HP Launches Thermal Logic Energy Tools

HP today rolled out Thermal Logic, a portfolio of tools to give HP BladeSystem users  more precise control over power and cooling. The initiative reflects server vendors continuing focus on offerings to boost energy efficiency in high-density enterprise data centers. 

Thermal Logic is a set of energy measurement and management technologies HP has built into its products, and includes several new wrinkles for data center managers:

• HP Dynamic Power Capping, which allows companies to control the amount of power used by each server, which can reduce costly overprovisioning of power. HP monitoring software allows users to confirm peak usage for each server and cap at that level, rather than relying on guesstimates based on nameplate power capacity. Dynamic Power Capping is expected to be available in mid-December.
• A new cooling architecture, HP Parallel Redundant Scalable Enterprise Cooling (PARSEC), which divides each BladeSystem enclosure into multiple zones with dedicated fans, allowing users to make better use of variable fan speeds. This allows custom configurations for servers and storage, rather than adapting all fans to one high-powered blade.
• HP Active Cool fans, which feature a new design based on aircraft technology that the company says can cool 16 blades using just 100 watts of power. HP says it has applied for multiple patents covering the new fan technology.

“With these new solutions from HP, customers are able to drive down data center costs by reducing energy consumption and, at the same time, minimize environmental impact,” said Peter Gross, chief executive officer, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, an HP company. “HP’s Green Business Technology initiative is built on decades of innovation and experience in data center design and deployment, resulting in solutions that empower CIOs to turn energy efficiency into business benefits that impact the bottom line.” 

Note: HP does not indicate how many PARSECs are needed to complete the Kessel Run.

HP Discusses Data Center Automation

At the recent Data Center World conference, we sat down with Kalyan Ramanathan, the Director of Product Marketing for HP Storage Automation. Kalyan discussed the growing complexity of the data center, the improtance of compliance and best practices, and the role that CMDB (configuration management database) and automation can play in addressing complexity challenges. Kalyan was part of the team at Opsware, the data center automation company acquired by HP in 2007. This video runs about 8 minutes.

For more news about Hewlett Packard, visit our HP Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

HP, Intel, Yahoo Team on Cloud Testbed

HP, Intel Corp. and Yahoo have created a global, multi-data center test bed for cloud computing research and development, the companies said today. The initiative is designed to provide researchers with access to an open source cloud platform for honing their development skills. The new platform will compete with a similar cloud testbed introduced by Google and IBM.

Both efforts are designed to provide researchers and universities with easy access to a cloud platform on which they can develop the skills required to write and support the cloud applications of the future.

The three tech giants are partnering with three universities - the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany - along with the National Science Foundation.

The testbed will initially consist of six “centers of excellence,” each hosting a cloud computing infrastructure running on HP hardware and between 1,000 to 4,000 Intel processor cores. The six centers - housed at IDA facilities, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Steinbuch Centre for Computing of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, HP Labs, Intel Research and Yahoo - will be fully operational later this year.

A Look Inside HP’s POD Container

HP today became the latest hardware vendor to launch a data center container product, the Performance Optimized Data Center (POD), which is housed in both 20-foot and 40-foot long shipping containers. HP is targeting the unit as a transitional data center solution for companies that need to quickly expand their operations. The company says the POD can support power loads of up to 1,800 watts per square foot (27 kW per rack). The product will be available sometime in the third quarter of this year. Here’s a closer look inside the HP POD and some of its features.

The POD will be able to accommodate up to 22 racks, which are
slightly taller than normal 19-inch racks (50U vs 42U).

HP Unveils its POD Data Center Container

HP today unveiled a data center container, the Performance Optimized Data Center (POD), joining the growing ranks of major vendors introducing container products. HP said the POD, which can be shipped in just six weeks, will allow customers to rapidly expand their data center capacity.

HP’s introduction of a container product was widely expected, as most of its major competitors have announced similar solutions. Vendors offering container solutions include Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Rackable (RACK), IBM and Verari Systems. Dell is also building data center containers for customers, but has not announced a container product.

The HP POD will support both HP and third-party technology, a contrast to containers optimized for vendor-specific hardware. HP also says its container allows a denser server environment than competing products, with power capacity up to 27kW per rack, or 1,800+ watts per square foot. The 40-foot POD can support more than 3,500 compute nodes or 12,000 LFF hard drives, offering the computing equivalent of about 4,000 square foot of traditional data center space.

