We live in an age where virtualized environments have become indispensable to supporting an ever growing number of connected, internet-enabled devices, social networks and enterprise cloud computing environments. As a result, the need for legacy chip support will grow exponentially as IT departments play the catch-up game to expand their data centers to support this proliferation of technology. It is unrealistic to expect businesses to always “trade up” to the newest technologies in order to gain access to the latest features, regardless of the size of your company or wallet.

At AMD, we believe that virtualization is a mainstream technology. It’s not just meant for the elite. We foresaw that hardware virtualization would be indispensable to our customers large and small and designed processing platforms with the goal of democratizing performance and scalability. Instead of forcing customers to always cater to infrastructure vendors, AMD instead brings virtualization to the masses for the long-term, so information can flow more easily no matter what generation of hardware you have in your data center or PC. It’s also worth reiterating that AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors stand out from the pack because they are equipped with dedicated pipelines for up to 12 integer threads, resulting in dedicated power and performance for virtualized environments and full speed memory on all models.

Every dollar invested into IT hardware and software has a great impact on our customers’ bottom line, therefore, we do not want to force our customers into purchasing the latest shiny thing. We also understand that a one-size architecture does not fit all situations, so we want to work with our customers to see that their time and dollars are spent wisely on the tailored solutions. That way, they can gain the most utilization and performance out of their AMD-based systems to ensure improved operational efficiencies.

Vlad Rozanovich is a director of Commercial Business Development at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

At AMD, we constantly hear from customers about different issues they are grappling with. It’s not to say that all customers face the same issues, but we certainly see a few common themes come up time and time again. Because of that, we thought it would be useful to start a “Best Practices” blog series that helps customers navigate these issues and understand the nuances of the server market. Let’s start first with virtualization benchmarks. There’s a lot more going on than what we see at the surface.

For example, the VMmark score of HP’s two-socket DL 385 G7 VMmark score (30.96) is evidence of the value of the architectural enhancements that the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors bring to the table for virtualization workloads.  This score certainly is impressive and highlights the performance benefits of “real cores” and additional memory channels (33 % more per processor than competitive 2P solutions). The  DL 385 G7 VMmark score slightly edges out the DL585 G6 – HP’s 24 core, 4P “Istanbul” processor-based server -   which received a score of 29.95.  In addition, the result of the DL 385 G7 is within 15% of Cisco’s UBS 250 M2 top score and within 10% of Fujitsu’s BX922 X2 score.  Both of these machines are based on Intel’s 3.33GHz, 130W Xeon model X5680 processors with 192GB of memory.  In comparison, the HP DL 385 G7 runs on a 2.3 GHz, 130 W AMD Opteron model 6176 SE with 128GB of memory.

But, like I said, this doesn’t quite tell the entire story. Take price, for instance (You can find AMD pricing here and Intel pricing here, as of May 13, 2010).  In this case, while we don’t have the retail prices of either the Cisco or Fujitsu systems, we can at least compare the price of the processors.  As you can see from the chart above, both of the Cisco and Fujitsu systems come with a premium of approximately $554 for the processors (2 processors x $277 more per processor).

Another issue to consider is that of memory.  The Fujitsu and Cisco systems use 33% more memory than the DL 385 G7 (192 GB for the Cisco and Fujitsu systems vs. 128 GB for the HP system.  Moreover, the memory used by the Fujitsu server maxes out the 12 available DIMM slots with 16GB DIMMs (a product which is not yet widely available, and can go for around $1500 per DIMM).

It’s also interesting to note how the Cisco and Fujitsu server scores varied even though they were based on the same processor and amount of memory.  I’m only speculating, but it may have something to do with Cisco’s proprietary Extended Memory Technology.

