x86 server

Quest for power efficient servers leads vendors to PC chips

What was once a battle over who could offer the fastest, most powerful server has turned into a competition over which servers can operate on the fewest watts, leading vendors to put PC chips in x86 systems.

"I just can't do it captain, I don't have the power!"

This trend is the result of data center power constraints; IT folks simply don’t have abundant quantities of power to supply their servers any more, but still need to add more compute capacity somehow.

So, server vendors are on the hook to offer systems that operate on very little power, and every vendor wants the right to say they offer “the worlds most efficient” server. But it appears they hit the limit with the level of efficiency today’s x86 server chips can offer, so some vendors have moved on to PC chips.

For example, last week, Dell launched new servers with Taiwan-based Via Technologies Via Nano processors, which the companies say offer the best power efficiency of any processor on the market today. Prior to that, Intel’s Atom processors for notebook computers were launched in SuperMicro servers.

My response was, really? PC chips in servers? Sounds great if you only plan to run Tetris on your servers, because when you choose lower watt chips, you trade off performance.

But it appears certain markets are willing to make that compromise. According to Dell, their new Via Nano-based systems are designed for “hyper-scale customers in the search engine and Web hosting businesses…who typically choose general purpose 1U servers or low-end tower servers, and make compromises around the density, power, and/or manageability aspects associated with these alternatives.”

It will be interesting to see how far these PC-chip servers go, who adopts them and how Intel and AMD respond to the Via Nano, product-wise. Will Intel and AMD try to leapfrog Via’s Nano chip with something that consumes even less power? I’m going to take a guess and say, hell yeah. But really, how low can they go?

Intel breaks another record; biggest anti-trust fine ever

Intel just broke another record - this time for getting the largest anti-trust fine ever.

The European Commission (EC) slapped Intel with a $1.45 billion fine for violating EC Treaty antitrust rules against engaging anti-competitive practices that excludes competitors from the market.

The European Commissioner for Competition Policy stated throughout the period covered by the decision, Intel held at least 70% of the worldwide market in x86 server CPUs, and used anti-competitive practices to hold that position.

“The fact that Intel had such a large market share is not a problem in itself. What is a problem is that Intel abused its dominant position. Specifically, Intel used illegal anti-competitive practices to exclude essentially its only competitor, and thus reduce consumer choice, in the worldwide market for x86 chips,” the commissioner, Neelie Kroes, told press. “Given that Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for over five years, the size of the fine should come as no surprise.”

The EC found that Intel gave rebate to computer manufacturers who bought all, or almost all, of their x86 CPUs from Intel. Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer on the condition that it only sell computers with Intel x86 CPUs.

Intel also paid computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products, according to the EC.

Intel also faces another anti-trust lawsuit, filed by AMD for similar anti-competitive practices in the U.S. The court date for that trial is in February 2010.

As expected, Intel’s CEO Paul Ottellini denied any wrongdoing and is appealing the decision. In a statement, Ottellini said, “As we go through the appeals process we plan to work with the Commission to ensure we’re in compliance with their decision… there should be no doubt whatsoever that Intel will continue to invest in the products and technologies that provide Europe and the rest of the world the industry’s best performing processors at lower prices.”

And some U.S. based legal pros issued statements today saying the EU’s fine was far too harsh.

“The EC’s use of huge fines against market-leading firms - fines calculated from a firm’s world-wide sales, not from harm to European consumers - discourages aggressive competition that benefits consumers,”  Ronald A. Cass, Chairman, Center for the Rule of Law, said in a statement. “Consumer harm should be the concern for competition law, and here instead consumers saw sharp declines in cost and increases in product quality - even Intel’s complaining rival, AMD, enjoyed historic success during the period it claims Intel’s actions foreclosed competition.”

But the manufacturers concerned by Intel’s conduct in the EC case - Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC - aren’t playing the violin for Intel right now, and reports say Intel’s closest competitor, AMD, is celebrating the EC’s decision.

And the EC’s commissioner doesn’t seem to feel bad about the massive fine either. In his closing statement to the press, he drew attention to Intel’s latest global advertising campaign, “Sponsors of Tomorrow,” in which Intel invites visitors to add their ‘vision of tomorrow’ to their website.

“Well, I can give my vision of tomorrow for Intel here and now: “obey the law,” Kroes said.

