Inside Enterprise IT : Server

The Scoop on Virtual-Ready Infrastructure (VRI)

Dell-Jennifer G — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:41:00 GMT

Remember Michael Dell talking at Oracle OpenWorld about Dell’s plan to reduce IT infrastructure spend by $200 billion? That doesn’t happen by making pretty PowerPoint. The team here in Round Rock has a rock-solid plan to bring Virtual-Ready Infrastructure (VRI) to life and soon.

So, what’s in it for customers … the folks actually struggling with hundreds of unique tools, scores of unique skill sets and dozens of unique processes. The ultimate goal of Dell’s VRI is to reduce customers IT spend through the use of fewer tools, fewer tasks and optimized IT delivery.

Paul Prince, Dell’s CTO, Enterprise Product Group, explains our VRI investment in the clip below.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The unified resource manager Paul mentions is a solution from Scalent Systems, a partnership we announced during VMworld this year.

It will allow you to dynamically manage your servers, storage and networking and allows one of the biggest resource savings:

Rack once, cable once – modify workloads without touching the physical infrastructure
Works with existing hardware
Incorporates both physical and virtual workloads
Doesn’t effect in-band server performance

We’re excited about what’s evolving, so please stay tuned. We’ll definitely be back to share more information on how this and the rest of VRI will come to life for you.

A Data Center That Fits in the Overhead Bin

DELL-Barton G — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:39:00 GMT

Jimmy Pike is the director of systems architecture for the Data Center Solutions group here at Dell and self-proclaimed “head geek.” Using a tool case with its insides stripped out, part of an old inbox and a bunch of off the shelf components he has created the world’s first portable “data center.” (All for the princely sum of ~$2,000)

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This former toolkit now holds:

Two dual-socket servers featuring 2.5GHz Intel processors
One server running Windows ‘03 acting as the DHCP and domain server and the other running Red Hat linux.
2 x 1TB SATA drives for each of the servers
32GB of memory
A single central power supply
A 5-port Gigabit Ethernet switch
2 x 500GB scratch discs

and a whole bunch more…

Extra credit reading:

GigaOm – Exclusive: Dell Shows Off a Data Center — In a Briefcase!

Pau for now…

Where's Waldo? No, Where's Barton George!

DELL-Bruce Eric — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:46:00 GMT

Much like the game my kids have always loved, Where's Waldo, on a daily basis we get the pleasure of trying to keep track of our newest colleague, Barton George, Dell's cloud evangelist.

He spent some time at OpenSource World/CloudWorld/Next Generation Data Center, which previously went by a much simpler name of LinuxWorld, and appears to have interviewed the entire left side of the menu (read: reference to Steve Guttenberg in the 1982 film Diner). He's posted those interviews on his blog and many of them here on Inside Enterprise IT (including Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth, Egenera's Ken Oestrich, Right Scale's Michael Crandell, GoGrid's John Keagy and Reductive Labs' Luke Kanies, among many others).

Well, the tables were turned on Barton recently and Michael Cote of RedMonk spent some time talking to Barton for their IT Management & Cloud Podcast.

They discussed a broad range of topics, including:

Swinging of dead cats;
Dell's cloud strategy and Dell's Data Center Solutions group;
Dell's desire to expand these efforts to a wider group of customers;
Software-as-a-Service; and,
Recent industry events and cloud conferences.

Take some time to listen to the podcast here.

Michael Dell Paints His Vision of the Efficient Enterprise at Oracle OpenWorld

DELL-Greg W — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:47:00 GMT

You might think that after two full days of keynotes, breakout sessions, events and meetings at Oracle OpenWorld it would be hard to excite a convention hall full of business and IT leaders, but Michael Dell had just the right formula with:

A compelling vision - Redirect IT dollars from management and maintenance to innovation and improving the business by building an Efficient Enterprise;
Big commitments for quantifiable results like working to take $200 billion of inefficiency out of the $1.2 trillion IT infrastructure industry spend and driving $200 million in savings for Dell's own IT;
Impressive statistics, something almost all of us in the IT industry get into, of the power of the Dell and Oracle partnership and Dell's leadership and track record in providing solutions;
Cool products, including:
- Dell's 11th generation of PowerEdge servers were onstage and Michael highlighted the enhancements in these new servers to simplify deployment, enhance performance, reduce complexity and lower power and cooling requirements;
- He also discussed more innovation to come next year with new PowerEdge servers based on Intel Nehalem EX architecture; and,
- Talked about continued enhancements to the EqualLogic storage products, like SSD (launched this year) and 10Gbps Ethernet (coming soon) that will drive efficiency and performance for storage.
A blueprint to make this vision a reality including:
- Standardization on open standard solutions built on x86-based servers;
- Simplification by starting with the applications and taking the complexity out of the way they are supported and managed, and by using Virtualization and Storage Consolidation;
- Automation by streamlining Services delivery and enabling self-service IT models where critical business services can be deployed through the cloud.
Dell's own plan - Robin Johnson, CIO of Dell, shared how he is driving inefficiency out of the Dell IT machine
Having fun - Everyone was excited by Larry Ellison's surprise appearance and from the return of the Tech Force alliance!

Hopefully you are as excited as we are about building the Efficient Enterprise, and if you’re here this week, be sure to come see us in the booth.

You can follow us on Twitter @dellatORACLEwld and check out my earlier post on Direct2Dell with details of all our activities.

Migrating Oracle Deployments to Dell PowerEdge x86-based Servers

DELL-Susie G — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:08:00 GMT

As a premier Oracle partner, Dell is excited to be on the show floor at Oracle OpenWorld 2009. We are proud to be demonstrating our comprehensive Dell | Oracle solutions including presentations both in our booth and at sessions outlining the benefits of migrating to Dell’s PowerEdge 11th generation x86 platform. In addition to our presentations, we’ll have plenty of migration experts at the show to help answer questions in our booth regarding Dell’s proven track record for partnering with customers to help them successfully navigate through the migration process.

By migrating from older generation x86 servers to Dell’s PowerEdge 11th generation x86 servers, customers are experiencing benefits including lower total cost of ownership, easier implementations and deployments, and greater scalability as their businesses continue to grow. With Dell’s 11th generation servers, customers are able to consolidate dispersed legacy environments onto one product line while reducing data center complexity, lowering power consumption, and reducing Oracle licensing fees - all while reaping the benefits of running their OLTP and DSS workloads faster than ever before. Whenever we release new servers, there is typically an incremental performance gain of approximately 10-15 percent. The technology packed in Dell’s PowerEdge 11th generation servers blew that away.

We reviewed three-year old servers that had recently fully depreciated. In comparison to the new 11th generation servers, we are able to achieve consolidation by an 8:1 factor - and sometimes even better depending on the workload. That type of consolidation equates to serious savings for our customers. Think about it – eight servers consolidating to one, all within the power envelope of a single older generation server. That means a full 16U rack of servers becomes just 2U; 32 network ports consumed becomes four; 16 redundant PDU ports becomes two; and this is just the physical savings. Just imagine how that translates to software and power savings as well.

With a full suite of tested and validated Dell | Oracle solution stacks, Dell enables customers to minimize risk, reduce pre-implementation testing and ensure interoperability before the migration process even begins.

Visit us at booth 3809 in Moscone West and receive a USB key full of useful tools outlining the benefits of running your Oracle database workloads on Dell hardware and enter to win one of the new Dell Latitude Z portable notebooks . You will be sure to get a better understanding why moving to Dell’s open standards platform provides customers with a cost effective, end-to-end solution that enables faster implementations, simplified management and faster return on investment.

To keep up with what we are doing at the event, follow us on Twitter @dellatORACLEwld, check out an earlier post on Direct2Dell with details of our activities and check back here and the Dell TechCenter. If you miss us at the show, visit us at www.dell.com/oracle for more information.

AC/DC – 80s Rock Band or Data Center Power Distribution Terminology?

DELL-David Havener — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:14:00 GMT

Good question but since you’re reading this on Dell’s CIO-focused blog and not Creem, you should assume it is the latter. This is a topic that's been widely discussed across our industry, including this article from Jeff Burt of eWeek.

