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AMD Opteron™ Processor + Our Partners = Masters of VMworld
Posted by tmueting in 6:08 PM
Loading ...Well, once again we survived another whirlwind week at VMworld in San Francisco. I want to thank all of you that stopped by our booth to see our demonstrations or to attend one or more of our theater presentations. And, to those of you who attended my session on Thursday morning (after Wednesday night’s party no less!) – a special thank you. It was good to be able to meet many of you personally and I enjoyed hearing about your environment and your use of AMD OpteronTM processor-based platforms.
We ran a full slate of theater presentations in the AMD Booth and, from what I saw, every session was standing room only. This year we were treated to two customer presentations – Scott Ramnitz from First Data Corporation and Michael Foltz of Kroger Co. – two long time AMD customers and early adopters of virtualization shared their experiences.
In addition to Scott and Michael, on Tuesday Steve Pope, CTO of Solarflare Communications discussed the performance challenges that virtualization presents for I/O Devices. Solarflare is a leading silicon vendor delivering products that enable the rapid adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet for data center and enterprise networks. Along with Solarflare and VMware, we demonstrated near native performance of AMD’s I/O virtualization technology on an AMD engineering development system featuring 4 twelve-core AMD Opteron 6100 series processors (codenamed “Magny-Cours”) and four AMD SR5690 chipsets running VMware ESX 4.0 and Solarflare’s 10GeB NIC. Please note that the AMD OpteronTM 6100 series processors, code-named “Magny-Cours,” referenced below are scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of 2010.
On Wednesday, Ron Graham, Technical Marketing Manager from Sun lead a discussion on virtualization performance on AMD OpteronTM processor based Sun servers like the 8-socket Sun Fire X4600 M2 server and then again on Thursday Ron returned to discuss Sun’s AMD OpteronTM processor-based Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems that deliver mission-critical entry storage. One of the most popular sessions of the week was given by Simon Crosby, CTO of Virtualization for Citrix Corporation. Simon didn’t mince words while giving us his unique perspective on the state of virtualization today and what he believes we can expect in the future in his talk entitled ”Cloud Computing and Desktop Virtualization.” AMD continues our close work with Citrix on XenServer and XenApp and supported the Introduction of Xen Cloud Platform to help accelerate customer adoption of open enterprise-class cloud infrastructures.
Also on Thursday Armando Acosta, Product Manager from Dell presented “Dell Solutions to Power the Efficient Enterprise.” Armando discussed Dell’s AMD OpteronTM processor-based blade and rack server solutions designed specifically for virtualization and the enterprise, including the Dell PowerEdge 905 server which took home a 2009 InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award
For those of you who didn’t have a chance to attend one of these sessions or would like to revisit the slides you can see them here (along with a host of other information) at the AMD Booth on VMworld.com. Also check out the latest AMD Virtualization Update by AMD’s Director of Commercial Solutions, Margaret Lewis.
All-in-all it was another successful event for AMD. As virtualization is hitting mainstream AMD has released a full line of Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processors that provides superior value for your most important virtualization workloads. Don’t just take my word for it, according to a recent blog post at Solori that analyzes price/performance for 2-socket servers – “Istanbul continues to offer a 20-30% CAPEX value proposition against Nehalem in the virtualization use case…”
Tim Mueting is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Countdown to VMworld – More Cores, More VMs with Six-Core AMD Opteron™ Processors!
Posted by tmueting in 12:12 PM
Gearing up for VMware, I had a chance recently to spend some time in AMD’s performance lab and showcase one of the cooler demos I have ever been a part of. Operating a Six-Core AMD OpteronTM 8400 Series processor-based HP DL785 G6 server with VMware ESX 4.0 software we were able to successfully consolidate 180 virtual machines onto one physical server.1
That is 25% more virtual machines than the competition can claim running the same workload. As a side note, running the same workload on either a Six-Core AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL585 G6 server or BL685c G6 blade -- we’re able to consolidate 120 virtual machines, which is 43% more VMs than the competition on a 4-socket, 24 core server.
But, don’t take my word for it, check out the video below (we also just broke our own record with HP releasing a a new top 48-core VMmark result on the same server with a score of 53.73 running 210 VMs!).
And, join us at VMworld August 31-September 3rd. We’ll be showcasing this demo at our booth (#1408) as well as many more.
Tim Mueting is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
1Based on 30 tiles x 6 VMs for 48-core HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server, as tested using the VMmark benchmark (http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html).