As large a fine as $1.45 billion is, it’s really a drop in the bucket for Intel; they reported $7.1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2009 alone,  so I doubt this will have any affect on their ability to churn out CPUs on the tick-tock cycle. The real issues for Intel is the tarnish the EC’s decision puts on them and that it takes the focus away from their technology - two side effects that are sure to help the competition gain some ground in the CPU market.

Rackable acquires Silicon Graphics, takes SGI name

Rackable Systems completed its acquisition of Silicon Graphics, Inc. on Monday and oddly enough, Rackable will adopt SGI as its global name and brand, instead of the other way around.

Rackable closed the transaction to acquire the debt-ridden Silicon Graphics (SGI) for $42.5 million in cash on May 8 and the company said it will change its name to Silicon Graphics International - or SGI - but will keep the Rackable Systems product line and ticker symbol (RACK) the same.

I wonder if abandoning the Rackable brand in favor of SGI is a good idea. Sure, SGI was hugely successful in the 1980’s and is still a more recognizable brand than Rackable because of its legacy, but SGI is also a failing brand that filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006 and again in April 2009 due to unmanageable amounts of debt.

In fact, I liken SGI to the captain of the high school football team; you know the type - a leader in its time, popular, and admired by all, but 20-some years later? Balding, broke, and holding desperately to what used to be.

Maybe I’m being too critical of SGI’s brand, but others question Rackable’s decision to take the SGI name as well. SGI is “Well known, sure. But more than a bit tarnished and not descriptive of Rackable’s business,” said Illuminata Analyst Gordon Haff.

Coincidentally, Sun Microsystems Inc. was founded the same year as SGI - 1982 - and they, too, are being acquired this year, by Oracle Corp. (Oracle won’t be dropping its name for Sun Microsystems though. )

Either way, Rackable now has a much larger portfolio of high performance computing products, with SGI’s x86 cluster offerings, shared memory clustered compute products, scalable data center and storage technologies, modular data centers, data management software, HPC tools and visualization technologies.

SGI will maintain its corporate headquarters in its current Fremont, California facility, with offices around the world, and the new management team will have senior executives from Rackable Systems and the former SGI.

Google’s server recipe no longer secret

Looks like Google has finally spilled the beans on its server design, which the company has kept secret for years.

According to a report, Google let everyone see its design at a conference this week. The system was a 3.5 inch thick 2U system with two processors, two hard drives, and eight memory slots mounted on a motherboard built by Gigabyte. Google uses x86 processors from AMD and Intel, and the servers are powered by 12-volt batteries in case there’s a problem with the main source of electricity, according to the report.

We already knew that Google uses 12-volt power supplies for its servers, which the company says is more than 90% efficient compared with typical server efficiencies at or below 70%.

For the most part, Google runs these servers not out of brick and mortar data centers, but from those shipping containers that have become all the rage with vendors like Sun Microsystems , IBM, HP and Rackable Systems in recent years. Google was putting data centers in mobile containers long before those guys, and typically uses standard 1AAA shipping containers to house around 1,160 servers each, according to the report.

Intel set to release “Nehalem” Xeon processors

Intel may launch its next generation multi-core Xeon processors, code-named Nehalem, on Monday.

The company sent out invitations to a live webcast on March 30 “for the launch of a groundbreaking new server architecture.” If that doesn’t give it away, some server vendors have already announced products based on the Nehalem processors, including Cisco, which will use the Intel Xeon CPU’s in their upcoming Unified Computing System’s blade servers.  Rackable Systems already introduced CloudRack systems based on Nehalem, and Dell is expected to introduce Nehalem-based systems this week.

In earlier disclosures about Nehalem chips for x86 servers, Intel said the processor will have two, four or eight processing cores and provide better scalability than previous generations. It will also have scalable cache sizes and simultaneous multithreading, or Hyper-threading, which is already available on other Xeon processors.

While Intel prides itself on introducing multi-core processors at a faster pace than competitor AMD, some of the most significant enhancements to the new Xeon processor have existed in AMD chips for years.

For example, one of the major changes with Nehalem is integration of the memory controller into the CPU. This replaces the legacy Front Side Bus, which is a known culprit in traffic bottlenecks issues. AMD has been offering an integrated memory controller –called Direct Connect Architechture — in its Opteron CPUs for years now.