Grid designs for data center power grid infrastructures need to include careful consideration of uptime and efficiency. Current flow needs to be steady and always available. It should also be cost-effective and “green.” The most fundamental consideration to be made when planning a new data center is whether to provision it with AC or DC power. The majority of IT data centers today use AC power throughout. This is not surprising, given the prevalence of AC power grid infrastructure in centers of global commerce. A century of AC power grid refinements (i.e. transformers, circuit breakers, fuses, standards) have resulted in a generally accepted view of AC power as dependable. Couple that with these limitations imposed by the perception of DC power grid selection (distances of less than one mile and fewer available hardware choices) and you might conclude that DC power type data centers are rare. This is not true.

There remain a large number of DC powered data centers throughout the world, and new ones continue to be built, driven by telecommunication service expansion across emerging regions. DC power holds advantages for telecommunication networks that relate to always-on “dial tone” service level requirements. Network data flow for audio streaming is circuit-based, rather than packet-based. Slight disruption in sequential read/writes results in a poor user experience. Until recently, 1993 to be exact, AC power was susceptible to a bad thing called “current harmonics,” which can result in overheated neutral circuits and transformers.

For these reasons, telecommunication companies embraced DC power early in their history of operations. DC power continues to be preferred for telecom networks due to the massive install base already in use, and DC power’s success in delivering incredible “dial tone” service levels -- “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” you might say.

Some other verticals for which DC power is attractive include: remote and mobile computing (oil rigs, ships, jets), military, and video-content providers. The debate goes on, about the virtues of AC vs. DC power and while the efficiency rating between the two standards has come close to parity over the years, Dell remains a strong advocate of choice in the OEM market. This is why we have chosen to partner with NEI to introduce the NEI E2710, a DC-powered server that meshes with Dell’s DMC systems management console and packs the same performance punch that Dell’s Nehalem-based PowerEdge servers do.

The past few years have seen dramatic enhancements in the efficiency of IT equipment, which has resulted in impressive efficiency gains for AC power equipped servers and storage. Power supplies now run at 80 percent and higher efficiency levels. Airflow and cooling design considerations have pushed out bulky component cables, in favor of skinny ones. Heat dissipation from components inside a chassis is now carefully considered when product design teams develop new platforms. Airflow is paramount, low “drag coefficients” enable fans to cool heat producing components with ease. The fans themselves have been completely redesigned, and are more power efficient themselves. In some large scale processor intense deployment, servers are “running naked” sans chassis, further eliminating drag coefficients while nestled inside their 19 inch-wide, 42U high racks. As a result, the power efficiency possible in today’s AC powered data center environments is excellent. This is fantastic news, both for companies with AC powered data centers and for everyone.

Now, you have a DC powered server that takes advantage of all of these recent enhancements, and delivers Dell dependability and power. Use it wisely.

Breaking the I/O Virtualization Bottleneck

DELL-Matt M — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:50:00 GMT

Virtualization has helped improve hardware utilization tremendously, but its full potential has not yet been realized. Virtualization technologies all share and virtualize a single physical port of the network adapter through software for the I/O needs of the virtual machines. All of that software battles to make I/O decisions for the virtual machines, which causes traffic jams, which slow the I/O performance and limit the number of virtual machines a physical server can run.

To address this issue, PCI-SIG, the special interest group that owns and manages PCI specifications as open industry standards, introduced a suite of specifications for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) specifications to allow multiple operating systems to share a physical interconnect.

Now Dell, Intel and Citrix are putting the PCI-SIG specs into action and will be demonstrating SR-IOV technology at the Intel Developers Forum 2009. IDF attendees can check out the showcase at exhibit booth #711 and hear all the technical brilliance straight from Dell, Intel and Citrix experts.

Here is the gist of how it works. SR-IOV allows hardware implementation of virtual network interface cards (NICs) or virtual functions without software emulation. In this way, a single I/O hardware is subdivided logically to appear as up to 256 virtual NICs and each virtual function is assigned independently and directly to a virtual machine, bypassing the software bottlenecks in the hypervisor to achieve near native performance. It also provides precise per-VM control for the connection speed and QoS. This specific demo uses Intel VT-d and Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet device and allows multiple virtual machines (VMs) running on Citrix XenServer on Dell PowerEdge R710 with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 to directly share I/O devices.

