One of the most arduous parts of business travel is getting the trips approved, booked and then, finally getting paid back through your expense reports.

Concur is a leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions for businesses and they chose HP ProLiant servers based on AMD Opteron™ processors to help consolidate their IT environment.

Concur needed to drive more performance out of less hardware, and obviously virtualization is a great way for businesses to get more out of their IT investments.  Through the use of both VMware VSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V software, Concur was able to reduce their server footprint and get better utilization in their data center. Initially they started with a few servers, and eventually worked their way up to 70% of their environment virtualized.  And according to their statements, Concur expects to get to 80 or 90% virtualized in the future.

Some of the improvements that they saw included reducing the number of servers by 40%, making it easier to manage their environment. In addition, the virtualized environment allows them to increase data by 30% but still maintain the same number of virtualized host systems. Instead of taking four weeks to deploy a new server, they can now do it in 6 hours, helping IT react more quickly to the needs of the business.

All of this resulted in a 10% reduction in their total cost of ownership, a clear business benefit that anyone, especially in these difficult times, can appreciate.

For more details, you can check out the case study on HP.com:

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA3-4346ENW&cc=us&lc=en

Now, if someone could just figure out how to beam me from Austin to Tokyo, I’d be so appreciative. 

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products 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.

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.

I remember one episode that was particularly unsettling, about online dating. It played on our fears—particularly in those nascent days of Internet relationships—of meeting someone online who turned out to be a creep. In this case, being a creep meant that he was a serial killer who lived off the fat of the women he lured to his bachelor pad. These days, it’s likely each of you know (or are one-half of) some happy couple who met online. But, at that time we were often being scared by stories of such meetings “gone wrong,” and online dating sites had to counter those fears through marketing, PR and customer relations.

Some scary hypotheticals like the one above have a modicum of truth, others are handed down through the ages and completely false, but deeply believed. I just discovered, for example, that tapping a shaken coke can will not stop it from exploding, and yet I’m not sure that I’ll resist tap-tap-tapping the next time I accidentally drop one. Reading is not always believing; sometimes you have to see for yourself (as, apparently, do many on the Mythbusters forum). Which is why I’ll be looking for a “Mythbuster” episode that takes this one on.

At AMD, we know that   meticulously exploring a claim from start to finish is the key to uncovering the truth for our customers and prospects. This is why we have begun a series of videos to address common misperceptions in the datacenter. These myths come our way directly from the sales force, who hear them every day. The first myth in the series that we have chosen to dispel is the idea that you cannot have AMD- and Intel-based servers in the same datacenter. We are guessing that this is widely circulated because some think it is impossible to migrate virtual machines between AMD and Intel-based systems.. This video, our first “AMD Truth Squad” communication, shows step-by-step how fast and easy it is to migrate VMs between AMD and Intel.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEiCv3pj18

Today we are also releasing a video that shows how an AMD-based server can act as a high-availability back-up server using VMware vSphere.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=143maoT43mc

We’ll take on more misperceptions as summer winds down and well into fall. Which ones would you like us to address? The truth is out there, let’s find it together.

Are you at this year’s VMworld in Las Vegas?  Don’t forget to visit us in AMD booth #311 at VMworld. See you there.

Julie Lass is a Sr. Public Relations Manager 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.

The ability to wear multiple hats applies as much to people as it does to technology. When I’m not at work I’m a husband, father, baseball coach, hockey fan, sushi addict, foursquare fanatic and successful comedian. While that last point may be a stretch it’s no joke that I’m responsible for the development of our 2D multi-view professional graphics cards, the remote graphics family and graphics solutions for the medial medical imaging market. And earlier this year I donned the coolest hat yet when I took on our first data center solution.

AMD FirePro™ professional graphics are typically incorporated into the workstations and mobile workstations architects, engineers, animators and designers rely on to bring their creations to life. But just like me, our graphics cards are not one trick ponies ─ their ultra-fast performance, superb visual quality and massively parallel processing power can help data center managers overcome a few challenges. These managers need to find ways to do more with less, meet the computing needs of varied user groups, more efficiently maintain and support fleets of systems, and ultimately protect data and prevent leakage.

Back in May we announced plans to expand beyond workstations and bring the of AMD FirePro professional graphics into the data center to help IT address the challenges and more. The AMD FirePro™ V7800P professional graphics was our first multifunctional server solution – capable of supporting Compute, Professional Graphics and VDI deployments. It’s the only single-slot multifunctional server solution available today, is certified by Microsoft for RemoteFX and can support up to 16 virtual machines running typical office applications, and is capable of tackling the most demanding compute-intensive, data-parallel tasks. In fact, it’s the only single-slot graphics solution certified for RemoteFX that is offered by an OEM – the Dell PowerEdge M610x blade server.

AMD FirePro V7800P

For data center managers looking for a more robust solution, this week we begin shipping our newest and most powerful multifunctional sever solution, AMD FirePro™ V9800P professional graphics. Capable of wearing the same Compute, Professional Graphics and VDI hats as the AMD FirePro V7800P, the AMD FirePro V9800P brings even more to the table:

• 4GB of GDDR5 memory
• 2.64 TFLOPS of single precision and 528 GFLOPS of double precision floating point performance
• Microsoft certification for RemoteFX and the ability to support up to 22 virtual machines running typical office applications
• Remote computing experiences on par with physical systems, including rich media like full motion video and 3D applications
• Passive cooling for silent operation and deployment flexibility
• An affordable MSRP of $2,499 – 50% less than the competing solution*

AMD FirePro V9800P

AMD Professional Graphics are moving beyond the workstation, to take on the data center and help IT to meet the most demanding centralized computing needs. With GPU compute gaining increased adoption and the ability to implement true graphics virtualization with RemoteFX, these really are exciting times.

Mitch Furman is a senior product manager, Professional Graphics 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.

*AMD FirePro V9800P MSRP is $2,499 compared to Nvidia Tesla M2070Q at $5,489; Nvidia MSRP from www.costcentral.com on 7/8/2011.

Let’s see if the comparison of VMmark 2.1 scores for HP ProLiant 4P rack servers lives up to expectations. The table listed below provides the scores, configurations, and estimated pricing for the HP ProLiant DL585 G7 and DL580 G7 servers.  Information is based on VMmark 2.1 results and the disclosure documents submitted for each server. Server pricing is in US dollars as of April 27, 2011 and was obtained via HP’s on-line server configurator .  VMware vSphere pricing was obtained from VMware’s web site.

As you can tell from these numbers, the HP ProLiant DL585 G7, featuring AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor technology, continues to post superior price/performance numbers in terms of cost per VM. However, a number of questions pop up when you look closely at the chart:

• Why is this not an apples-to-apples comparison with equal memory configurations?
• What would the score for the HP DL580 G7 be if it was running 256GB of memory?
• Would the score improve for the HP DL585 G7 if more memory was added?
• What would be the HP DL580 G7 cost if it was configured with 256GB of memory?
• What parameters affect the performance of VMmark?