Another feature in Nehalem is the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), which will give the chip faster access to a lot more bandwidth. This feature is similar to AMD’s HyperTransport technology, which has been around for a number of years as well.

That said, by adding QPI and an integrated memory controller, Nehalem will have access to a lot more bandwidth than its predecessors without relying on tons of cache memory, according to an ARS Technica report on Nehalem.

More importantly, what all of this means for end users is significantly better performance for applications that can take advantage of multithreading and multiple processing cores.

Server sales suffer on economy, virtualization; vendors branching out

With the U.S. economy in a recession, world economies suffering and virtualization adoption on the rise, it comes as no surprise that factory revenue in the x86 worldwide server market declined 5.2% year over year to $12.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008 (3Q08), according to the IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker released December 3.

In fact, this is the largest quarterly revenue decline for servers since the fourth quarter of 2002, and the sluggish server unit shipment growth of 2.8% year over year in 3Q08 represented the slowest increase in server shipments since 4Q06, the IDC reported.

“The x86 server segment was definitely impacted by the economic downturn; there was significant deceleration in the quarter with a particular weakness in September,” said Jed Scaramella, IDC Senior Research Analyst, Servers. “Due to the uncertainty in the market, customers cut back on all nonessential spending.”

Volume systems revenue declined 7.2% year over year in the third quarter, the first decline for this market segment in more than 14 quarters, and revenue for mid-range enterprise servers declined 9.5% year over year. Shipment growth also slowed significantly for x86 servers to 4.0% (1.97 million units) because of a low demand, and revenue declined 6.6% year over year in 3Q08, representing the largest year-over-year decline for the segment in more than 24 quarters, IDC reported.

The IDC didn’t mention this in their release today, but it is obvious that virtualization is partly to blame the slowing demand for commodity x86 servers because it increases server utilization.  According to Tom Bittman, VP and distinguished analyst with Gartner, virtualization has penetrated 12% of the market, and the number of VMs deployed doubles every year. “By 2012, we expect more than half x86 workloads will be run on VMs,” Bittman said in an interview about his presentation on the virtualization market for Gartner’s 27th annual Data Center Conference this week.

“Virtualization and cloud computing have screwed up the market; vendors used to compete in compute islands, they were all direct competitors, but now they fight for control of an entire virtual layer. IBM and HP are competing in broad server technologies, instead of HP and IBM competing only in the area of server hardware,” Bittman said. “All vendors worry about becoming commodities and they all want to be considered the brains of the industry”

Perhaps that concern, along with slow server sales, is why vendors including HP, Dell and Sun have branched out into the area of data center services this year that could add a revenue stream beyond selling hardware. HP acquired EYP Mission Critical Facilities about a year ago and began offering data center services in March. Just this week, Dell announced it would offer services to help people extend the life of their data centers. Before that, Sun announced data center services that include data wiping.

But, there were exceptions to the grim server market numbers; revenue for high-end enterprise servers grew 4.0% year over year, the third consecutive quarter of growth for the segment. Other exceptions to the slowdown were blade servers (11% of the market) and IBM System z (9.4% of the market), which both increased this quarter, IDC reported.

Scaramella said IBM System Z sales didn’t suffer because they tend to be cyclical and are built into companies long-term budgets, which is not always the case for the smaller x86 systems. “Customer are more likely to push out [x86] purchases and see what they can do without,” he said.

And blades were the only platform to experience positive growth in the quarter, with all major vendors exhibiting double-digit growth in blade volumes, IDC reported.

I’m no analyst, but I am guessing the demand for blades didn’t slow down along with other x86 servers because today’s blades are pitched as ideal virtualization platforms. The HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade, for instance, is one of many new blades designed with more memory, data storage and network connections to meet the needs of memory and I/O-hungry VMs.

In addition to their appeal as a virtualization platform, blade servers are desirable because they take up very little space in cramped data centers and many blade surpass rack servers in power and efficiency.

So, it will be interesting to see whether server sales recover when the world economies improve, or if they remain depressed due to the increasing use of virtualization.

