After accidentally leaking details of its eighth-generation ProLiant servers and blades last week, HP has finally launched the new servers at an event in Las Vegas. Gen8 servers cover the gamut, including rack servers, blades, towers, and scalable systems. This announcement was a little different than past announcements in that HP kept very quiet about the details of what is actually inside the servers. Instead, HP concentrated on high-level capabilities. Despite the lack of hard data, we learned that these servers have some very impressive capabilities that will definitely help datacenter managers deal with some major problems they face today.
One of the most interesting features of the new servers is improved energy efficiency. HP has always taken a strong interest in optimizing power and cooling resources. HP’s G6 servers introduced the concept of a “sea of sensors,” where sensors throughout the server precisely measured temperature to better direct airflow. With HP’s iLO embedded management and Insight Control power management software, IT managers could keep a close watch on overall server power consumption and even cap power for individual servers. With the Gen8 servers, HP is expanding on the sensor concept with a “3D sea of sensors,” a new intelligent rack, and smarter power distribution units (PDUs) and power supplies. This new intelligence allows a datacenter manager to determine the exact location of the server in the rack. HP claims these enhancements result in a 10% reduction in power consumption on average.
The new power optimization capabilities HP is introducing are categorized as three "services." Although power and cooling management has been available for ProLiant servers for some time now, the difference with the Gen8 servers is the increased level of automation these new services add.
- Thermal Discovery Services are a combination of high efficiency components, such as HP SmartMemory and Platinum Plus power supplies coupled with additional server temperature sensors on riser and peripheral cards. The additional server instrumentation provides the data for a graphical view of the historical and present power usage for each server, allowing workloads to be optimized for power consumption and performance. The result is much better control over energy use. HP is claiming that this automated service will deliver up to 70% more computes per watt.
- Location Discovery Services automatically discover and keep track of ProLiant Gen8 servers in HP's new Intelligent Series racks. These services automatically identify the exact location of each managed server in the rack, eliminating the need to manually maintain server location ID tags or lists of server locations.
- Power Discovery Services are linked with HP’s new Intelligent Power Distribution Unit (iPDU). Together with Insight Control, Power Discovery Services can automatically track power usage and check for proper power wiring at both the server and rack level.
HP has always been at the forefront of introducing power and energy management functions into its systems. The “sea of sensors” and excellent management tools in HP servers have allowed datacenter managers to view and control a variety of parameters related to power and cooling. The new Gen8 servers incrementally add to this capability, but they greatly expand the level of automation, freeing datacenter managers to focus on other critical issues. With power consumption and systems management consuming more and more of the IT budget, HP’s Gen8 servers promise to significantly reduce the burden of keeping modern datacenters running with the best possible environmental footprint.
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