Let’s address the first question –why is this not an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of memory configuration? The system configurations are based on the disclosure documents submitted to VMware.  Each VMmark score really represents a “point in time” – it is the score obtained for the described hardware running specified software. Each vendor submitting scores decides which configuration to use. If the vendor is trying to get the best possible “raw performance score” then the resulting system configuration represents the hardware configuration needed to max out the CPU and obtain the best possible score.

Tim Mueting, one of our resident virtualization experts, provided answers to the next two questions.

What would happen if these servers had either more or less memory?

• Adding more memory to HP DL585 G7 would not improve the score.  At this point the CPU utilization has met the threshold while the system is still meeting the defined quality-of-service requirement.
• Reducing the amount of memory on the HP DL580 G7 test may reduce the total score and the number of tiles it could run, but it is difficult to determine by how much.  To achieve the reported score the system requires more than 256GB – but this does not mean it is effectively using all 512GB.  Keep in mind that for NUMA based servers, like the HP DL585 and DL580 G7 servers, you need to balance the memory across all DIMM slots for best performance.

How does memory cost effect price/performance evaluation? - the cost of 512 GB of memory is approximately $20k according HP’s website.  Since we do not know the VMmark score that would be achieved with 256 GB of memory we are not able to accurately do the price/performance evaluation.

What other factors affect VMmark scores? There are two factors you can immediately mention – disk subsystems and number of threads.

In terms of disk subsystems, VMmark has a published FAQ that states, “The performance of each workload can vary to a degree with the speed and capabilities of the underlying system. For instance, disk-centric workloads might respond to the addition of a fast disk array with a more favorable score.” The comparison done in this blog does not look at the disk arrays used by the two configurations – this could be a lively topic for a future blog.

 Let’s now take a look at the number of threads – if you take a look at the range of VMmark 2.1 posted scores – the larger number of threads handled, the higher the scores. Here is a list of at the top scores by thread count on the VMmark 2.1 results page as of May 2, 2011.

• The best 48 thread score is the Cisco UCS B200 M2 with a score of  7.17/7 tiles/56 VMs
• The best 96 thread score is the HP DL585 G7 with 9.91/13 tiles/104 VMs

• The best 160 thread score is the HP DL580 G7 with 16.89/20 tiles/160 VMs

 After all of this evaluation – the real question is do customers buy virtualization servers based on VMmark 2.1 scores?  Because most of you are virtualizing to drive better efficiency and help reduce the cost of enterprise computing, is a VMmark performance benchmark even the right way to evaluate your options? What parameter do you use when purchasing virtualization servers? We would like to get your views posted.

Whether that’s with our own technologies – such as AMD Eyefinity allowing users to see more and do more by using up to 6 monitors[1] – or in collaboration with our partners, the rush is the same.

The development of the Microsoft RemoteFX feature for Windows Server®  2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is one such innovation. Today marks another important milestone in its development: Microsoft has announced availability of the Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, the next step in a process that began last March when Microsoft revealed that the RemoteFX feature was being developed. A beta version release soon followed in July 2010.

The Microsoft RemoteFX feature truly virtualizes graphics for the first time, enabling multiple remote workers to access nearly any type of application or screen content, including rich media such as full-motion video and 3D applications, on a broad range of connected remote devices including PCs, thin clients and network monitors. RemoteFX harnesses the power of GPU computing to accelerate the rendering of multiple virtual desktops when paired with servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Why are we so excited about RemoteFX? At AMD we are committed to delivering intensely visual experiences to users on the go.  RemoteFX represents an important move towards this vivid, digitally connected future.  We worked hand in hand with Microsoft to create a solution designed to enable stunning visual experiences by taking advantage of GPU acceleration as supported by ATI FirePro™ V5800, ATI FirePro™ V7800, ATI FirePro™ V8800 and ATI FirePro™ 9800 Series professional graphics cards.

Hats off to Microsoft for taking one more step towards enabling a vivid visual future. Have you tried RemoteFX? Visit our website for more information and then share your experience here.

Janet Matsuda is general manager of Professional Graphics for 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.

[1] AMD Eyefinity technology works with applications that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort connectors, and/or DisplayPort compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort connector(s), are required.  AMD Eyefinity technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled ATI FirePro™ graphics card with Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems – the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase.  SLS (“Single Large Surface”) functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.

Parallels, the host of the summit, is a very interesting virtualization company.  Founded in 1999, Parallels offers an innovative range of products that support all major PC platforms and operating systems covering both consumer and commercial segments. AMD’s intersection with Parallels has been on two fronts – servers and graphics. And if you stop by and visit us at booth #112 during the show you can check out our multi-core processor technology designed specifically for cloud environments, the AMD Opteron™ 4100 series processors – the perfect complement for the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers product. These processors feature energy-efficient innovations that make them one of the world’s lowest energy consuming x86 server processors per core.

And when optimal performance and VM density are the goals, the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor delivers up to 12 cores per processor for an outstanding virtualization option. In fact, the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor recently received an InfoWorld 2011 Technology of the Year award with its massive virtualization capabilities specifically noted.

You will also be able to see graphics virtualization technology from Parallels running with our AMD FirePro™ professional graphics products. Graphics virtualization is going to be another key discussion in the world of cloud computing this year.  AMD has partnered with Parallels to give high-end professional users the ability to finally get graphics acceleration in a virtual machine with Parallels^® Workstation 4.0 Extreme.  In other words, you can now get dedicated graphics within a VM with acceleration for all your professional engineering or digital content creation applications. In addition, as with all ATI and AMD FirePro graphics cards, this professional application is optimized and certified to provide one of the best and most reliable experiences demanded by users. With multiple cards in a single system you can achieve dedicated graphics acceleration with multiple virtual machines thereby helping to increase the efficient use of your hardware assets.

We’ll also be showing off AMD’s new ATI FirePro™ RG220 graphics card with Parallels Workstation Extreme. The ATI FirePro RG220 is a full performance graphics accelerator plus IP transmission card.  This combination enables remote graphics output with the PCoIP protocol over any LAN or WAN to a zero thin client device. So for those VDI sessions with complex graphics requirements you can now provide a dedicated, graphics accelerated, VM in the datacenter that is available to any user across the network.

I will be delivering a presentation at the summit on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. that will dig a little deeper into AMD FirePro™ and AMD Opteron™ processor server technology for the cloud.  And, as an added incentive, I’ll be giving away an ATI FirePro V5800 Professional Graphics Card immediately after the presentation.

And if that isn’t enough, while you’re at the booth don’t forget to register to win an HP ProBook 6555b laptop which we’ll also be giving away at the end of the show.

Hope to see you 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.

