July 1, 2010 at 16:57Two new four-processor ProLiant DL
June 21, at the Technology Forum in Las Vegas, HP made a series of important announcements of standard architecture servers and storage systems. The family of HP ProLiant DL G7 rack servers has replenished with three high-end models, including the new flagship of the series - the eight-processor HP ProLiant DL980 G7. It is based on the Intel Xeon 7500, HP PREMA's proprietary horizontal scalability architecture and redundant system factory.
We will talk about this 64-core machine that supports up to two terabytes of RAM and is designed to serve business-critical applications in the fall, when it will begin shipping to customers, and today I would like to talk about two other new products that have already entered the market - the four-processor HP ProLiant DL580 G7 with Xeon 7500 processors and its analogue on 12-core AMD Opteron 6000 processors - HP ProLiant DL585 G7 server.
The four-unit HP ProLiant DL580 G7 replaces the fifth-generation HP ProLiant DL580, which was released about three years ago (older HP ProLiant models are updated less frequently than single- and dual-processor servers in this series, so they can skip one generation in their development). By using the Xeon 7500 instead of the Xeon 7300/7400, the maximum number of cores in the server increased one and a half times from 24 to 32, and the maximum amount of RAM increased four times to one terabyte (in the HP ProLiant DL580 G7 there are 64 DIMM slots against 16 slots of its predecessor and instead of PC2-5300 FBDIMM DDR2 modules, PC3-10600E DDR3 are used). In addition, the increased number of DIMM slots makes it possible, using relatively cheap four-gigabyte modules, to obtain a sufficiently large amount of RAM in the machine.
Among the other configuration improvements of the new generation of the server, we note four Gigabit Ethernet ports instead of the previous two and optional support for 10-gigabit Ethernet on two ports, the possibility of using SSDs and the SD card slot from which the virtual machine hypervisor is loaded.
Compared to the fifth-generation model, the HP ProLiant DL580 G7 has significantly expanded features for protecting against hardware failures - for example, the processor itself uses the Machine Check Architecture (MCA) technology, originally developed for Intel Itanium, to protect data in the cache memory of the Smart Disk Subsystem controller Array now uses flash memory (Flash-Backed Write Cache) with an almost unlimited storage time instead of backup batteries; the RAM uses the On-Die Error Protection error correction algorithm, isolation of faulty DIMMs and mem mode ory lockstep.
In addition, a memory error isolation technology unique to servers of this class is used. If an unrecoverable memory error occurs, only one application or virtual machine that is affected by this error is rebooted, and not the entire server. By switching to the third version of iLO, standard for the seventh-generation HP ProLiant, the remote server management console is up to eight times faster (compared to iLO2).
In the seventh generation of rack-mount HP ProLiant, power supplies of different capacities (750 or 1200 watts) can be installed depending on the configuration of the machine components and the specific conditions of its operation, since the servers are equipped with four universal Common Slot Power Supply bays supporting hot-swapping of one of the power supplies.
A large number of processor cores and RAM, as well as high fault tolerance and optional 10-Gigabit Ethernet support, make it possible to use this system as a platform for consolidating “heavy” server applications based on virtualization solutions from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix and introducing the virtualized workplace infrastructure (VDI ), as well as traditional tasks for multiprocessor servers - serving large databases, ERP and CRM applications, large email systems. The server supports Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Oracle Enterprise Linux, VMware, and Citrix XenServer operating systems.
Its analogue on AMD processors differs from the last year HP ProLiant DL585 G6 by twice the maximum number of cores and memory size (the HP ProLiant DL585 G7 is equipped with 48 DIMM slots, the maximum amount of RAM is 512 GB). Like the HP ProLiant DL580 G7, it has eleven PCIe 2.0 expansion slots against nine of its predecessor. Otherwise, the two new DL58x G7 servers are practically no different (of course, with the exception of functionality specific to Intel and AMD processors, for example, the XEON 7500 uses QPI architecture for interprocess connections, and Direct Connect Architecture 2.0 is used in the Opteron 6000).
As always, we will be happy to answer your questions.
We will talk about this 64-core machine that supports up to two terabytes of RAM and is designed to serve business-critical applications in the fall, when it will begin shipping to customers, and today I would like to talk about two other new products that have already entered the market - the four-processor HP ProLiant DL580 G7 with Xeon 7500 processors and its analogue on 12-core AMD Opteron 6000 processors - HP ProLiant DL585 G7 server.
The four-unit HP ProLiant DL580 G7 replaces the fifth-generation HP ProLiant DL580, which was released about three years ago (older HP ProLiant models are updated less frequently than single- and dual-processor servers in this series, so they can skip one generation in their development). By using the Xeon 7500 instead of the Xeon 7300/7400, the maximum number of cores in the server increased one and a half times from 24 to 32, and the maximum amount of RAM increased four times to one terabyte (in the HP ProLiant DL580 G7 there are 64 DIMM slots against 16 slots of its predecessor and instead of PC2-5300 FBDIMM DDR2 modules, PC3-10600E DDR3 are used). In addition, the increased number of DIMM slots makes it possible, using relatively cheap four-gigabyte modules, to obtain a sufficiently large amount of RAM in the machine.
Among the other configuration improvements of the new generation of the server, we note four Gigabit Ethernet ports instead of the previous two and optional support for 10-gigabit Ethernet on two ports, the possibility of using SSDs and the SD card slot from which the virtual machine hypervisor is loaded.
Compared to the fifth-generation model, the HP ProLiant DL580 G7 has significantly expanded features for protecting against hardware failures - for example, the processor itself uses the Machine Check Architecture (MCA) technology, originally developed for Intel Itanium, to protect data in the cache memory of the Smart Disk Subsystem controller Array now uses flash memory (Flash-Backed Write Cache) with an almost unlimited storage time instead of backup batteries; the RAM uses the On-Die Error Protection error correction algorithm, isolation of faulty DIMMs and mem mode ory lockstep.
In addition, a memory error isolation technology unique to servers of this class is used. If an unrecoverable memory error occurs, only one application or virtual machine that is affected by this error is rebooted, and not the entire server. By switching to the third version of iLO, standard for the seventh-generation HP ProLiant, the remote server management console is up to eight times faster (compared to iLO2).
In the seventh generation of rack-mount HP ProLiant, power supplies of different capacities (750 or 1200 watts) can be installed depending on the configuration of the machine components and the specific conditions of its operation, since the servers are equipped with four universal Common Slot Power Supply bays supporting hot-swapping of one of the power supplies.
A large number of processor cores and RAM, as well as high fault tolerance and optional 10-Gigabit Ethernet support, make it possible to use this system as a platform for consolidating “heavy” server applications based on virtualization solutions from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix and introducing the virtualized workplace infrastructure (VDI ), as well as traditional tasks for multiprocessor servers - serving large databases, ERP and CRM applications, large email systems. The server supports Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Oracle Enterprise Linux, VMware, and Citrix XenServer operating systems.
Its analogue on AMD processors differs from the last year HP ProLiant DL585 G6 by twice the maximum number of cores and memory size (the HP ProLiant DL585 G7 is equipped with 48 DIMM slots, the maximum amount of RAM is 512 GB). Like the HP ProLiant DL580 G7, it has eleven PCIe 2.0 expansion slots against nine of its predecessor. Otherwise, the two new DL58x G7 servers are practically no different (of course, with the exception of functionality specific to Intel and AMD processors, for example, the XEON 7500 uses QPI architecture for interprocess connections, and Direct Connect Architecture 2.0 is used in the Opteron 6000).
As always, we will be happy to answer your questions.