The folks at VMware have spent considerable time and effort in developing a virtualization benchmark that represents the relative performance of a server platform.  But as with many benchmarks, it doesn’t always represent real world scenarios.  VMmark, for example, was developed in 2006 when virtualization was focused on less robust applications.  We should also recognize that:

• VMmark VMs are very lightly loaded with minimal I/O.
• The VMs in VMmark are not very robust – using only 1 or 2 vCPUs per VM.
• The VMs in VMmark use very little memory – a maximum of 2GB for each VM.
• The goal of VMmark is to run as many virtual machines as possible on a single physical server.
• The individual workloads may not reflect what is typically running in the enterprise, nor do they stress the hypervisor.
• Customers still only run an average of 12 to 15 VMs on a single server as opposed to the 126 VMs used for the DL385 G7 publication. There have been many studies on this topic such as this one by SourceDataCenter, “The data center purchasing intentions.”

I’m sure a variety of OEMs will be posting more results very soon, but until then I think this gives us a great picture of where we are today.  Based on the results of the DL 385 G7, servers using the new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors can offer customers up to twice the virtualization performance as the previous generation processors (codenamed “Istanbul”) and one of the best price/performance values in the marketplace today.

Does this help answer your questions about measuring virtualization performance? What other questions can we answer?

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. 

*The results stated above reflect results published on http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.htmlhttp://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html as of April 27, as of April 27, 2010. The comparison presented above is based on the two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6176 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680. For the latest results, visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html.

*Configuration Information:

2 x AMD Opteron™processors Model 6176 SE (12-core 2.3GHz) in HP ProLiant DL385 G7 server, 128GB (16 x 8GB DDR3-1333) memory , VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-HP-2010-04-20-DL385G7.pdf

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz 130W TDP) in Cisco UCS B250 M2 server, 192GB (48 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory using Cisco Extended Memory Technology, VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-Cisco-2010-04-06-UCS-B250-M2.pdf

Cisco memory prices can be found at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps10265/ps10280/ps10300/white_paper_c11-525300.pdf

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz 130W TDP) in Fujitsu BX922 S2 server, 192GB (12 x 16GB DDR3-1066) memory, VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-Fujitsu-2010-04-06-BX922S2.pdf

*Fujitsu memory prices can be found at http://www.stockinthechannel.com/p/S26361-F3284-L525-16GB-DDR3-1066MHz-Memory-Modul-Fujitsu-memory-modules/1698619.aspx

Since the question was raised – I have reconfigured the VMmark systems as of May 6, 2009. I have listed valid memory configurations for the systems that match the total amount of memory used in the VMmark benchmark.

 * All cost comparisons are based on the difference in total system cost of the Intel processor-based system corresponding to the VMmark scores noted above, compared to the total cost for the AMD Opteron™ processor-based system referred to in the corresponding section of the above chart.  Prices are based on configurations submitted on OEM (Dell and HP) online system configuration tools as of May 7, 2009. 

 Now instead of focusing on who wins – AMD or Intel – let’s focus on details that are probably more important to customers who are really using these systems. As is shown in the chart above, with systems based on the AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2384, there are more options of memory speeds and DIMM configurations when purchasing 64GB of memory. This provides the ability to choose in terms of system price or performance.  I think this kind of choice puts the customer in the winner seat.

For another look at system configurations and pricing I suggest you go to the Solutions Oriented Blog. 

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her 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.

First, a short bit on VMmark . VMmark is a consolidation benchmark that generates an aggregate score of individual VMs for a given number of tiles. A tile is six VMs running common load-generation tools that represent typical workloads: web server, file server, mail server, database, java server as well as an idle VM. One client computer is used to generate the load for one tile.

Looking at top VMmark scores you find systems that can run over 100 VMs per server. And there is a lot of chatter about how a 2 Socket Intel Xeon “Gainestown” processor-based server can run 16 tiles (or 96 VMs). However, there is no reference to the cost of the systems posting scores. VMmark documents the system configuration for the benchmark so you can take a stab at pricing these configurations on-line at the hardware vendor sites. (See slides 3 and 4 of presentation) In doing so we found that some of the top VMmark Intel Xeon “Gainestown” processor-based server configurations price out at about 175% and in some cases even higher than the top performing AMD Opteron™ processor (“Shanghai”) configurations (based on April 16, 2009 prices). Even in the performance-oriented high performance computing world this would turn heads. Cost does matter.