HP Moving Defense Department Into The Cloud

HP will help the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) deploy a cloud computing infrastructure, the company said today. The cloud initiative, known as RACE (Rapid Access Computing Environment) is designed to reduce costs, consolidate applications and shorten delivery times for DoD computing projects. The system will be deployed by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which says RACE will give the DoD a new level of speed and agility.

John Garing, the Chief Information Officer of DISA, spoke about the RACE initiative at the Data Centers Best Practices Conference June 13 in Washington. “We’re moving to provide a cloud in the Department of Defense,” said Garing. “It’s a change in the way we look at service delivery. In much of the DoD we still think of circuits and servers and apps. We don’t think about clouds and services. We went through an epiphany.”

Deploying a cloud infrastructure will allow the DoD to test and develop systems without having to purchase hardware or software licenses, saving time and money. The cloud compute resources will be based on DISA’s standard architecture, allowing employees to provision operating environments from the cloud with a service catalog accessed via a secure web portal. HP said its solution will automate management tasks and dynamically allocate server resources, saving energy and manpower.

Will HP Launch A Data Center Container?

In recent weeks there have been rumors that HP will soon join the ranks of server vendors offering data center containers. When HP was promoting yesterday’s launch of its new 2-in-1 blade server, The Register took the opportunity to ask Mark Potter, HP’s VP of BladeSystem operations, about those reports:

And speaking of limited space — where’s HP in this whole data center in a shipping container brouhaha? We’ve seen Sun, Dell, IBM and Rackable in the game. Where for art thou, Aitch Pee?

“You can expect HP will have an industry leading roadmap,” said Potter. “A couple of weeks ago we launched the StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage system — and this announcement is a part of that rolling thunder. Stay tuned, you’ll see a lot more.”

Ok, well that doesn’t exactly… “I wish I could tell you more,” said Potter.

Sometimes a non-answer speaks volumes. It sounds as though we can expect an HP container product to materialize soon.

HP Unveils New 2-in-1 Blade Server

HP is rolling out a new line of blade servers that combines two servers in a single energy-efficient blade. The new ProLiant BL2×220c G5 is designed for data centers that require more horsepower for cloud computing or high performance computing (HPC) applications but have a limited amount of data center space. To enable that denser environment, HP says its new blade delivers 60 percent better performance per watt than similar configurations from competitors.

The new HP offering highlights the intensifying battle among major server vendors for high-volume deals with customers building cloud computing and HPC infrastructure. IBM recently launched its iDataPlex server for Web 2.0 infrastructure, while Dell has its XS23 Cloud Server.

“The IT industry is at an inflection point with companies demanding more efficient, highly-utilized scale-out technologies that can improve the economic model for their data centers,” said Michelle Bailey, research vice president, Datacenter Trends program, IDC. “The growth in digital information is changing the course of the data center, forcing organizations to quickly scale their infrastructures to keep pace with user demands.”

HP and EDS: Blockbuster or Bust?

Is HP’s acquisition of EDS a major milestone for the company, or a strategic misstep? There was no shortage of opinions around the web yesterday. Here are some highlights:

• InformationWeek notes that there will almost certainly be significant data center consolidation. In 2006, HP announced one of the most ambitious projects yet, consolidating 85 data centers worldwide into six larger centers located in Atlanta, Houston and Austin.
• Nick Carr says “cloud computing promises to turn many traditional systems-outsourcing businesses into pure commodity businesses - undifferentiated utility services.”
• Drue Reeves at The Burton Group reflects on the competitive implications for Dell. “From a services perspective, the move by HP leaves Dell with few options to get into the services race. About the only possible acquisitions left are Unisys (already a Dell services partner), Accenture, Computer Science Corp, and Perot Systems. Accenture is probably the cream of the crop, but their price – thanks to HP’s move – may be more than Dell wants to pay at this point.”

It’s Official: HP Will Buy EDS for $13.9 Billion

That didn’t take long. HP announced this morning that it will acquire EDS for $13.9 billion, or $25 a share. The deal comes just hours after the companies acknowledged they were in talks, and has been unanimously approved by the HP and EDS boards of directors. The transaction should close in the second half of this year, HP said.

Buying EDS will more than double HP’s services revenue, which amounted to $16.6 billion in fiscal 2007. The companies’ collective services businesses, as of the end of each company’s 2007 fiscal year, had annual revenues of more than $38 billion and 210,000 employees, doing business in more than 80 countries.