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In an environment that is increasingly competitive, as well encountering problems when trying to adapt to environmental constraints, companies require solutions that allow them to generate optimal performance/cost ratios. A typical example is the management of data centres, a sector that is sensitive to any activities that can lead to reduced functional costs (energy consumption, cooling). New processor families allow for the development of server solutions that take into account all of these factors. On top of this is the ecosystem of virtual servers which are being put into place by enterprises so as to lighten maintenance needs, reduce costs and finally, making the system more efficient.
Article sponsored by IBM and Intel
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In the same way as other hardware manufacturers, the IBM group offers servers adapted to virtualization running the Intel Xeon 5500 series processor. The IBM BladeCenter HS22 provides improvements over previous models in terms of detailed management.
The HS22 blades come with two Intel Xeon 5500 processors of your choice, running at up to 2.93 GHz, while there are 12 DDR3 DIMM slots allowing for up to 96GB of memory running at 1333 MHz. Two 2.5” hot swap replaceable bays are present allowing up to 600GB of internal storage space in the form of hard drives or SSD disks.
The Intel Xeon 5500 processors manage multiple energy consummation levels (P State and T State), with numerous transition speeds allowing for fast changes between operating states.
Minute management of standby states allows for reduced energy consumption while still providing excellent performance thanks to the different technologies implemented by Intel like Turbo Boost which allows you to over clock the processors, and Power Energy which dynamically manages the energy use depending on the workload.
Compared to the previous generation of blade servers, the new range or devices running Intel Xeon’s takes up 50% less space in the racks, while also consuming 35% less energy. With the new Nehalem architecture, the memory controller has been integrated into the processor, increasing the bandwidth available while reducing latency.
The IBM BladeCenter HS22’s architecture has been created so as to improve efficiency at all levels: from the low energy use Intel Xeon 5500 processor to IBM’s System Director advanced management software which watches over and restricts energy consumption. All of this fine tuning translates into 93% energy saving when compared to previous generation racked servers.
Reusing some of the investment
So as to get a good return on your investment, the IBM BladeCenter HS22 can be used with certain previous generation chassis as well as being associated with blades that come with processors other then x86, assuring combinations with existing material.
Finally, it can be noted that the devices are UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) compatible, opening the way to better peripheral device management in the BIOS. The IBM System X range is the one of the first to be UEFI 2.1 compatible.
We have also seen that with the arrival of the Intel Nehalem architecture and the Xeon 5500 family series, it is easy to change a data centres conception by focusing on energy use so as to find the best performance possible with the lowest energy use.
With a planned lifespan of dozens of years, and taking into account resources that are becoming sparser, data centres can no longer be resource hungry with huge heat extraction required, as the new focus is on reducing the number of required servers.
It is now possible to configure the devices to minute detail, reducing costs linked to energy use and cooling systems, while guaranteeing acceptable performance thanks to virtualization and improvements in server performance use.
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