Going a step further, we now have the information to evaluate the price/performance of some of these systems by taking the estimated system cost and dividing it by number of VMs achieved during the VMmark run. While large number of VMs might be impressive – most IT professionals in today’s economy are focused on balancing performance and price—looking at the cost per VM helps to better understand the cost of putting the system in action. What you find is the system with the top VMmark score is not the system that gives you the best cost per VM.

Now that we have looked at the VMmark systems configurations, what type of virtualization configurations are customers really running? When looking at customer case studies posted on hardware and software vendors’ sites we find servers configurations ranging from 16GB to 64G of memory as more of the norm. We also don’t find many data centers pushing 100 VMs on a system. Responses to SearchDataCenter.com’s 2008 Purchasing Intentions Survey reveals that only 5% of respondents are running more than 25 VMs on a server – 61% are running less than 10 VMs per server and 33% are running 10 to 25 VMs per server. And since many customers are implementing virtualization as a cost saving strategy – we don’t see many of these customers buying the top bin “performance” processor models, which by design tend to consume the most power.

We did the pricing on systems configurations using energy efficient processors and more typical memory configurations for virtualization (again based on April 16, 2009 pricing), comparing both system pricing and cost per VMs (see slide 5 of presentation). Take a look for yourself. We think you will agree considering performance and price can give you a better view of its overall value.

So the question remains: how do *you* define “simply spectacular” virtualization? Is it in terms of raw performance or is it price/performance? Hopefully after reading this post, you have a different answer than when you started.

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her 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.

In light of this debate, I also talked last week with Graham Lovell at Sun -- one of our technology partners. (You can watch a bit of our conversation below.) Graham is the director of Open Storage and let me tell you, he gets it.  Their Amber Road product line has effectively addressed the important issues that customers can face in determining the storage component of a data center strategy – specifically the need to have highly scalable storage capacity on a high performing network  - storage that is simple to manage and power efficient.  Interesting how storage and server requirements are converging these days.

It seems the tide has been turning a bit in the storage world and there’s a lot more to consider now beyond the “classical” fail-safe back-up.  There are synergies to be had by looking at the overall server/storage/software/virtualization equation.  Sun’s delivered a product line that takes a building block approach to integrating the crucial storage element because that’s the direction the IT managers and the businesses they support are going.  Simple as that.  (Take a look at the massive Internet Archive project which is using AMD Opteron™ processor-based storage in a Sun Modular Datacenter.)

There will likely always be a place for the more traditional back office systems.  But expensive implementations based on proprietary technology and that don’t readily mesh with the increasing need for quick, local, on-demand storage arguably aren’t the best fit given the direction our customers are going.

With more customers looking to virtualization to solve their IT needs, consolidation of storage is likely going to be that “critical first step” in getting the most out of a virtualized environment. Flexibility becomes more important and products like Sun’s Amber Road, built on AMD Opteron processor technology, help drive the right solutions.

Delivering technology that lets you build what you need, when you need it and do so with maximum efficiency -- that still sounds like the right way to go.  I can’t see a future where that doesn’t make sense.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuswZrVcj4

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products 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.

Having been around IT planning teams for the past 15 years, hearing any ROI statistic always sets my radar off.  This is no exception.  To me, this claim feels very unusual and there are only 2 explanations that I can think of; Either they are trying to oversimplify a very complex calculation by only looking at one factor (power); or they simply don’t understand the complexity of enterprise applications.  Either way they risk doing a major disservice to customers.

The argument that a company can pay off the investment in a new multi-core server by retiring 9 older single core ones is akin to buying a new hybrid car and raving about how much money you are saving every time you fill the tank, ignoring that you had to purchase a car in the process. Return on investment should encompass all of the costs of a solution; otherwise it risks overstating the return.

