Tech Corner
Welcome to Tech Corner! We intend for this to be a place you can find FAQs from our Solutions Architects, new downloads, etc.
High-end meets low-end: HP's DL980
There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to x86 servers. Scale-out or scale-up. The de-facto standard scale-out platform for most of our customers seems to be the 2-socket Intel server. What do you do if your application needs more horsepower? You can buy bigger servers, but the bigger server you buy, the more of your application eggs (if you will) you have in one basket. While x86 servers make great scale out platforms, when it comes to scale-up applications, they leave a bit to be desired in the areas of RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability). Performance can become a concern as well on larger scale-up platforms as vendors take chips designed for 4-socket implementations and try to wedge them into 8-socket servers.
That's where the new Hewlett-Packard DL980 8-socket server comes in. HP has taken industry-leading RAS features from their high-end Integrity platforms and brought them down to the x86 level. Now, when you put all of your eggs in one basket, the performance and availability are what you expect.
Based on HP’s PREMA architecture, the DL980 comes in 4 processor (32 core) and 8 processor (64 core) models, with up to 2TB of memory. HP adds their own innovative technology, derived from their mission critical Integrity platform, to dramatically improve the reliability and scalability of the 8 socket server and come up with an industry-leading server platform that is ready for the most demanding scale-up workloads.
At the heart of the PREMA architecture is the XNC node controller. This node controller was derived from technology used on HP’s Superdome class systems and is the “glue” that ties all of the Nehalem EX processors together and provides for greater reliability and scalability than “glueless” configurations from other vendors.
If you would like to learn more about the DL980 and HP’s PREMA architecture and how it can help your business achieve efficiencies that were not available before now, contact your Mobius Partners Account Executive to schedule a briefing on this groundbreaking technology. Comments on this article? I'd love to hear from you. Email me -- Dwane Ballard.
Rumors of the death of HP-UX have been greatly exaggerated.
I recently had the opportunity to attend HP’s annual UNIX Ambassador Symposium. This meeting serves as a kind of “State of the Union” meeting for anything and everything having to do with HP-UX and the Business Critical Server (BCS) product line. I have to admit it was certainly an eye-opening experience. While I don’t have enough space to go over everything that was covered, I will say that Intel’s announcement of the newest Itanium processor, Tukwila, has generated a lot of excitement with HP. That, and getting a glimpse into HP’s plans for the Converged Infrastructure and how the mission critical nature of HP-UX can fit into that strategy moving forward, is kind of exciting. Well, as exciting as any product strategy can be… If you’d like to hear more about the BCS product line and mission critical HP-UX, contact your Mobius Partners Account Executive and we would be happy to get you more information. – Dwane Ballard
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