It is one thing for an AMD staffer like me to tell you this. However, when this message is said by independent sources, well that’s what catches attention. So instead of me telling you how great our AMD Opteron^TM processors are for virtualization – let’s take a quick tour of some recent industry opinions.

“Of the Year” Awards

The AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor just received one of InfoWorld’s “2011 Technology of the Year” awards – the best CPU for parallel processing – and was noted as being “ideally suited for dense computational work, such as virtualization hosting or running numerous parallel processes, where its tight design and massive number of cores deliver unprecedented computing throughput.”

The Dell PowerEdge R815, featuring four AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors, recently won one of CRN’s “Best Products of 2011” awards.  This award showcases “a series of products that, in many ways, allow us to do more, do better and begin to do things we’ve wanted to do but had no way to do.”

The Dell PowerEdge R815 was also a winner of a SearchDataCenter.com 2010 “Data Center Products of the Year” award – given to products that SearchDataCenter.com feels are exemplified by innovation, performance and value.  The Dell PowerEdge R815 took the Silver Award in the Server Hardware category.

“Five Star” Reviews

Awards are always nice to win, but let’s brush off the glitter of the runway and take a look at product reviews. These are situations that make a product manager nervous – you are taking the technology from theory to application. But, at AMD, we are standing up to the challenge.

The HP ProLiant DL585 server has been a mainstay for virtualization since its introduction. The newest model, the HP ProLiant DL585 G7, featuring four AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors, received a five star rating from PCPro and “suits businesses looking for a server consolidation and virtualisation platform with massive expansion potential, the best remote management tools and good storage options.”

In terms of dual-socket servers, both the HP Proliant DL385 G7 and the Dell PowerEdge R715 earned 5 star ratings from PCPro for the number of real cores and true value they bring to virtualization.

More Real Cores to Handle the Real Demands of Virtualization

Our goal with the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor was to design a processor that could handle today’s increasingly complex and demanding virtualization environments – and it’s clear so far that we’ve delivered on that. Servers including AMD Opteron 6100 Series technology can deliver advantages normally reserved for ultra high-end systems – like up to 48 total cores in a 4P configuration. More real cores means you can run more virtual machines (VMs) with single vCPUs on a server, increasing your consolidation rate, or you can run more robust VMs with multiple vCPUs on a server to handle resource intensive database workloads.

But it is not just about cores – the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor more than doubles the memory bandwidth¹ and provides nearly 2x the I/O bandwidth of previous generation 2P and 4P servers². This is just the kind of help you need to tackle virtualization with greater throughput, exceptional value and the scalability needed to handle peak workloads.

AMD Also Takes a Bow

And one last award to note – AMD made InformationWeek’s list of the “12 Most Disruptive Enterprise Vendors” – these are companies reported to be shaking up the status quo with new products, approaches and models. I like this award a lot – I want to be working with the folks who are making change – not the folks who are resisting change!

What are your plans for virtualization in 2011? Are you looking to move to the world of simply spectacular virtualization?

Margaret Lewis, director of software product marketing, 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.

Backup

1. Based on quad channel DDR3-1333 for AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor vs. dual channel DDR2-800 for Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor.
2. I/O comparison based on 3x HyperTransport™ technology links @ up to 4.8 GT/s (up to 14.4 GT/s total bandwidth) for Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor vs. 4x HyperTransport technology links @ up to 6.4 GT/s (up to 25.6 GT/s total bandwidth) for AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor.

I used to spend hours in the resource center at school, just like I spent hours at the public library down the street from my house.  The resource center was where you went to learn things, and in those years, I think I learned a lot.  I can’t say as much for college, luckily I got the learning taken care of early in my life.

Today’s resource center is where you can go to find out all about AMD Opteron™ platforms.  So, if you are in the IT world and not familiar with our products, here are a few things that you can use to educate yourself or your team.

• AMD Opteron 6100/HP ProLiant podcast on virtualization: http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=2361343&promo=100503
• AMD/Cray/NERSC Web Event – find out how some of the world’s biggest supercomputers are planned and built:  http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/paper/view/1780/
• You may think that HPC for Dummies is an oxymoron, but for so many organizations building HPC clusters, the challenge of explaining and describing the world of HPC to their bosses and coworkers can be just as big as building the clusters: http://sites.amd.com/us/atwork/promo/Pages/hpc-for-dummies.aspx
• Linux Magazine webinar on HPC with HP; lots of information on the design and optimization of HPC clusters: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7882
• The AMD/HP/VMware virtual infrastructure site, with plenty of information on how to optimize and deploy virtualized solutions: http://www.yourvirtualinfrastructure.techweb.com/
• Podcast on the future of AMD Opteron processors, including our upcoming 16-core “Bulldozer”-based processor:  http://insidehpc.com/2010/12/15/podcast-a-sneak-peek-at-amds-16-core-bulldozer/
• AMD and HP; technology innovation from the desktop to the data center: http://go.techtarget.com/r/13061358/10071344/1
• Dell and AMD server purchasing guide.  Do you need help trying to navigate through all of the choices?  This will definitely help: http://go.techtarget.com/r/13061787/10071344/5

So as you plan out your IT directions for 2011, there are plenty of places for you to learn more about our award-winning products and leading partner solutions.  Enjoy.

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream 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.

But, on to the fun.

This week the Golden Globes released the nominations for their annual Film and Television awards.  These awards are issued by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and they kick off the season of Hollywood trophy giving.  In the technology world we have our own set of professionals that dig deep into products to uncover the excellent, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This year has also been a big one for the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors.  As we look back over the year’s reviewer highlights (and are getting ready for next year’s awards), its clear the Dell PowerEdge R815 features prominently as a critics’ darling. The general consensus from the reviewers is that it is a solid workhorse for virtualization and a great value.  The R815 is a 4-socket, 2U rack server that has the ability to scale up to 48 processors.   So if you have a need for cores, and you missed the reviews the first time around, here they are once again for your consideration:

“…you can pick up an R815 with four eight-core, 2.0GHz Opteron 6128 CPUs, 16GB of RAM, and two SATA drives for around $4,725 at the time of this writing.” InfoWorld

“The R815 would be right at home in a large virtualization farm or used as a warm-site virtualization host that can take on a heavy load if something happens to the production data center. It’s a big box, but it’ll also cost a lot less than you might otherwise think for a quad-socket server.” InfoWorld

“If the number of concurrent processes is large enough (think virtualization), then quad-CPU, 48-core AMD Opteron wins the price-performance race.” InfoWorld (Blog)

“Even with the top specifications, it works out considerably lower than the R810, putting the PowerEdge R815 and its AMD processing power within the reach of a lot more buyers than the Intel-based alternative.” V3

“Dell’s R815 is more in line with the ‘shattering the 4P tax’ strategy: it really is a slightly more expensive, more scalable alternative to the Dual Xeon 5600 servers. Admittedly, that analysis is based on the paper specs. But if the performance is right and the power consumption is not too high, the Dell R815 may appeal to a lot of people that have not considered a quad socket machine before.” AnandTech

“Dell’s PowerEdge R815 materializes AMD’s promise of the ‘Value 4P server.’” AnandTech

“In der 4-fach-Konfiguration gibt es mit der 8-Core-CPU Xeon X7560 nur einen Gegner. Im Test punkten AMDs 12-Kern-Prozessoren im 4-Sockel-Server mit höherer Effizienz und deutlich günstigerem Preis.” TecChannel

English translation:  “Using a 4p configuration there is only one competitor with the 8-Core Xeon X7560. AMD’s 12-core processors in a 4-socket server wins because of better efficiency and a much lower price.” TecChannel

“Our review system came supplied with a quartet of the latest 12-Core Opteron 6174 modules and its comparatively low price tag makes it a strong contender for cost-conscious businesses looking to improve their rack density.” ITPro

Jason Deal is a PR Manager 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.