Let’s take a look at retiring 9 single core servers by consolidating them down to one multi-core server. Simplistically you are going to incur the following costs:

·         Consolidation prep – you have to actually do all of the planning and prototyping of the system, mapping data, etc., this is not a simple “copy and paste” exercise. Let’s not forget the data center planning piece of this exercise.  You are going to have to remove all of the systems and install a new one.

·         Migration of the data – this includes the actual movement of the data.  Maybe you get lucky because all 9 servers magically had the exact same data structures and can all coexist happily with each other.  Or not.  I’m going to bet on “not”, I’ve seen enough of these projects.

·         Security – You had 9 separate servers with 9 separate ACLs or security profiles set up to manage who could – and more importantly – could not access the data.  Whenever you start consolidation of systems, it is important to make sure that the Marketing Department can’t see the Payroll Department’s files.

·         Testing – once you have the new servers in the rack, you don’t actually just flip a switch. You are going to have to touch all the applications that touch that server.  Including middleware, backup, security, and network infrastructure.  One incorrect MAC address can result in a bunch of troubleshooting if you can’t quickly diagnose the problem.

·         Unplanned consequences – Did you ever add a new user and find another suddenly can’t print?  Most project managers I’ve worked with include some measure of “overage” to the project to help compensate for having to track down the “stragglers” of any project.

·         Licensing changes – Well, 9 servers running 9 copies of the old program might be a sunk cost in ROI, but I am betting that as you consolidate these servers you may end up needing to upgrade to the newest version of the software in order to handle the complexity of the new environment.

·         Disposal – you will need to get rid of the old systems, let’s not forget that you can’t just leave them in the dumpster (don’t forget to take the time to truly destroy the hard drives…)

And this is all just the tip of the iceberg, I’m sure that each one of you can provide your own list of hidden costs in trying to do a project. There is a human cost, and with the typical cost of ~$65/hour (the fully burdened cost estimate from the last project I worked on a few years ago) the human costs will likely dwarf the hardware purchase. If you don’t comprehend these costs, you can’t accurately assess ROI.

I’m not naïve in thinking that projects like this happen every day.  But it is a bit naïve to think that power costs alone can determine ROI.

Looking at the typical server deployment, you can rest assured that the hardware is the lowest cost of the project by far.  So if you want to do yourself a favor, don’t let your company fall for the “pays for itself in 8 months” hype that’s out there – do your own research and get the full story with all the costs revealed.  Otherwise you’ll be the one explaining things to the CFO.

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products 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.

With today’s focus on "green IT" and energy efficiency, it’s no wonder that the interest in low power processors continues to grow. Even when AMD (and a handful of very insightful customers) could see that low power computing was the future, we couldn’t anticipate how rapidly cloud computing, "twin servers" (2 motherboards in a single chassis), and small form factor servers and blades would become top of mind for many IT managers. These innovations, combined with the strong role of virtualization in the data center, are all telltale signs that the world is going to continue demanding more efficient solutions.

And the economy today? Do you really believe that any IT director wants to stand in front of the CEO and explain why they are not taking the steps to reduce power consumption in the data center? Even small and medium businesses are affected by the rising costs of energy and with the increasing sense of shared global responsibility for conserving energy, it is becoming a key performance initiative for many IT Managers.

When we introduced the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor (codenamed "Shanghai") last November, customers were excited to find that in many cases, those standard power processors could actually consume less power than the existing low power Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. What could be better than that? How about even lower power? Or even greater performance? Today, we’ve announced two new "Shanghai" processor categories: the AMD Opteron™ HE processors – designed for energy efficiency and the AMD Opteron SE processors – designed for the highest raw computing environments.

Energy efficiency is something that we work to design into all of our processors. We are even bringing a new feature to the market called AMD PowerCap manager that will allow IT datacenter managers to set predefined maximum limits for the processor’s clock speed and voltage, allowing a flexible solution for holding down energy costs. Because many workloads tend to be spiky in nature, the need to run at the highest clock speed is often only for a cycle or two. Power capping helps smooth out the peaks and can help maintain a better overall average power. In fact, AMD PowerCap manager can reduce server processor power consumption by up to 63%. And our AMD CoolCore™ technology, which lets you turn off unused parts of the processor, is now extended to include L3 cache.

