Intel Launches Data Center Manager Software

A diagram illustrating an implementation of Intel Power Manager.

Power usage has become a key priority for data center operators, who are assessing the best hardware and software options to track and manage the efficiency of their facilities. Yesterday Intel (INTC) became the latest tech titan to roll out an energy-focused offering, announcing Intel Data Center Manager, a software development kit that helps monitor and manage data center power consumption on servers using the new Intel Xeon 5500 processors. Data Center Manager uses Power Node Manager, a power management policy engine embedded in Xeon 5500 server chipsets, to collect and analyze energy usage data, set up alerts for power and thermal events, and set policies on power capping and workload management.

Intel tested Data Center Manager last year in a proof-of-concept installation at the Chinese search engine Baidu, which was experiencing power capacity challenges in leased third-party data center space. Baidu’s rack-level power constraints limited it to just 5 2U servers in each 42U rack. By using Data Center Manager to track and cap power usage, Baidu was able to put three additional 2U servers in each rack, for a total of 8 - providing 60 percent more capacity. Intel has a white paper detailing its work with Baidu.

For more information, see coverage at CIO.com and a blog post from Intel’s Jackson He with an in-depth look at the energy management features of the Xeon 5500.

Intel Xeon 5500 Focuses on Power Savings

Patrick Gelsinger, Intel senior vice president, holds up a wafer containing the new Intel Xeon 5500 series processors.

Intel’s news Xeon 5500 processor (Nehalem EP) was launched yesterday, and touted as a historic leap forward in power and energy efficiency. Each processor features four cores and automated energy efficiency enhancements, providing users with greater control of their energy expenditures. Intel says the Xeon 5500 features a processor idle power level of only 10 watts, enabling a 50 percent reduction in system idle power compared to the previous generation. New integrated power gates allow idle cores to power down independently.

The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series also offers up to 15 automated operating states, allowing significant improvements in chip power management by adjusting system power consumption based on real-time throughput. Intel says these features can allow customers who replace older Intel Xeon servers with the 5500 series to recoup their costs in as little as 8 months.

Here’s our roundup of analysis and commentary about the Xeon 500 launch:

• Why You Should Care About Intel’s New Server Chip: A high-level overview from GigaOm, offering three areas where Nehalem changes the game.
• Intel Showcases ‘Transformational’ Nehalem: The Register notes the energy advances, but also the fact that Intel has been slow to focus on low-power chips. “The Nehalem EP chip is exactly the high-volume, high-performance, energy-efficient chip that should have been launched years ago, not today,” writes Timothy Morgan.
• At VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi notes that the Xeon 5500 is the latest round in the processor wars between Intel and AMD, which has its Istanbul chips with six cores coming later this year, and plans to launch a 12-core server chip in 2010. 

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.

Intel Considering Portable Data Centers

It’s been more than a year since Sun Microsystems (JAVAD) announced Project Blackbox, its container-based “data center in a box.” We’ve been closely tracking developments with portable data centers, including the subsequent product announcements from Rackable (RACK). The concept has generated much interest and discussion, but deployment has thus far been limited to a Blackbox at Stanford and three ICE Cube customer shipments by Rackable.

This week there’s evidence that one of the tech sector’s biggest names is thinking portable. In a recent issue of its Premier IT magazine (via John Rath), Intel indicated that it is taking a serious look at deploying portable data centers in shipping containers. Here’s a summary from Martin Menard, the director of Intel’s Platform Capability Group:

The cost of building a new data center is extremely high

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Intel: How to Tackle A Major Consolidation

Planning and logistics are critical to the success of a major data consolidation. And consolidation projects don’t get much bigger than the one currently underway at Intel (INTC), which is consolidating 133 data centers worldwide into just eight high-density facilities.

The process is driven by challenges in power and cooling in legacy data centers. More than 60 percent of Intel’s data centers are at least 10 years old, with designs that make it difficult to capture the benefits of virtualization and energy-saving technologies. The consolidation process will take eight years to complete, and will overhaul many aspects of Intel’s infrastructure.

“The transition is pretty major for all our business units,” said Uttam Shetty, the Director of Data Center Efficiency at Intel. “All of the businesses (at Intel) have been open to these changes. It took a quarter or so to align the rest of the corporation, and there are some technical challenges within the design process. What we have done is show the benefits as we go to various business units.”

Intel’s task is made somewhat easier by the fact that it has space in existing facilities for the new data center space, so there’s no new construction required. When the consolidation is completed, Intel will have added about 300,000 square feet of new space in those eight sites, which will be strategically located in the US, Europe and Asia. Intel is not identifying the location of their new facilities. It has existing state-of-the-art data centers in Oregon and New Mexico.