HP hopes to cut data center costs with new Gen8 servers

Hewlett-Packard on Monday introduced Gen8, its next generation of servers, which integrate new technologies designed to cut overall maintenance and power costs in data centers while maintaining high server uptimes.

Gen8 servers have new hardware and software technology for better performance-per-watt and a reduction in the manual labor involved in updating servers, HP said. The automatic updating and server load-balancing features will help save millions of dollars over a three-year span, HP said.

The new servers address the need to balance limited space and provide more processing power in data centers, while curbing power costs. The servers include technologies resulting from a two-year, US$300 million research program code-named Project Voyager, in which the company tried to find ways to automate data-center tasks and reduce costs. The project resulted in more than 900 patents and a new systems architecture called HP ProActive Insight architecture, the company said.

HP also has a separate project under way to reshape the server architecture called Project Moonshot, in which the company is tying its servers with Calxeda chips based on ARM processors to bring power and performance to cloud-related workloads.

The Gen8 servers will become generally available in March. HP did not provide full specifications of the servers, but earlier this month the company published initial details that they are multi-socket and based on Intel's upcoming E5 processors, whose announcement is expected soon. Gen8 servers will eventually replace the Proliant G7 family, which was introduced in 2010 and based on x86 processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

One of the new power-saving technologies is HP's 3-D Sea of Sensors, where overutilized servers are identified based on real-time location, power, workload and temperature data. Based on the data, system administrators can redirect workloads to ensure that servers are operating at the most peak efficiency. The new technology reduces the manual labor involved in monitoring power and cooling, according to HP.

The servers also include services to track power usage per rack and servers. Thermal Discovery Services improve airflow efficiency to cool servers. Over a three-year period, the new technologies can bring annual energy savings of up to $640,000, and save more than 30 days of administration time a year per person in a 10,000-square-foot data center, according to HP.

The servers are optimized for specific workloads such as databases, cloud and virtualization, according to HP. Improved memory, networking bandwidth and storage features mean that database application performance will be boosted by as much as 50 percent compared to the previous generation of servers, the company said.

The new servers support up to 50 percent more internal storage drives per server compared to previous generations. They are also optimized for solid-state drives, which can help improve storage performance by more than seven times compared to previous generations of servers, according to HP. To ensure high data availability and server uptime, HP is providing technology that mirrors data over three drives simultaneously.

System administrators can troubleshoot issues a lot quicker through technologies like Active Health and HP Insight Online, which analyze, monitor and diagnose server issues through data gathered across 1,600 system parameters. An embedded technology called Intelligent Provisioning technology automatically sets up and configures servers, while Smart Update technology pushes out server updates.

HP is expected to reveal further details about the server at a press event alongside its Global Partner conference in Las Vegas this week.

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