Power efficiency has to be accompanied by performance. Our new processors today offer the potential to both consume less power and deliver better application performance. But what does "better performance" really mean? When the focus is on energy efficiency, better performance means helping you recognize a savings while your apps operate the same or better. How does this translate for businesses?

Take a look at the progression of energy efficiency in quad-core processors, and you can easily see that between our 65nm "Barcelona" processors and our new 45nm "Shanghai" processors, the overall power consumption, at both load and idle, had been steadily moving downward. Now compare that with the cost of power and you can see that as costs of power continue to rise, the AMD Opteron processors can be your best hedge against increasing costs in the data center.

If you’re asking yourself what do these comparisons really mean, consider this simple statement: using the exact same platform, an upgrade from the highest performing low-power "Barcelona" processor to the 2.3 GHz "Shanghai" HE processor can deliver up to 44% better performance to power ratio. That’s pretty significant. To reiterate, it’s not just the power savings, its power savings combined with performance that delivers a compelling business solution.

Then it’s quite clear that our advancements today can help IT managers in their quest for increasing computational muscle, while decreasing costs.

I encourage you to also take a look at what our OEM customers are saying. Rackable Systems has blogged about the new processors and Dell makes a guest appearance at our AMD at Work blog. Also, check out a new video detailing the benefits of the "Shanghai" HE processor and how it address the challenges of the datacenter.

AMD’s philosophy of giving you the power of choice comes through loud and clear in these latest product offerings. Whether you need a balanced, energy efficient processor that helps ensure you are optimizing your energy consumption without sacrificing performance or your performance hungry application demands every edge available, AMD Opteron processors give you the choice. The best part is this is all done within the same infrastructure – each processor works on the same platform – ensuring your biggest task is not being an inventory manager for the myriad combinations needed to support your data center, but concentrating on what really matters, satisfying your customers.

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products 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.

Sure, there’s new management at VMware, a repositioning to the operating system for the virtual datacenter, and lots of new competition. But what struck me even more than those changes are the fact that the x86 virtualization movement, started all those years ago by Diane and Mendel, is going mainstream, and that’s very very exciting for someone like me, who’s in charge of helping making sure AMD’s customers have the best experience possible in running software on AMD hardware.

One proof point is just the sheer amount of attention VMWorld is getting this year. Who would have ever thought the conference that attracted 1,600 early adopters of x86 virtualization to San Diego in Nov. 2004 would be hosting 14,000 mainstream IT professionals in Sept. 2008? And that the New York Times would write so much about a technology as enterprise focused as virtualization! I think this demonstrates the power that virtualization is already playing in shaping the future of the computing industry.

A second proof point is the amazing number of new servers I see being introduced by everyone from large OEMs to small system builders that are specifically aimed at serving as excellent virtualization solutions. For example both Dell and HP have recently introduced blades based on the energy efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor that are designed to handle the rigors of memory-intensive virtualization.

A final proof point that virtualization has gone mainstream is the thriving ecosystem developing around virtualization. Just take a look at the presentations that were given in AMD’s own booth at the show – our “Master of Virtualization” theater was filled with small and large ISVs and IHVs who were showcasing how they are moving the needle on virtualization – including 3Leaf, Broadcom, Citrix, DataRam, Egenera, Microsoft, Novell, Sun, Transitive, Parallels, and Virtual Iron.

So what’s next in these times of change? I believe that as virtualization pushes it way into the main stream – and lights up discussions around topics such as cloud computing, virtual infrastructure, and dynamic data center fabrics –  the virtualization ecosystem needs to understand that interoperability, open standards, and vendor cooperation has to be paramount. Customers are looking for choice – and not for technologies designed to lock out competition. They want live migration of virtual machines across different processors and tools that can manage virtual machines created by any hypervisor. Feel free to contact me and we can follow up with more information.