HP

Red Hat Embraces AMD Virtualization Capabilities In HP Servers

April 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Red Hat today announced its support for virtualization capabilities offered by AMD processors in new HP servers.

The company’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 platform supports AMD’s Rapid Virtualization Indexing technology, for more efficient use of memory management on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. HP is now offering systems equipped with these processors in its HP ProLiant DL585 G5 servers, Red Hat said. Also, support for virtual guests configured with more than four CPUs has now been added.

“Red Hat and AMD have worked very closely with the open source community to ensure that full support for Rapid Virtualization Indexing is available with the first Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems to be offered by a leading hardware OEM,” said Earl Stahl, vice president, Software Development at AMD. “We’ve been able to ensure that customers can reap the benefits of this new virtualization technology right away. We have been delighted with the excellent performance that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has achieved. Red Hat, AMD and HP customers now have available one of the fastest and most scalable virtualization platforms on the market today.”

“Red Hat also is offering para-virtualized device drivers to make I/O workloads in virtual guests perform close to the bare-metal performance of the system”, said Doug Shakshober, senior consulting engineer at Red Hat.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 has been shipping since November 2007.

[Source: Test Center Daily]

HP Updates HP-UX, Introduces Four New Operating Environments

April 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

We missed this last week, but HP announcing four new operating environments (OEs) with the latest release of HP-UX 11i v3, Update 2, was just too big a deal not to cover.

Designed to simplify UNIX deployments on HP Integrity servers, the new OEs enable customers to reduce costs and accelerate time to solution for immediate out-of-the-box productivity. They deliver fully integrated UNIX virtualization and high availability features, as well as a full range of HP software, with the HP-UX 11i operating system, in a single package.

Users don’t have to buy the pre-packaged deals; they can just buy the OS and then add middleware products à la carte. But HP claims customers can save money by purchasing the packaged deals, as well as the time in not having to buy and install each separate feature they want.

With the new update, the operating environments include Base, High Availability, Virtual Server, and Data Center. High-Availability and Virtual Server both have everything Base has, but with unique features to one another. High-Availability, for example, has HP Serviceguard, software that helps clustered server environments prevent downtime. The Virtual Server OE, meanwhile, has Virtual Server Environment, HP’s virtualization environment for its Unix servers.

The latest release of HP-UX 11i v3 Update 2 also delivers improved performance. According to HP’s announcement, customers can achieve up to a 100 % increase in network speed, as well as continued acceleration of the mass storage stack, which controls I/O devices such as SCSI logical units. In addition, Update 2 simplifies blade management and consolidation while advancing multi-OS usability. The new release facilitates upgrades by enabling virtual partitions on v3 to combine HP-UX 11i v1, v2 with v3 on a single machine.

[Source: SearchDataCenter.com]

HP To Support Citrix XenDesktop Across ProLiant Servers And Compaq Thin Clients

April 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

HP today announced it plans to support Citrix XenDesktop upon its availability next month across its HP ProLiant server and HP Compaq thin client product lines.

Citrix XenDesktop, currently in beta, is a complete desktop virtualization solution that makes desktop delivery simple, secure and cost-effective. HP, one of the world’s leading thin-client providers, is delivering integrated access to XenDesktop deployments to provide customers with thin clients that enhance the user experience and reduce IT costs through what the company dubs “simplified lifecycle management”.

“HP offers a broad range of desktop solutions that make virtualization a reality for a very wide range of worker and IT infrastructure types,” said Roberto Moctezuma, vice president and general manager, Desktop Solutions Organization, HP. “The combination of HP virtualization and Citrix’s XenDesktop will provide IT departments with an excellent solution for simple and secure management of their desktop base while providing users an optimal computing experience.”

The addition of XenDesktop support also builds on HP’s recent introduction of HP ProLiant iVirtualization powered by Citrix XenServer. This combination allows HP customers to easily take advantage of Citrix’s full application and desktop delivery solutions to help make their IT infrastructures more flexible and dynamic from the desktop to the data center.

[Source: press release]

HP’s Ann Livermore On Virtualization

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

In an interesting interview with ZDNet UK, HP’s Ann Livermore, who heads the company’s Technology Solutions Group, talks about the difference between HP and IBM and touches upon virtualization.

A highlight:

What is HP’s take on virtualization, and where do you think the barriers are that stop people getting the maximum value from it?

Livermore: A lot of people associate virtualization with the server, and what really needs to be done by customers is to virtualize the entire data center, the servers, the storage, the networking, and the applications. And the first problem customers run into when they start doing that is: “How do I manage this thing? When I have physical servers sitting there, virtual servers and in a mixed environment, what do I do?”