One of the many things I love about my job here at AMD is that I get to meet and talk with a very diverse group of industry leaders who are tasked with analyzing, planning and implementing the latest and greatest in IT solutions and technologies.  I’ve watched virtualization as both a technology and a strategy evolve and transform how datacenters and even desktops are managed.  I’ve watched the dramatic change in how we evaluate x86 server platforms in terms of performance, power efficiency and overall value and how virtualization has played a key role in this transformation.

The advancement in virtualization technology has now led us to cloud computing.  Recently, I was fortunate to contribute, along with Margaret Lewis, in the writing of the AMD sponsored Cloud Computing Clusters for Dummies book.  In the book we discuss cloud computing in general, what some of the unique server requirements are for cloud computing, and how AMD is driving the adoption of cloud computing as an IT infrastructure.

There is no question now that cloud computing is real – though I wonder sometimes if the real question isn’t “just what is cloud computing”?  It seems to me that the definition of the cloud depends on who you talk to.

Today it is difficult to open a trade journal, read a blog, or even watch TV without finding some reference to “the cloud”.  Mothers are creating, editing and sharing family pictures via “the cloud”.  Business men and women are collaborating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations all through “the cloud”.

We defined “the cloud” in our Cloud Computing Clusters for Dummies book as “the next stage in the evolution of the Internet;  the means through which everything – from computing power to computing infrastructure and applications, from business processes to personal collaboration – can be delivered as a service wherever and whenever needed”.  The cloud is a set of approaches that can help organizations quickly and effectively add and subtract resources in almost real time.  Cloud Computing is about both the business model and the technology.

Some would lead us to believe that in the near future everything will be in the cloud -that the cloud is in fact a replacement for today’s traditional data center.  Prominent industry leaders have predicted that in the future the traditional data center will be replaced by a small number of very large cloud-based datacenters.

Still others are more cautious and are voicing concerns about security, privacy, and regulatory compliance.

Traditionally, Cloud Computing is said to have two distinct models.  The public cloud, like those you hear about from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others where services are offered on a per use basis and the underlying infrastructure is shared amongst all customers.  And the private cloud, the cloud infrastructure that sits behind the firewall but provides cloud-like services to its select set of internal customers.  More recently we have been hearing talk about a third model – a hybrid model, or the Hybrid Cloud.

According an Information Week interview of HP’s Russ Daniels, CTO for cloud computing and VP of Cloud Strategy, HP’s take is that “virtually every enterprise will operate in hybrid mode, with some of its operations on-premises and some in the cloud”.  Daniels went on to say that contrary to some theories put forth, cloud computing is not a replacement for the data center.

This seems to be a much more practical approach to me.  Yes, some small businesses may find it practical and cost-effective to move all of their IT processing to the cloud, and certainly all of us will use cloud-based services (think social media and email) at an increasing rate.

But the enterprise is a much more complex environment.

I found this definition from TechTarget’s website SearchCloudComputing.com:

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. For example, an organization might use a public cloud service, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for archived data but continue to maintain in-house storage for operational customer data. Ideally, the hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.

Both Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware appear to agree on this concept.  In a recent interview with ITworld, Mr. Ballmer was quoted as saying “I think the new solutions that get pioneered in the cloud will also get retrofitted so they can be run on-premises by customers, because no customer is going to have everything in the cloud. People are going to have these kinds of mixed environments”.

Similarly, Mr. Maritz recently noted, “The new service based on VMware vCloud Datacenter enables enterprises to not only improve efficiency internally, but also be in a position to tap into external resources in a non-disruptive way when it makes business sense to do so.”

The cloud is indeed real, and my guess is that in the future most if not all enterprises will realize the benefits of some form of hybrid model.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on cloud computing and the hybrid cloud model specifically.  Are you moving any of your enterprise applications to the cloud?

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, 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.

I would have gladly taken anyone’s bet, because while there were critics out there saying that AMD was off base, customers were pretty clear that they understood the value of cores…real cores.

And they are showing it now.

Normally we are not one to break down shipment data, that information is generally treated as “confidential” within the company.  But when I was crunching numbers the other day for one of my countless meetings, I took a look at the new AMD Opteron 6100 series data and found a pretty striking trend.

Cores matter.

In looking through sales data for the first half of 2010, 12-core processors clearly outsold their 8-core counterparts – by a wide margin. I was expecting that there would be a slight bias towards the 12-core, but I figured there were plenty of applications where the extra clock speed of an 8-core might be popular.  Apparently I was wrong, customers are voting with their budgets, and cores matter.

So, what is driving this trend to higher core counts?  I’d love to think that it is somehow something that we can take credit for, but in reality, it is just an indicator that the business world is hungry for more cores. They are using them for things like:

Virtualization – Many customers have told me that they have a rule of “one VM per core”, so with 12-core processors, their consolidation can get even denser. With 24 cores in a 2P server, there are plenty of resources to allow all of the VMs to have plenty of access to compute power whenever they need it.

Database/Business Apps- Databases are the kings of simultaneous multi-user access. Having a dozen cores in a socket helps ensure that all of your queries come back quickly, your reports aren’t delayed and when you are making new sales, you’re not waiting behind that bonehead in marketing to finish finding out who bought toothbrushes in Toledo last Tuesday.

High Performance Computing – If you are breaking a big problem up into millions of smaller pieces and pushing that out to a cluster to solve, having 12 cores per processor means that you can dramatically cut the time involved through parallel processing. Folks like CSCS in Switzerland are taking advantage of AMD’s 12-core technology with their new Cray XE6 system that was recently installed.

So, when it comes to core counts, our customers are sending a pretty clear signal to us: Cores Matter.  That message is very good to hear because next year will see 16 total cores in our Bulldozer-based products.

