HP Updates Integrity Servers with 'Montecito'
447032
PC Magazine - The OEM also broadens the virtualization capabilities of the high-end systems by adding greater support for Windows.
690455
Hewlett-Packard Co has added to its HP-UX 11i v2 operating environment by extending data protection for its HP Integrity servers.
720669
Hewlett-Packard hammered home its commitment to the Itanium 2 chips this week, announcing new mid- and high-end members of its Integrity family of servers with the Madison chip, along with new support for OpenVMS 8.2, Novell's version of Linux, bundled virtualization software and, for the first time, a pay-per-use policy for server-based Windows.ADVERTISEMENTReducing the Total Cost of OwnershipLearn how to reduce the total coast of ownership in enterprise data management in this case study.
535519
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.
256527
Small drive for fat wallets Hewlett-Packard is henceforth packing flash solid-state drives into upcoming models of its ultra-slim business desktops.â¦
656836
(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard is developing new storage hardware that will make it easier for administrators to assign the right amount of storage to different departments in an organization. HP on Monday announced plans for new models in its midrange EVA series of disk storage arrays at the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas. The EVA 4100, 6100, and 8100, due later this year, feature what HP calls Dynamic Capacity Management. Typically, when a company buys new storage capacity, it apportions it to different programs or different business functions in the organization. It can lead to the false impression that the company has used up all its storage capacity. Dynamic Capacity Management (DCM), HP said, allows the storage manager of a company to assign capacity to various departments or functions as needed and allows the system to reduce capacity assigned to departments if they're not using it up at the rate they thought they would. This saves companies the cost of buying more storage capacity they may not need, said Mark Gonzalez, vice president of enterprise server and storage sales at HP. "Perhaps you don't have to buy as much storage as you had to before and because of that, you use less power, use less cooling and can delay your purchases," Gonzalez said. "What's the most expensive storage that you'll buy? The storage that you have to buy today." Gonzalez said the EVAs may carry a list price somewhere in the range of $35,000 to $40,000. HP offers DCM, what it also calls thin provisioning, in the high-end XP line of disk storage arrays it introduced in May. The availability of it on the EVA line will coincide with the launch of Microsoft's new Windows Server 2008 operating system, which is due out later this year. Besides assigning storage capacity more in line with actual use, the EVAs will utilize a Windows feature that can reduce the size of storage capacity already assigned and reassign it to another purpose. But storage provisioning is as much a problem of office politics as it is technology, said Andrew Reichman, a storage industry analyst with Forrester Research Inc. Software application administrators at companies ask for as much storage as they can get because it's difficult to add more space later. But storage administrators want to preserve storage capacity so they don't have to buy more storage capacity unnecessarily. In the back and forth of office politics, Reichman said, the software administrators tend to win these battles. But with DCM, which he thinks is more accurately called "adaptive provisioning," assigning and adjusting capacity is easier and better assures applications will get the storage they need but not more than they need, he said. "Adaptive provisioning is good for environments where you have good communications. Where the server admins and the applications admins say 'I agree to take less and will trust you to grow it for me as time goes so we use less resources,'" Reichman said. "In my experience those environments are few and far between." HP also announced it's introducing a new tape drive for data storage and its first tape storage device in a blade form factor.
54392
Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its Integrity BladeSystems with a new model released this week thatâs intended to handle memory and CPU intensive applications.
543567
(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.
413831
Releases an open-source operating system update for corporate servers that offers three prominent virtualization technologies.
625125
(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard's HP Labs research center has developed a new approach to cooling datacenters by adjusting air conditioning systems to changing server loads more precisely than what's available now. HP says its Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) technology, which the company claims can deliver 20 percent to 45 percent savings in cooling energy costs, depending on the size of the datacenter, will be available in mid-2007. DSC involves placing several heat sensors on racks of servers throughout the datacenter, which send information on changes in temperature to a central monitoring system. As the sensors detect an increase in a server's temperature, a signal is sent to the nearest of several air conditioning units to throttle up to cool that server. When the server cools down because it's not doing as much computing, the air conditioner throttles down. HP, which firstÂ introduced the concept of Dynamic Smart CoolingÂ in 2003, revealed a number of additional program details Tuesday. It announced creation of a Data Center Solution Builder program with design partners that will work with HP to implement a DSC solution, which can be retrofitted into an existing datacenter. HP has already started trials of the technology is going to implement DSC in new datacenters for its own operations at six U.S. locations. Also, Pacific Gas & Electric, the power utility serving Northern California, will make rebates available to datacenters that deploy DSC, said Mark Bramfitt, of PG&E. DSC is a way of addressing an energy consumption problem datacenters didn't have just five years ago, said Chandrakant Patel, an HP Fellow and one of the system designers. "Five years ago, no one got fired for wasting energy but they did get fired if the server went down," Patel said. But today, energy consumption is an issue and Dynamic Smart Cooling technology addresses datacenter management concerns about the operating expense of powering and cooling, said Paul Perez, vice president of HP's Technology Solutions Group. At a demonstration of the technology for media Tuesday at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, journalists could see that the datacenter in a nearby room was using 117 kilowatts of electricity to stay cool. But when the DSC system kicked in, consumption dropped to 72 kilowatts. Power consumption is, on average, 40 percent of the operating expense of running a datacenter, Perez said, citing industry research. And 60 percent to 70 percent of that energy expense goes to cooling the servers, he said. Other technology companies areÂ working on ways to keep datacenters cool, said Jonathan Eunice, founder and principal advisor at Illuminata, an IT research firm. Chip makers like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are developingÂ processors that run coolerÂ than they have in the past, Eunice said. HP's chief competitor, IBM, is trying toÂ address thermal issuesÂ on a system level. "IBM does have its services arm with the ability to send out heating experts to map the datacenter hot spots and advise about efficiencies," said Eunice. IBM also offers a product called Power Executive that measures and modulates power consumption on a wide basis. Â ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
723864
Both new servers are designed to better support virtualization, HP says.
82742
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has begun shipping a new product that the company thinks will give it an edge over rival IBM Corp. in the market for blade servers.
580949
Storage powerhouses Hewlett-Packard Co. and QLogic Corp. have created an easy-to-use SAN-in-a-box product targeted at small and midsize businesses.
205399
Company aims to ease server management headaches with PHP tool set. Also on tap: updated tools for Web developers.
380299
(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.
180577
HP (www.hp.com) announced an investment of more than $3 billion over the next three years designed to vault Intel Itanium 2-based HP Integrity servers to the leadership position in the $20 billion market currently served by RISC processors.
695582
Hewlett-Packard will detail enhancements to its virtualization products, the HP-UX 11i Unix operating system, and its AlphaServers this week during its HP World 2004 conference in Chicago.