The IDC is predicting this slowdown to continue throughout most of 2009, but server sales will rebound with the economy, Scaramella said. “We are not anticipating a quick rebound [but] I do not think we will see the same extreme fall-off the market experienced after the dot.com bust,” he said. “At that time there was a tremendous amount of excess capacity built out in the infrastructure. Over the past few years, many companies have been in a consolidation mode - reducing the numbers of servers they have in operations as well as reducing the number of data centers they have in operations. Back in 2001-2002, companies were able to put off purchase due to the excess capacity, this is not the case today.”

Sun Microsystems provides storage, hard drive wiping services

Last week I chatted with Michelle Dennedy, Chief Privacy Officer for Sun Microsystems Inc., about a new data erasure service the company is offering as part of Sun’s recently announced Datacenter Services suite that could help avoid serious data loss or data breaches.

“When people move their storage and server arrays from location A to B, these systems are loaded with sensitive customer data, and if one asset falls of the truck, they would be out millions of dollars in data and in a lot of trouble,” Dennedy said. “Also, when someone comes in to repair systems they have access to all of the data on those systems,” so erasing the data is a smart move. 

For example, I recently read this article about a private contractor who downloaded sensitive data from a U.K. government system onto a memory stick, and then lost it. And another story, also from the U.K, reported that a computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 National Health Service patients went missing when it was sent to a software company to be backed up, ironically, in case the records got lost.

While Sun didn’t divulge the specific customers or incidents that inspired this new service, I imagine they where similar to those reported above. Dennedy said Sun’s new data erasure service was created to prevent vulnerabilities when repairs are being done by a third  party or when systems are being re-deployed to a new site. “You should know that if you lose a piece of equipment, you are losing only that silicon and not the data that was on it,” Dennedy said.

Another time to erase data is when a system is decommissioned and disposed of; many companies don’t think about erasing the data before ditching the old hardware, and that data could end up in the wrong hands, according to Dennedy. “It isn’t that they don’t care, but there is some ignorance about the massive amounts of data contained by the people getting rid of the equipment,” she said.

“Our technicians will administer software based erasure service for storage and servers, and will hand over a certificate to say, this is no longer an information asset,” she said. Sun is offering the service to non-Sun servers and storage as well.

Of course, users can erase data in their own systems using hard drive erasing software (a simple Google search yields over 480,000 results) and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies offering this service, along with a certification, as well.

It is unfortunate that we live in a time when there are so many criminals waiting in the wings to steal data; the market for stolen data is about $276 million, according to Symantec Corp. Knowing this, taking every precaution to secure customer data with services like those from Sun and other companies is very necessary today.

Data Center efficiency tips and tricks from Data Center Decisions

The overarching theme of the Data Center Decisions conference in Chicago last week was energy; how much data centers use, how much they pay for it, and how much they could be saving. 

The keynote addresses on both days of the conference, October 24 & 24, covered data center efficiency at length, with plenty of tips and resources to help data centers cut back on power consumption, though it appears that not many people are taking the necessary measures to reduce consumption. Because of this, government plans to step in and mandate power saving measures to prevent future climate change.

As awful as this sounds, government intervention is a necessary measure at this point, because facility spending has increased tremendously over the past two years with no end in sight, and with all of this additional compute capacity, the outlook for the environment is grim.

The energy required to power and cool a single server emits four tons of greenhouse gases, so by 2012, data centers worldwide will exceed greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry, according to Ken Brill, President and Executive Director for the Uptime Institute, who gave a keynote address called “Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency” on October 24 based on the McKinsey / Uptime Institute report.

So, why has data center power consumption spun out of control? In addition to the increasing demands from Web 2.0, 80% of today’s compute demand is performed on distributed systems with only 5% to 20% utilization rates, whereas before 1980, mainframes were used, and at much higher utilization rates, Brill said.

The way to reverse the trend sounds easy enough; use virtualization to consolidate systems and increase server utilization rates, and also kill comatose servers.

Simple as these steps sound, it can be difficult to do when you don’t keep track of servers to know their utilization rates, Brill said. In this case, implementing a formal de-commissioning program using ITIL to document, bill back and audit the systems is a first step. 

“If we want to become energy efficient we have to become better engineers,” Brill said.

Other measures that can make a major impact are correctly setting the cooling unit set point, shutting off humidification and de-humidification functions, implementing hot aisle/cold aisle containment, turning off unneeded cooling units, and if possible, increasing eco-friendly water side cooling, Brill said.