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing 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. This blog contains forward-looking statements.  Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words such as “plans,” “expects,” “believes,” “anticipates” or “intends.”  AMD Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this blog involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

But, when delivering a  product to market, what people tend to focus on – naturally – is the end result. The blood, sweat and tears that went into making the product a reality can sometimes get overlooked. But, not at AMD.

From start to finish, we’ve been working in lock step with VMware and their engineering group to ensure our new AMD Opteron^TM platforms would be superb. I can say without hesitation that this partnership was instrumental to our success, and in fact, we couldn’t have done it without them.

With that said, on Friday, August 27, AMD threw a well-deserved “Thank You” party for 350 VMware engineers who supported the delivery of these products.  The festivities included a custom cake (VMware and AMD do make cloud computing delicious), Italian gelato, and test flights of indoor RC Helicopters (Next time maybe we’ll invite a few air traffic controllers to join the fun!). 

Thanks VMware! 

John Fritz is a Director of Strategic Software Alliances 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.

In short, it means opportunity. Cloud computing is the next stage in the evolution of the internet that dynamically delivers information to end users where they want it, when they want it. And, in doing that, there needs to be a sophisticated balance of computing hardware and software to power that kind of abundant and flexible data.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SmkneuE9A

At the processor level, this boils down to a few key areas of innovation: power management, virtualization and memory. Let’s take these one by one.

• Power Management: Recently, AMD made waves by announcing we now hold the top spot for the world’s lowest 2P power server ever. This is a testament to the power management innovation we’ve delivered with our AMD Opteron^TM processors, but most notably our AMD Opteron 4000 Series platform.
• Virtualization: The launch of VMware vSphere 4.1 was a perfect example of how virtualization helps customers better manage their clouds. AMD’s Tim Mueting discussed AMD’s software/hardware collaboration with VMware in a blog post that touches on the key features of AMD’s hardware-assisted virtualization.
• Memory: With workloads such as web serving relying so heavily on a pool of memory resources, ensuring your cloud environment is designed with robust memory is critical. AMD Opteron-based platforms deliver up to 48 DIMMs of DDR3 memory in a 4P server to meet those needs.

So, whether you think cloud computing is hype or reality (and AMD’s Margaret Lewis discusses her take on that in a recent Forbes article), is up to you. What’s important is that you voice your opinion, and, together, we can navigate this technology that is paving the future of IT. Stay tuned for the finalists on right here on the AMD @Work blog.

Tracey Blanton is a Product Marketing Manager 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.

I am excited for the transition from VMmark 1 to VMmark 2. VMmark 1 was initially released in 2007 when the focus of virtualization centered on the consolidation of infrastructure workloads.  The intent of VMmark was to give a look at the number of Virtual Machines (VMs) that could run on a particular server. To achieve this, VMmark would stack up many lightly loaded VMs until the server became saturated. With today’s multi-core technology, like the 12-Core AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor, a VMmark score may have hundreds of VMs on a server.

But here is the rub – in real life you are more likely to run 10 – 20 VMs on a server, not hundreds. From my point of view, “one VM per core” is a pretty standard “rule of thumb” for most virtual environments.

As virtualization evolves more focus will be placed on running “real world workloads” – applications like web serving and database that can carry heavy disk and network loads. The lightly loaded VMs of VMmark 1 just don’t do a good job of approximating this environment.

Benchmarks only provide a look at performance for a very specific environment.

One of the issues often raised about VMmark is the fact that it only evaluates raw performance and does not take into consideration system price or power consumption.  In my experience, end users evaluate more than just performance – they evaluate the the cost and power consumption of servers for their virtualized environments as well. How these parameter balance is often a key factor in the buy decision.

Let’s take a farewell look at some recent VMmark 1.1.1 results.

The VMmark score line in the chart above is the “raw performance” of the system, as determined by the WMmark testing (a full description of the testing and the systems can be found by clicking on the link above). I have added a cost for each system using HP’s and Dell’s on-line system configurators and server specifications listed in the benchmark submission documents. A price per VM was calculated by dividing the system cost by the number of VMs. Both the AMD-based HP ProLiant DL 385 G7 and the Dell PowerEdge R815 systems offer excellent system costs compared to competitive configuration. And even though the competitive systems posted higher raw performance scores, AMD-based systems really shine in price per VM.

Note how the Dell PowerEdge R815 showcases our concept of a value 4P. One the one hand, compare the PowerEdge R815 to the competitive 4P system (the PowerEdge R910).  The R910 provides about 20% more raw performance, but at more than double the system cost. At the same time, the R815 is also lower cost and higher performance than the competitive 2P system (the R810). And in terms of price per VM – the R815 has the lowest cost of any system. Now that is Simply Spectacular Virtualization!

We need to give VMware a lot of credit for taking a leadership role in addressing the challenge of virtualization benchmarking. The first generation of VMmark has taught us all a lot about benchmarking virtualized environments – and has made a good topic for many blogs. Looking forward to VMmark 2!

What are your thoughts on VMmark and benchmarking virtualized environments?

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.

¹ Pricing obtained from www.hp.com and www.dell.com, respectively, using their online configuration tools.  Systems specifications matched those described in the VMmark testing.  Pricing accurate as of August 18, 2010.

A lot has been written recently on the number of virtual machines (VMs) that can (or should) optimally and safely run on a single physical server.  While there are many differing opinions, most agree on the basic principles.   The customers I talk to tell me they attempt to balance performance, utilization and risk in determining what is “optimal”.

We all want to get the most out of our hardware investment, and server consolidation through virtualization plays an important role in meeting, and in many ways exceeding, this goal. But determining just how many VMs can be supported on a particular hardware platform without impacting the performance needs of end user applications can be a tricky task.  We have to take into consideration the needs of the differing workloads sharing the same physical resources, including CPU, Memory or I/O bandwidth.

Virtualization can place a high demand on the server’s CPU, memory, cache and I/O bandwidth.   To improve just how those resources are used and shared in a virtual environment – in some cases taking the burden off managing those resources in software – AMD has implemented several CPU extensions with our AMD Virtualization™ technology.  In addition, the added number of cores, now up to 12 cores per socket with our AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor, the additional memory capacity and memory channels, and faster Hyper Transport Links (think HT3) have all helped to increase VM density, or the number of virtual machines that can be on a single physical server.

Based on a very unscientific, random poll I’ve been taking at various trade shows, user group meetings and customer visits, it appears that most administrators attempt to stay within 50 – 65% capacity of their physical servers as long as they are meeting their performance requirements.  This seems very realistic to me and a far cry better than the 3-8% utilization rates we were getting prior to implementing a virtualization solution.

At the same time, they tell me they are still reluctant to overload a physical server with a large number of VMs even if the capacity is available. What happens if a hardware failure is encountered?  More VMs would be unavailable, more applications would be unavailable, more users would be affected and it would take longer to move those VMs to an available physical server and get everything up and running again.  Therein lays the virtual balancing act.  We still have to plan for a suitable time to recover in case of an unplanned outage.