The software we provide is to manage both the physical and the virtual servers through a single pane of glass, a single set of software, and actually create the equivalent of a logical server environment that is being managed. We believe one of the biggest impediments has been: “How do I manage this thing once it is in production?” With our software, you are able to visualize it, plan the changes, and actually make the changes in the environment.

Do you see a slow transition to virtualization?

Livermore: Yes, and most are going to find that the transition from physical to virtual is slow enough that they are going to have to manage both for a while.

But you do see virtualization on the desktop becoming more popular?

Livermore: Absolutely. We believe that for security reasons, for performance reasons, cost reasons, any of those can be compelling reasons for a virtualized desktop–or a thin-client accessing the services you need from that device.

Could this be ideal for blades?

Livermore: PC blades can be an implementation of virtualization. HP made an acquisition a year ago of Neoware for our PC business to give us the capability to have a virtualized client environment. So we feel good about our blade business. Half of all virtualized environments are blades, so when people are thinking of virtualizing, very often they end up with a blades environment. That places us in a strong position.

[Source: Cnet News – Newsmaker]

HP Wants To Power ‘Next Generation’ Data Center Transformation

March 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

HP today announced ‘a set of products and services designed to help customers transform their data centers from a standalone collection of physical assets into a virtual and adaptive infrastructure designed to rapidly meet changing business needs’, which it dubs the next generation data center (NGDC).

From the press release:

HP is providing businesses with the technology tools and strategies needed to address top data center initiatives: energy efficiency, automation, virtualization, consolidation and business continuity.

Coupled with HP’s current systems, storage, software and services, the new products and services make up the HP Data Center Transformation portfolio, which helps enterprises to manage and transform their data centers.

“Today customers are facing multiple challenges – the explosion of data, a growing mobile workforce and the need for access to real-time information,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “HP is uniquely qualified to help CIOs dramatically change the way they create, manage and operate their data centers.”

HP infrastructure additions include new services, plus a powerful HP ProLiant server:

HP Critical Facilities services – As a result of its February acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, HP is expanding its Data Center Services offering with three new critical facilities services focused on consulting, design and assurance. The services help customers create scalable facilities that reduce the cost of data center operations through energy-efficient power and cooling technologies contained in space-efficient facilities.⁽²⁾

HP Data Center Consolidation services – These include design, transition and support services to help customers reduce the number of their facilities. As a result, customers reduce energy and operating costs while maintaining the ability to support business growth with a robust, flexible infrastructure.

HP Data Center Virtualization services – The HP virtualization portfolio has been enhanced with new design, support and education services that help customers create a virtual infrastructure from their physical technology assets. This includes virtualization across servers, storage, networks and applications.

HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server – The HP ProLiant DL785 G5 is a powerful and scalable eight-socket x86 server based on Quad-Core AMD® Opteron™ processor technology. The server is an ideal platform for virtualization due to its processing power, large memory footprint, storage capacity and expandable input/output. The DL785 improves server utilization by consolidating multiple servers and reduces the management, energy and space issues associated with server sprawl.

New software provides single view of physical and virtual world, enhanced automation:

HP Insight Dynamics – VSE – This is the industry’s first software to analyze and optimize physical and virtual resources in the same way. The software helps customers extend the life of their data centers with advanced energy-aware capacity planning. HP Insight Dynamics – VSE will support multi-vendor hypervisor technologies and can reduce costs of common data center tasks by as much as 40 percent. Previewed today and expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008, HP Insight Dynamics – VSE seamlessly plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager, the world’s most popular platform management tool.

HP Operations Orchestration enhancements – New integrations extend comprehensive automation across all physical and virtual infrastructures. By automating manual and error-prone processes across clients, applications, servers, networks, and storage, these integrations help customers better manage and automate business services. Additionally, these enhancements help customers reduce labor costs, increase service availability and meet compliance requirements by providing auditable, standardized processes.

[Source: ZDnet Blogs]

Dell Reportedly Plans To Give Away VMware ESX Server 3i For Free, World Keeps Turning

March 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters 4 Comments

According to The Inquirer, it appears Dell is considering to stop charging VMware ESX Server 3i licensing fees on its PowerEdge servers to its customers. This was reportedly said by VMWare’s Senior Product Marketing Manager Martin Niemer and comes two weeks after the virtualization vendor announced it would start embedding the 32 MB hypervisor across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM servers.

This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as VMware had added to the previous announcement that hardware vendors would be able to choose which premium they would charge to end customers, if any. Expect the other hardware vendors to follow suit and drop the prices for including the hypervisors significantly (or even zero) if Dell comes through, especially with the sharp-priced Microsoft hypervisor Hyper-V on its way.

But don’t expect this to have a serious impact on the whole VMware reseller channel’s bottom line, as some blogs are proclaiming already. The real money is in the enterprise offering and upgrades anyway, and the smaller distributors and resellers have other advantages when it comes to SMB offerings besides pricing.