Data centers that are adding hardware should make an effort to buy efficient power supplies and hardware, which all the major vendors offer, and rightsize memory to avoid using excess power, Brill said

If your asking yourself who in IT has enough extra time to do all of these things, Brill had a suggestion for that, too; appoint an “Energy Czar” - someone who cares about the environment and wasting power - to make sure the data center facilities and operations are as efficient as possible.

Of course, the Energy Czar could also get a bonus here and there for lowering the company power bills, which most certainly will happen when even some of the above measures are implemented.

Companies can also use efficiency software tools or hire outside consultants to help increase energy efficiency, and there are plenty of choices today.

Rackable Systems updates its most popular half depth server

Rackable Systems, Inc. today announced the new C2005 server, designed with more expansion slots and a choice of SAS or SATA II hard drives for greater flexibility and configurability.

The C2005 is an updated version of Rackable’s top selling half depth 2U server product, the C2004, which offers density comparable to industry standard 1U servers.

“The C2005 introduces an unparalleled level of flexibility compared to anything we have ever offered,” said Geoff Noer, VP of Product Management.

The new C2005 includes both Intel and AMD quad-core processor options and offers up to five low-profile expansion slots and a sixth slot available in all configurations (often a x16 PCI-E slot), Noer said.

“A lot of new technologies, like virtualization, benefit from having additional expansion slots for connectivity. In a 1 U server you typically only see one or two expansion slots,” Noer said.

The C2005 also includes up to 10 x 2.5” or 5 x 3.5” SAS or SATA II hard drives – or a mix or both. “An emerging challenge is to address the need to support both 3.5 and 2.5 inch, and providing both in a single platform” adds appeal, Noer said.

“Configurations that would have had to been in a 3U server or larger, for the number of expansion slots, can now be done with a 2U half depth. The density level is much higher and suited for technologies like virtualization,” Noer said.

Noer said the C2005 is well suited for scale-out computing across many markets, especially Internet, Enterprise, and HPC customers.

Up to 44 C2005 servers fit into a single rack. The server is also available in AC or DC power, and Noer said both options are in high demand. “The advantage of DC is largely around increased reliability of the solution. We can also supply AC to the cabinet and DC power to all of the servers inside the cabinet,” through Rackable’s AC-to-DC X86 rack-level rectification technology, which the company has offered since 2003.

The server is available for order immediately. Rackable did not give pricing because the systems are built to order, and pricing depends on configurations Noer said.

Gartner lists 10 most disruptive technologies of 2009

Gartner, Inc. analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2009 during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held in Orlando through October 16.

Some of the technologies listed were the obvious, like virtualization and cloud computing, and Gartner predicts that servers will evolve beyond the blade server stage that exists today.

Gartner’s definition of a strategic technology is one that could have a significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. The analysts looked at factors like high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major financial investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

Gartner’s the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 include:

Virtualization. In addition to server virtualization, virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly as a way to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication). This can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information.

Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing providers deliver computing capabilities “as a service” to external companies and the services are delivered in a highly scalable and elastic fashion using Internet technologies and techniques.

Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.

Servers — Beyond Blades. Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs.

The organization tracks the various resource types, for example, memory, separately and replenishes only the type that is needed, so companies don’t have to pay for all resource types to upgrade capacity. It also simplifies the inventory of systems, eliminating the need to track and purchase various sizes and configurations. The result will be higher utilization because of lessened “waste” of resources that are in the wrong configuration or that come along with the needed processors and memory in a fixed bundle.

Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles.

The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

Enterprise Mashups.Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their models for delivering and managing applications.

Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational potential it may offer their enterprises.

Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs software to accomplish its function.

Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking (Facebook), social collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.

Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent due to increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry.

Organizations must build careful, detailed plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate administrative team convergence.

Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance. BI is directed toward business managers and workers who are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.

Green IT. Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Organizations should consider regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.

A few of these technologies were also on Gartner’s list for 2008, including Green IT, Unified Communications, WOA, Mashup and Social Software. Other technologies Gartner expected to be significant for businesses in 2008 were Business Process Modeling, Metadata Management, Virtualization 2.0, Computing Fabric, and Real World Web.