Cores and Memory

Another important aspect when considering how many VMs to run is memory.  How much memory do you need per core or per VM?  It’s my understanding that some experts recommend 2-4GB of memory per core, while others recommend that amount per VM depending on the type of workload. We know from experience that the more cores and memory we have for our virtual environments, the more capacity and better performance we can achieve.

And we can’t forget about I/O.  There are new features and technologies being introduced to ensure better throughput and performance for those workloads with heavy I/O characteristics.  Stay tuned here for more on that topic soon.

Resources

There are several tools and technical resources available that can help give you a better idea of what your configuration should look like.  VMware offers a product called VMware vCenter CapacityIQ which plugs into vCenter Server and provides capacity management for both datacenter and desktop environments.  Microsoft offers its Assessment and Planning Toolkit which provides server virtualization scenarios to assist in planning for server consolidation with Microsoft Hyper-V.

HP, Dell and a variety of others offer services that utilize these same tools and various other resources that can also be effective, in addition to providing you an independent evaluation of your needs.

Back to our original question: how many is too many?  According to a 2008 study by SearchVirtualization.com, 62% of the respondents were running 10 or fewer virtual machines per host and 5% were running more than 25 VMs per host.  I’m sure these numbers have increased over the last year or more, but by how much?

What criteria do you use to optimize your environment?  How many VMs are you running today and how many do you consider ideal?

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.

Virtualization has only added to this.  Consider just one part of the issue, what constitutes a relevant virtualization benchmark?  In our opinion, a relevant virtualization benchmark should include a combination of different workloads with differing characteristics running on an increasing number of virtual machines.  This approach will sufficiently stress the hardware and the software stack to determine what we think will be the optimal configuration for performance and efficiency.

Up until now, VMware’s VMmark benchmark has been the industry’s adopted standard for measuring performance of the VMware hypervisor.  I’ve shared with you before my assessment of VMmark and its limited application to real-world environments, and I’ve shown where different methodologies can and will produce vastly different results.  In the end, when analyzing performance, the answer is often the dreaded “it depends”.

We now have another viable option to assess and plan for our virtualization environment.  On Wednesday, July 14^th, SPEC released the first hypervisor-neutral virtualization benchmark for servers, which measures performance, power consumption and the relationships between power and performance.   According to SPEC, SPECvirt_sc2010 uses a realistic workload and SPEC’s performance and power measurement methodologies to enable vendors, users and researchers to compare systems performance across multiple hardware configs, virtualization platforms, and applications. The fact that SPECvirt is “vendor neutral” in terms of the hypervisor is a real plus for customers who are trying to evaluate all aspects of the virtualization platform. It also shows the maturation of the virtualization market to include competitive offerings from major software vendors like Citrix, Microsoft, Red Hat, and VMware.

SPECvirt_sc2010 was developed by the SPEC virtualization subcommittee of which AMD was a key contributor, along with many other of our partners like Dell, HP and VMware.  This new benchmark modified several existing SPEC workloads; SPECweb2005, SPECjAppServer2004, and SPECmail2008, all common targets of virtualization, to match a typical server consolidation scenario such as CPU resource requirements, memory, disk I/O and network utilization. 

AMD is proud to have been a part of the development and release SPECvirt_sc2010 and we look forward to seeing it evolve in the industry.  We believe the addition of a power metric and the ability to analyze power/performance relationships at both the server and the system level is big step forward in the area of virtualization benchmarking.

SPECvirt_sc2010 doesn’t come free.  A license can be obtained from SPEC for $3000. Membership in SPEC is open to any interested company or entity that is willing to commit to SPEC’s standards.  More information is available at http://www.spec.org/virt_sc2010/.   

So where does this leave VMmark?  Only time will tell.  Have you looked at SPECvirt_2010?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 way I see it, as the software continues to get smarter and smarter, and the hardware evolves to be more and more efficient (take our latest AMD Opteron™ 4000 and 6000 Series platforms), cloud computing is becoming much more accessible to customers. This is a huge step for the entire IT ecosystem.

Yet while cloud computing itself may be trending towards greater accessibility, management of the cloud is becoming more and more complex.  To help address this issue, VMware has broadened its vCenter management portfolio with VMware vCenter Configuration Manager and VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager.  These products are now more tightly integrated with VMware vSphere providing a more efficient management solution.  Customers now have more tools to help to improve the efficiency of managing their virtualization environments through an automated, policy-based solution.

In addition, VMware vSphere 4.1 also includes new performance and scalability enhancements, including a new memory management technique called “memory compression” and expanded resource pooling capabilities that aggregate pools of resources which, according to VMware, provides up to twice the scalability as the previous version.

The release of VMware vSphere 4.1 couldn’t come at a better time. The demands for a cloud-based delivery model are greater than ever as data explodes around the world, and information abounds online (some stats on that data explosion in this video). In order to effectively handle all of that data without exponentially increasing power consumption or data center real estate costs, innovative solutions – such as public and private clouds – become a necessity. AMD has worked with VMware for years to ensure the hardware and software deployed in the datacenter work together seamlessly, ensuring that innovation doesn’t happen in a silo

As datacenter technology becomes more and more sophisticated, and the cloud continues to mature, what are the pain points you’re still facing? We welcome your comments here, and hope you add to the discussion.

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 Dell PowerEdge R815 is a great example of a value 4P server.  Dell has packed a lot of capability in a 2U form factor. Designed to support up to 48 processor cores, the Dell PowerEdge R815 offers a balanced architecture of advanced manageability, memory scalability of up to 32 DIMMs, massive I/O, and system redundancy – all in a space-saving 2U form factor. You get an option of AMD Opteron processors with either 8 cores or 12 cores along with three different power bands – all with the consistent feature set.

What does it cost to own this value 4P server? Let’s check out the cost compared to a competitive 2P system.  Pricing was derived from the hardware vendors’ on-line system configuration tool for SMB servers as of June 3 and 4.  Systems take into consideration the OEM’s recommendations for memory and power configurations and include one 160GB SATA hard drive and a basic level of service.

The chart provides the hardware cost (system cost) and hardware + virtualization software cost (system +VMware vSphere). There are a couple of points to note. The cost of the competitive 2P server is lower – but so are its capabilities. I am comparing a 2P server with 12 cores, 64GB of memory, and VMware vSphere Enterprise version  to the value 4P server with up to 4x the number of cores, double the amount of memory, and the Enterprise Plus version of VMware vSphere 4. It should be noted that the cost of the 2P competitive server would be about $10,000 more if it was configured  with 128GB of memory and the vSphere Enterprise Plus edition like the Dell PowerEdge R815.

