HP's share of the x86 platform blade market, based on revenue, rose to 33 percent in 2006 from 32 percent in 2005, while IBM's fell to 40 percent from 42 percent, said Jeffrey Hewitt, a Gartner analyst. At the same time, though, the x86 blade market is growing. Global blade server revenue grew to $2.7 billion in 2006 from $2 billion in 2005 and unit shipments grew to 727,000 from 548,000 the year before, according to the Gartner report.
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Intel has developed a white-box blade server based on standardized components, instead of specialized parts usually used to produce such systems.Called Clear Bay, the server is based on the&#160;Server System Infrastructure Forum&#39;s Modular Server Specification&#160;announced last July.The Modular Server Specification lays out standards for blade servers and, where possible, aims to use off-the-shelf components for connectors, power supplies and heat sinks. The aim is to bring down the cost of blade servers -- which are denser and generally easier to manage than rack-mount systems -- and make them available to a wider range of users, including small businesses.Clear Bay is based on a 6U-high blade chassis that can support up to six two-way server nodes running dual-core or quad-core Xeon processors, 14 hard-disk drives, two storage-control modules, a management module and two Ethernet switch modules. The platform includes Intel&#39;s Multi-Flex Technology, a set of management and storage technologies. Among the technologies included are virtual storage mapping, integrated storage-area network, diagnostics, and single sign-on, among others.Officially known as Intel Modular Server Products, the Clear Bay platform is intended to be assembled and sold by local manufacturers instead of top server vendors like IBM or Hewlett-Packard.Pricing for servers based on the Clear Bay platform was not immediately available. But Intel expects pricing for Clear Bay servers to be roughly similar to rack-mount servers based on the same processor and configuration.&#160;
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Dell on Monday&#160;added a new series of blade products to its PowerEdge server line, expanding its presence in a market dominated by rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard.The PowerEdge M-Series of blades includes the fastest-performing and most power-efficient blade servers the company has, said Mike Roberts, senior product planning manager for Dell.The PowerEdge M1000E, a 10U enclosure, will support the new Intel-based PowerEdge M600 and Advanced Micro Devices-based PowerEdge M605 blade servers, also announced Monday.The M1000E enclosure supports a range of network connectivity options, including modules for Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand connectivity. The enclosure allows customers to upgrade or stack up on network hardware to boost networking speed.The PowerEdge M600 blade server is a dual-socket server that supports up to two quad-core Intel Xeon processors, including processors in the Xeon 5400 series running at up to 3.16GHz. The dual-socket PowerEdge M605 servers support dual-core Opteron 2000 series processors running at up to 3GHz. Both blades support Windows Server 2003 and Linux OSes.Targeted at data centers, the PowerEdge M1000E enclosure is priced at $5,999, and the blades start at $1,849. The products will be available worldwide starting Monday.Dell&#39;s OpenManage systems management technology, which will be bundled with the blades, includes energy management tools. Capabilities include real-time power reporting and the ability to set power usage by blade.Power efficiency in blade servers is an important consideration for those looking to upgrade data centers, said Richard Doherty, cofounder and director of Envisioneering Group. Energy costs have become a big factor in considering hardware for data centers, and companies are taking a closer look at reducing their carbon footprints, Doherty said.&quot;Going greener can be a reason for an upgrade,&quot; Doherty said.The new blade server gives Dell an opportunity to catch up with HP and IBM blade products, especially in small data centers, Doherty said. Dell&#39;s PowerEdge M-Series will compete with IBM&#39;s BladeCenter H and HP&#39;s BladeSystem c-Class blades.In addition, the new blade servers will need strong management tools in order to succeed, Doherty said. Dell in the past has announced service and support initiatives that haven&#39;t panned out, and the company&#39;s OpenManage system management tools are not as strong as autonomic computing offerings from HP and IBM, Doherty said.System management is a big concern for data centers, and customers are looking for the ability to manage systems without the need for additional IT engineers, Doherty said.
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AMD Opteron servers prove more power-efficient than Xeon-powered servers in tests.
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Azul Systems is doubling the capacity of its Vega 2 "computing appliance," a device that uses multiple multicore CPUs for large-scale computing.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard launched a server based on&#160;Intel&#39;s new Tigerton quad-core Xeon processor&#160;Thursday, battling IBM for customers who run data-intensive business applications like enterprise resource planning and virtualization software.
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Hitachi Data Systems has announced a new enterprise storage lineup to include features such as a virtualisation which allows customers to manage up to 32Petabytes of internal and external storage.
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HDS Virtual storage gets thin provisioning Hitachi Data Systems is scaling down its Universal Storage Platform V system to target the virtualization needs of the mid-range market.â¦