Countdown to VMworld – Hear the latest trends in Virtualization Straight from the Masters
Posted by tmueting in 8:41 PM
VMworld 2009 is just around the corner and you can be sure that AMD will be front and center at what has become one of the premier technical conferences of the year. I’m honored once again to be speaking at one of the breakout sessions during the week. I invite you to come join me on Thursday at 10am for a discussion on Virtualization and Cloud Computing with AMD OpteronTM processor-based platforms. I’ll be covering the latest in AMD OpteronTM processors including exciting new features from our most recent introduction of the Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor (formerly codenamed “Istanbul”). It is the industry’s only six-core process for 2, 4 and 8 socket servers and offers 34% higher performance-per-watt than Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based servers in the same power and thermal envelopes.
I promise this will be much more than just a product presentation. I will provide valuable insight into what we’re seeing in the world of virtualization and cloud computing. I’m very excited to announce that we also plan to have a special guest speaker during this session. Not to give too much away, but we expect to have a very special customer that will discuss their experiences as they move towards their goal of being 96% virtualized in their datacenter. This particular customer has been using virtualization for past several years for server consolidation and high availability and they have implemented over 1500 hosted virtualized desktops running on AMD OpteronTM processor-based servers and VMware software.
And speaking of sessions, we also have a complete line-up in our Masters of Virtualization Theater in the AMD booth in the Exhibition Hall. Please come by and say hello. You can check out several of our demonstrations featuring emerging virtualization technologies and attend a variety of presentations to learn the latest and greatest from many of our closest OEMs and industry partners including Citrix, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Sun and Virtual Computer, just to name a few. And as a bonus, we have two of our key customers lined up to present and discuss their experiences with virtualization and AMD OpteronTM processor-based servers.
The theater presentations will run every hour on the hour and last approx 20 to 30 minutes including Q&A. Please consult your VMworld schedule for Exhibition hall times and come by our booth – #1408 – for a complete schedule of the AMD booth presentations.
And if you just can’t wait for the conference you can visit the AMD booth at the VMworld Virtual Conference. I’ve just posted a new “Ask the Experts” piece highlighting the Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor – check out some of the other new material on AMD while you are there.
We’re just a few weeks away. I hope to see you all there.
Tim Mueting is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Live Migration: Here to Stay
Posted by tmueting in 11:57 AM
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)I have recently returned from the HP Technical Conference and, although attendance was down a bit this year (likely due to the economy), there were still plenty of enthusiastic AMD customers and partners in attendance. The buzz around the availability of the recently released Six-Core AMD OpteronTM “Istanbul” processor and HP Proliant G6 servers was tremendous. HP has announced seven HP ProLiant platforms based on “Istanbul” processors as well as the availability of upgrade kits for existing G5/G5p platforms. I’m also happy to report that I had a packed room during my virtualization session on Tuesday.
In our booth on the exhibition floor we demonstrated the ability to use VMware’s VMotion to seamlessly migrate a running virtual machine between an HP Proliant G2 server running Dual-Core AMD Opteron “Rev F” processors (released in 2006), G5 server running Quad-Core AMD Opteron “Shanghai” processors, (released in 2007) and the newest G6 server with Six-Core AMD Opteron processors. We’ve just released a video on YouTube featuring a similar demo -- except that it also includes our upcoming processor codenamed “Magny-Cours”.
I’m constantly getting questions on the topic of live migration and VMotion in particular. Customers want to be assured that they can use VMotion to migrate virtual machines between older and newer versions of their AMD processer-based platforms. Apparently we and our technology partners could do a better job of getting the word out.
So let’s be clear -- the answer is a resounding YES!
Here are the facts. With the launch of our first quad-core processors, AMD formalized a functionality that had existed in our processors for a while under the feature name of Extended Migration. This capability enabled virtualization software vendors like VMware to support the live migration of a virtual machine between different versions of AMD processors starting with Rev E, which was released in 2004. Subsequently, with ESX 3.5 u2, VMware released a feature as part of VMotion called Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) that uses AMD Extended Migration to support VMotion between AMD Opteron processor generations. In order to utilize the feature, each server must be configured for EVC. For information on configuring EVC, see the “Migrating Virtual Machines” chapter in the Basic System Administration Guide for your ESX release. You can also gain a better understanding of EVC processor support and baseline definitions at the Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support VMware web page.
Keep in mind that live migration across AMD OpteronTM processor generations is supported by other virtualization software, including Citrix XenMotion and Microsoft HyperV Server 2008 R2 Live Migration. In fact, you can watch a demo showcasing Hyper-V live migration between Quad-Core and Six Core AMD Opteron processors.
And don’t forget the technology demonstration we did a year ago with Red Hat, showcasing live migration between an AMD and Intel processor -- the YouTube video is still getting a lot of views.
Rest assured, AMD is pushing the technology envelope to cover all bases when it comes to offering broad support for your virtualization environment.
Tim Mueting is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.