So let’s go beyond the raw cost figures and look at these servers with Virtual Machine (VM) deployments. There are two evaluations of “cost per VM.” The first one assumes that each VM will have 1 vcpu and the total number of VMs for each system matches the total number of physical cores. This logic matches the methodology used by some of our major web hosting customers and is also a more traditional configuration for hosted desktops sessions with software like VMware View or Citirx XenApp.

The second evaluate assumes that the VMs each have 4 vcpus and the total number of VMs for each system is the total number of cores/4. This type of configuration might be used for a more robust workload like a Microsoft’s SQL Server or a business application like SAP.

In either case – the end result is the same. The Dell PowerEdge R815 blows past the competitive 2P server in terms of capabilities and cost per VM. With a savings of over $6,000 ($49,272 for two HP ProLiant DL 380 G7 servers as compared to $42,574 for one Dell PowerEdge R815 server)this shows the philosophy of the value 4P server  – a simply spectacular platform for  virtualization!

My colleague, John Fruehe, published a blog The Value 4P – Courtesy of the AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series Platform, that provides an overview of this new type of server.  And I just recently participated with Dell and VMware in an Information Week webcast Performance & Value: Virtualizing with the Dell PowerEdge R815 Server  that provides some more insights into the value 4P server.

 So let me know your thoughts. Would you consider a value 4P server as a virtualization platform for your data center?

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.

Dylan had it right in 1963 when he recorded this classic that some say captured the spirit of social and political unrest of the times.  Today, the times certainly are a-changin’, especially when it comes to the computing power of x86 servers.  The role of x86 servers in the world of enterprise IT continues to grow.  In fact, according to an IDC report, the first quarter of 2010 experienced the fastest year-over-year revenue growth for x86 servers in more than 10 years.  Virtualization, once a niche technology is growing more pervasive in today’s datacenters. 

Servers based on x86 technology are equipped with unprecedented amounts of I/O and memory capacity.  The latest AMD Opteron™ 6000 series platform (formerly known by the code name “Magny-Cours”) is based on the AMD Direct Connect Architecture 2.0.  The platform now boasts up to 12 cores per processor, supports up to two times the memory and I/O bandwidth of the previous generation Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor and includes AMD-V™ I/O Virtualization technology in the chipset.  

With all the advancements in virtualization technology over the past few years, it appears we’re ready to tackle what some are calling the third leg of server virtualization – the network.  A great example of this is HP’s latest release of Virtual Connect Flex-10 networking adapters for the HP ProLiant BladeSystem, and VMware vSphere vNetwork Distributed Switch feature.  HP’s Virtual Connect Flex-10 is hardware-based I/O technology that enables you to partition a 10Gb Ethernet connection into four virtual connections and fine-tune the bandwidth of each of those connections.

Virtual Network Design

We’ve seen how virtualization has changed the way servers are designed, and we are now seeing virtualization change the way networks are designed.  In the world of virtualization, a physical server hosts many virtual servers, which can now communicate with multiple virtual network interface controllers (NICs).   Virtual switches contained within the physical server extend the network infrastructure beyond the physical NIC which creates a virtual network infrastructure – all of which must be managed and tuned.

Enter HP Virtual Connect Flex-10.  Virtual Connect Flex-10 defines a physical end-point to the network infrastructure and allows a server administrator to control the assignment of virtual networks (or VLANS) to the physical NICs inside the BladeSystem.  This Virtual Connect end-point clearly separates the role of the server administrator from the role of the network administrator. The network administrator provisions the network VLANs to the Virtual connect infrastructure and the server administrator connects the NICs to the appropriate network.

Virtual Connect works with VMware’s  vSphere 4.0 vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS).  vDS extends VMware’s legacy vSwitch technology with features that enable spanning multiple hosts with a single virtual switch.  vDS now treats the network as an aggregated resource. Individual, host-level virtual switches are abstracted into a single large vNetwork Distributed Switch that spans multiple hosts at the datacenter level.  While a vNetwork Distributed Switch can plug into any existing virtual infrastructure, HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 provides a mechanism for presenting consistent “networks” and VLANs to all hosts within the ESX cluster.

With vDS, VMware has also added a number of other new capabilities, not available with Standard Switches, that address emerging virtual network requirements.  A few of the more interesting features are:

• Private VLAN (PVLAN) enables users to restrict communication between virtual machines on the same VLAN or network segment which helps to address security concerns and help reduce the number of subnets needed for certain network configurations.
• Network VMotion tracks the virtual machine networking state as the VM moves from host to host on a vNetwork Distributed Switch providing a consistent view of a virtual network interface regardless of the VM location.
• Bi-directional Traffic Shaping helps users limit the traffic to or from a VM or group of VMs to protect a VM or other traffic in an oversubscribed network.

Software Licensing

With the introduction of vShpere 4.0, VMware introduced a new tiered licensing model.  Those of you looking at taking advantage of VMware’s vNetwork Distributed Switch will need to upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus. 

You can now enter into a new generation of Virtualization with technology like HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, vSphere vNetwork Distributed Switch and HP ProLiant BladeSystem servers equipped with AMD Opteron™ 6000 series processors – designed to deliver unprecedented price/performance, vastly improved manageability and decreased power and cooling costs.

 Are you considering network virtualization technology for your data center?

Also see John Fruehe’s blog “The Value 4P – Courtesy of the AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series Platform for an overview of the Magny-Cours platform, and check out my blog Understanding the Bigger Picture of VMmark Benchmarks for a review on the latest virtualization performance results.

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.

Tech Ed has historically been a way for IT professionals  to immerse themselves in  the latest technology innovations and  learning opportunities, collaborate with their peers, connect with the various product  team at Microsoft and meet the folks from partners like AMD. 

This year, AMD presented in Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) pavilion at Tech Ed.  It’s fitting that we talked about desktop virtualization at Tech Ed, as AMD has been a leader in designing and developing solutions for this market since the early days.  And as VDI seems to have crossed Geoffrey Moore’s chasm, Microsoft and AMD are poised to enable compelling solutions.

The performance of Microsoft’s VDI solution can be enhanced when running on AMD hardware for a number of reasons – virtual machine density and virtual machine performance being two important factors.  With the virtualization enablement built into the AMD Opteron™ series processors, IT professionals can enjoy the best of both worlds when implementing VDI – excellent data security and simplified desktop management, all without sacrificing the user experience.

At the heart of Microsoft’s VDI technology are two new features coming in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1: Microsoft Dynamic Memory will allow customers to adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand to maximize server hardware use, and Microsoft RemoteFX will enable users of virtual desktops and applications to receive a rich 3D, multimedia experience.    And when powered by AMD graphics technology, Microsoft’s RemoteFX feature can take advantage of powerful GPU acceleration to enable an outstanding visual experience.   The RemoteFX capability is important, as the potential for a poor user experience previously was viewed as one of the main barriers to entry for VDI solutions.

