server

NEC Express5800/A1160 Server Breaks Virtualization Performance Record (VMmark)

August 6, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

NEC Corporation today announced that their newest enterprise server, the NEC Express5800/A1160, has established a world record in overall VMmark performance benchmark results.

VMmark is an industry benchmark developed by VMware, to measure the performance and scalability of multiple enterprise applications running in virtualized servers so that customers can compare different virtualization platforms. The metrics are defined in “score @ tiles.” “Score” is referred as a throughput performance metric and “tiles” are the consolidation capacity of the system.

The record-breaking score, 34.05@24tiles, was achieved using the NEC Express5800/A1160 server, which was configured with 8 sockets populated with the Intel Xeon X7460 processors, powered by VMware ESX 4.0.

The NEC Express5800/A1160 features state-of-the-art NEC server technology with an up-to-4 nodes scalable building block architecture using the HSI technology to connect the blocks along with enhanced reliability, availability and serviceability, all of which are based on long-standing rich heritage of NEC mainframe, supercomputer and Intel Itanium server products.

Taking advantage of the server’s robust scalable architecture, high consolidation capacity, and high performance, NEC is promoting the NEC Express5800/A1160 server as a reliable virtualization platform.

Lenovo’s Latest Servers Well Suited For Virtualization

July 1, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Lenovo today announced its latest line of servers, the ThinkServer TD200 and TD200x tower servers as well as the RD210 and RD220 rack servers. The new servers offer small to mid-sized businesses the latest in performance with several choices of Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors and vastly expanded memory and storage. These ThinkServers are also equipped for virtualization and several power saving features to help customers cut their energy usage without sacrificing performance.Equipped with the latest Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, the new ThinkServers are up to three times faster than their predecessors. With high-speed DDR3 memory up to 128GB, the latest models offer more memory than previous Lenovo servers. These highly scalable, dual processor servers also offer increased storage capacity with up to 12 hard drive bays in the rack models and up to 16 in the tower models.

Lenovo’s new ThinkServers are virtualization-ready and are equipped with several time and cost saving features that help customers seamlessly transition to a virtual environment. The latest ThinkServers come with an onboard connector for an embedded hypervisor. With the expanded memory and storage capacity on the new models, customers can consolidate several legacy servers onto a single new ThinkServer to save on hardware costs and energy usage while boosting their return on investment. Lenovo supports a variety of virtualization solutions from Microsoft, Novell, VMWare and Red Hat.

The ThinkServer TD200, TD200x, RD210 and RD220 are the most energy efficient servers from Lenovo yet, featuring low wattage processor and memory options, and small form factor hard drives. Select models are compliant with Energy Star for Servers 1.0, finalized in May 2009, which provides a 30 percent reduction in power usage compared with other x86 servers that do not meet the standard. In addition, the ThinkServers’ power supplies are more than 92 percent efficient, meaning more energy is translated into usable power.

The new ThinkServers come with the Integrated Management Module (IMM), which provides complete, “always-on,” out-of-band server management capabilities via an easy-to-use Web interface. With IMM, users can remotely access and manage their ThinkServer from anywhere, anytime, even if the server has crashed or is turned off.

Select models come with IMM Premium, giving users full control of their ThinkServer (including the mouse, keyboard and video) from remote locations, as well as the ability to connect local drives remotely to their ThinkServer through virtual media.

Servers are a critical IT mechanism at the heart of many businesses. That’s why Lenovo’s server solution provides total support for both hardware and software to help customers without IT departments quickly set up, update and manage their servers.

In addition to its standard warranty, Lenovo offers ThinkServer customers a 90-day trial of ThinkPlus Priority Support services so customers have the complete support they need during the critical first days after their server purchase. This provides services such as next business day warranty service, 24×7 hardware and software phone support as well as priority call routing to advanced technicians. For customers who need on-site hardware installation and online training, Lenovo also offers the ThinkPlus Productivity service plan.

The RD210 and RD220 are available immediately, and TD200 and TD200x will be available starting July 2009. The ThinkServer RD210, RD220 and TD200x are available worldwide through business partners and Lenovo sales representatives. The TD200 is available through Lenovo sales representatives for special bid. Pricing for the RD210 starts at approximately $1,699 and $2,199 for the RD220. The TD200x starts at approximately $2,699.