SR-IOV holds great promise. It improves data throughput and increase performance, efficiency, and scalability with high performance I/O devices, while preserving flexibility and mobility with live migration support. In preliminary lab tests with Dell, Intel and Citrix, this technology reduces processor utilization, Increases bandwidth to virtual machines and improves data transfer rates across the network.

Another benefit is that SR-IOV can save reduce capital expenditure as it doesn’t require special network infrastructure. It works with existing standard 10GE Ethernet switches on existing network infrastructures. Some other virtualization solutions rely on proprietary technologies requiring rip-and-replace upgrades to networks to get the benefits of I/O virtualization. SR-IOV technology further cuts hardware costs by reducing the number of physical network cards, and switch ports, as well as cabling for even more consolidation in a virtualized environment.

Rich Hernandez, PG Development Engineer Strategist in Dell Server Advanced Engineering Group has been working on this technology. Here he is with a brief overview:

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Cloud Tamer: Right Scale’s CEO Michael Crandell

DELL-Barton G — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:07:00 GMT

I’m getting down to the end of the videos I recorded last month at Cloud World/Open Source World and I’ve saved some of the best for last. My penultimate interview is with Michael Crandell, CEO of Right Scale.

Right Scale, based in sunny Santa Barbara California, makes a cloud management platform that provides greater control over the cloud and makes it easy for companies to begin to migrate applications to the cloud or start building new ones there. See what Michael has to say…

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Some of the stuff Michael discusses:

Right Scale focuses on three things: 1) Automation, 2) Providing a library of cloud ready solutions, 3) doing all this in an open and transparent way that allows portability among cloud platforms.
How Right Scale came to be. Their founder was teaching a class at UCSB about how to build an ecommerce site. Amazon granted him some free compute time to use in his class. He realized he needed a framework for managing and monitoring the classes usage, he also realized there was a business to built around this idea…
Where Right Scale will be putting its efforts in the up coming year:
- Supporting more cloud platforms as the come online
- Increasing their partner program and their cloud-ready solutions
- Increasing support for enterprise level editions and features e.g. security and compliance, user control, billing, metering…

Extra-Credit reading:

Right Scale part 1: Mickos joins and control moves up the stack
Right Scale part 2: Why the Cloud? Apple Fanboys and server suffrage

Pau for now…

Reliable Power to Protect Your Precious Data

DELL-Matt M — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:05:00 GMT

There is a tree twisting thunderstorm raging outside and you know enough to grab a flashlight and candle just in case the power goes out. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You miss a rerun episode of Mad Men? Ah, but wait, isn’t the online sale is still going on at work through mid-night? Oh crud, what if the servers go down? Will you lose all the credit card transactions in process?

There is no need to sweat a power outage when your servers and storage are backed up with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). You’re in luck. Today Dell unveiled 28 new UPS products with a whopping efficiency rating of 95% or more to keep your systems running. The UPS products come in a variety of wattages in either tower or rack-mount form to give you reliable, vital power backup for your IT equipment to protect your precious data.

Dell UPS systems come with LCD screens for instant status and monitoring of the full power load of a rack and even your entire network by glancing at the Dell UPS display. But what good is that when you’re kicking back at home? Not to worry, they have management software for remote management and monitoring through Web browsers. The Dell UPS will also send you an alarm notification and status reports through e-mail or a text to your mobile phones. They also will perform a graceful, unattended operating system shutdown if there is an extended power outage. Now relax and get back to watching Mad Men.

I had a chance to talk with William Muscato, product manager for the Dell Data Center Infrastructure team, about the new line-up of Dell UPS products. Here is what he had to say about how Dell has thoughtfully included features to simplify the selection, deployment, and monitoring of power backup and distribution.

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The Impact of Customers on Dell's OEM Business and Appliances

DELL-Bruce Eric — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:19:00 GMT

In this interview, Dell's Franklin Flint describes how a customer works with Dell's OEM group, even influencing the design of Dell-branded products for use in their hardware appliances.

Using the Google Search Appliance as an example, Franklin describes how the PowerEdge R710 server includes more network interface cards (NICs), better customization of the LCD display panel, internal flash memory capabilities and other features that make it OEM friendly, or an "appliance-inspired" server platform.

Have a listen:

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