AMD is the only processor technology company that can lay claim to providing both the CPU and high-performance GPU components necessary to support an end-to-end VDI implementation.    And our relationship and technology partnership with Microsoft has allowed us to deliver platforms that are finely tuned to support your Microsoft-based desktop virtualization solutions.

When looking at Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, also take a look at your complete desktop virtualization solution.  I believe you will find that Microsoft has a very complete solution designed to meet almost any needs. And I believe you’ll find AMD as the logical choice for your system hardware.

Matt Kimball 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.

Many providers are trying to join the virtualization discussion by simply focusing on the components of the technology. However, VMware is taking a different approach by keeping the focus on you, the customer. AMD, along with its hardware partner Dell, is proud to sponsor VMware Express and showcase PowerEdge servers featuring AMD Opteron™ processor technology.

Here’s a list of upcoming locations where you can see AMD and Dell live and in-person.

• May 26: Scottsdale
• June 4: Houston
• June 16: Nashville
• June 22: Dallas / Ft Worth

Be sure to check the website for additional information as the tour progresses: www.vmware.com/tour

The VMware Express is a great way to get educated about the many performance, efficiency and security benefits of virtualization and cloud computing. By boarding the VMware Express, you can gain:

• Hands-on experience with VMware’s award-winning desktop virtualization and cloud computing solutions in real-world scenarios.
• Insight from technical experts about the benefits that virtualization and cloud computing solutions can provide to specific businesses, from the desktop through the datacenter, and to the cloud.
• Access to five demo stations that illustrate VMware desktop and server solutions, including VMware View™, VMware vSphere™ and the VMware vCenter™ family of products.

You might also want to take a look at a success story that showcases the City of Austin and their use of Dell PowerEdge Servers running AMD Opteron processors with VMware ESX to help prune power and cooling requirements while boosting testing and development capabilities.

Virtualization and cloud computing have relevance for businesses of all sizes.  Before making an investment in these technologies, however, take a few minutes to kick the tires and test drive available solutions. We hope to see you soon at a location near you.

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.

Over these two days, attendees will be given the chance to directly interact with leading Xen virtualization developers such as Keir Fraser, Ian Campbell, Dan Magenheimer, Jeremy Fitzhardinge, Jan Beulich, George Dunlap, and others. Ian Pratt, the founder and chairman of Xen.org, will also present his “State of the Community” keynote and provide attendees plenty of time to interact and discuss Xen technology, roadmaps and future direction. In addition, Thomas Woller, a senior member of the technical staff at AMD, will present a paper on behalf of AMD. A party on the first night of the event will give attendees a chance to interact with the Xen community in a relaxed, informal setting.

Xen Summit events are extremely technical in nature and may not be a good fit for casual technology observers The event is meant to be a deep-dive into open-source Xen virtualization technology and you can expect to see source code in almost every presentation. If you are in the market for this kind of super technical event on virtualization, then Xen Summit is the place for you.

The event cost is $235 which includes food and snacks on both days during the sessions, an evening at Dave and Buster’s on the 28th, a Xen giveaway, and a small contribution toward the registration costs for 10 college students. The registration system is currently open at http://www.regonline.com/xen_summit_amd.  Hope to see you there!

Stephen Spector is the Xen.org Community Manager. 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.

Consider our latest server based on the AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform, the Dell PowerEdge™ R815, designed to deliver up to 48 processor cores with a balanced architecture of advanced manageability, memory scalability of up to 32 DIMMs, massive I/O, and system redundancy all in a space-saving 4-socket/2U form factor. This server provides users with truly exceptional price/performance. Capable of tackling some of the toughest virtualization, high-performance computing, email messaging, and database workloads, the PowerEdge R815 offers customers an excellent RISC/UNIX migration platform.

With its increase in the number of processor cores, the new 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor helps customers to virtualize their IT environments more quickly and on fewer systems. AMD is utilizing the same processor cores and the same chipsets across all of its new platforms, so as Dell builds out new PowerEdge server offerings, like the new PowerEdge 815, they can utilize the same building blocks.  2P, 4P, it’s all the same to us; it’s a single platform definition that will make keeping all of your systems up to date a snap.

Dell is also driving more “intelligence” and responsiveness into each new PowerEdge server platform with the inclusion of its unique Lifecycle Controller. Lifecycle Controller provides IT administrators with a single console view of their entire IT infrastructure while performing a complete set of provisioning functions including system deployment, system updates, hardware configuration and diagnostics.

The PowerEdge 815 is also made to deliver energy efficiency as a design standard while helping customers meet the performance and budget goals they require. Energy-efficient system design built with Energy Smart technologies such as power capping, power inventory, and power budgeting help to better manage power consumption within a specific environment.

The PowerEdge 815 is our latest AMD technology-based server. Below is a quick video that highlights what’s new.

Armando Acosta, Dell’s’ Product Marketing Manager for the new PowerEdge 815. 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.

If you follow basketball you know that stats are at the heart of the March Madness – free throw accuracy, baskets made versus attempted, fouls per player/team, and even the number of fans attending a game. Same with our server processors – the industry is in the wild throws of comparing benchmarks, pricing, and power specifications of legacy to the latest server CPUs. So in this time of heightened madness let’s take a look at some interesting stats that have been posted.

A white paper published by HP, “Reducing the Power Consumption of HP ProLiant Servers in the Data Center,” shows how virtualization can help achieve power savings by consolidating several legacy servers onto a fewer number of modern servers.  The study evaluates a hosted-client workload comprised of Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 x64 running with Citrix XenApp™ that is delivering multiple Microsoft Office user sessions.  The baseline for the study is a configuration of 16 first-generation HP ProLiant BL460c server blades running Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processors and supporting 1,500 user sessions. The study evaluates the number of blades it takes to run the 1,500 user sessions when the workload is virtualized using Citrix XenServer™ on sixth-generation (G6) HP ProLiant blades. Two Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor-based configurations are referenced – one using standard power processors and the other using more power efficient HE model processors.

The table below highlights some of the results of this HP study:

The results demonstrate that virtualization can be used to lower the number of servers required in a XenApp environment, which can help to reduce the physical footprint as well as power and cooling requirements within the data center. The results also showcase the advantage the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor-based servers bring over the competition in terms of price per user and power per user.  Compared to the legacy HP BL460c system both of the HP BL465c configurations offer nearly a 70% reduction in power per user, with nearly 25% to 30% lower price per user, depending on processor choice. Compared to the HP BL460c G6, the HP BL465c G6 configurations offer a reduction in power per user of almost 8% to 15%, with around a 20% lower price per user, again depending on processor choice.

So if you have been sitting on the side lines in terms of upgrading your servers – the time is now to join the game. The Six-Core AMD Opteron processor keeps racking up the points in terms of price/performance. And the new 12-Core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor (known by the code name “Magny-Cours”) that is getting ready to launch is looking to deliver even more value.

What are your thoughts on hosted client computing? Are you virtualizing your XenApp configurations?

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.