Cisco Plans Bold Move Into Server Business, Enters Arena With HP And IBM

January 20, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

According to the NY Times, Cisco Systems is planning a big push into the server market, essentially entering into competition with its historical partners HP and IBM (who declined to comment on the story).

A risky move for Cisco, but a very interesting one.

The product — a server computer equipped with sophisticated virtualization software — is a bold but risky move by Cisco into an unfamiliar, intensely competitive market that typically produces far lower profits than Cisco makes from network gear. But it reflects the company’s ambition to grow beyond its roots as the so-called plumber of the Internet to offer everything from instant messaging software to digital stereos.

As The Register points out, VMware technology is likely the foundation of the virtualization part, since Cisco still owns part of the company (about 2%). Cisco is not disclosing any specifics though, but the NY Times learned that Cisco could show off the first of its new systems as early as March.

Acquisition rumors between Cisco Systems and VMware (and even EMC in full) are sure to flare up again.

A good follow-up article was published on Forbes.

HP ProLiant Virtualization Blade Server To Be Equipped With Samsung Solid State Drives

October 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Samsung Electronics has announced that its 32 gigabyte (GB) and 64 GB solid state drives (SSDs) have been selected, after extensive testing, for use in the HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade server. This represents the first time that an SSD has been qualified for use in a server optimized for virtualization. The server is the world’s first server blade designed specifically to host virtual machines, and is designed for use in virtualized environments that require significant memory, data storage and network connections to optimize server performance.

By using SSDs instead of hard disk drives, HP is able to free up a significant amount of physical space which can then be allocated for additional DRAM capacity—further improving system performance. The BL495c has 16 DRAM sockets.

The HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade eliminates performance bottlenecks in virtual machine hosts. Engineered with more memory and I/O than any other two-processor blade server, the new server has a maximum processor speed of 2.3 GHz and a maximum front-side bus speed of 1 GHz, according to HP, and comes with the option of two SATA SSD storage drives (either 32 or 64 GBs).

The Samsung single-level-cell (SLC) SSD has a (sequential) read speed of 100 megabytes per second (MB/s) and a (sequential) write speed of 80 MB/s. The SLC SSD’s power consumption is as little as a miniscule 0.5 watt (one-twentieth that of a conventional 15K enterprise rpm hard drive) in active mode and 0.1 watt in sleep mode.

VMware Releases Virtual Desktop Manager 2.1, ThinApp 1.0 And Server 2.0 Coming Up Next

May 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware has released a minor update for its connection broker Virtual Desktop Manager, technology it aquired by snapping up Propero about a year ago. VDM – download a trial here – has now reached version 2.1 (build 596) and includes the following addition features:

Multiple sessions per user within a pool
Pools spanning datastores in order to better manage resources
VDM Configuration Backup (command-line only)
Integrate MMR multimedia extensions DLL with VDM Client (Windows XP)
Allow blocking of incoming RDP connections that are not from VDM Clients
Allow end users to change password
Allow end users to restart their VM

Also, the company expects to ship ThinApp 1.0 (former Thinstall, of which the beta 2 was announced recently) as well as Server 2.0 (currently also in beta 2) during the course of this Summer.

VMWare To Embed VMware ESX 3i Hypervisor Across Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM Servers

February 27, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Today at VMWorld Europe 2008 (watch our video reports), VMware announced agreements to embed the VMware ESX 3i hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM. System providers are expected to begin shipping servers embedded with the VMware ESX 3i hypervisor within the next 60 days.

From the release:

“We are very excited to be partnering with Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP and IBM to proliferate virtualization and fast-track customers on the path to running a self-managing virtual datacenter,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “Customers can now get VMware pre-integrated and pre-configured for the hardware platform of their choice for immediate standalone server consolidation. As customers want to expand their adoption and get more value from virtualization, they can upgrade from the ESX 3i hypervisor to VMware’s complete datacenter virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3).”

“VI3 provides automatic load balancing, business continuity, power management and the ability to move a virtual machine across physical machines with no service interruption. In addition, customers who are already using VI3 can plug-and-play virtualization-enabled servers into their datacenters to dynamically and automatically expand the pool of resources (CPU, memory, and networking) available to meet their changing business requirements.”

Greene and other VMware executives highlighted the new VMware ESX 3i agreements with representatives from Dell, HP and IBM during today’s VMworld Europe general session keynote presentations. The presentations will be available via a recorded web cast (http://www.vmware.com/go/europe-webcast ) by 3:00 p.m. Central European Time and 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today.