HP, IBM, Dell Ship Ivy Bridge Servers

Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell and other server OEMs are using Intel’s 14 May introduction of new Xeon processors to roll out new and enhanced systems.

Intel’s new Xeons – including the low-power E3, based on its 22-nanometre Ivy Bridge architecture and featuring the chip maker’s 3D Tri-Gate transistor architecture – are designed for greater performance and better power efficiency than their predecessors, giving enterprises what Intel officials are calling pathways from two- to four-socket systems, and smaller businesses avenues to move from single- to dual-socket servers.

There also are offerings for workstations and microservers.

ProLiant Gen8 lineup

HP is adding new systems to its ProLiant Gen8 portfolio of x86-based systems, powered not only by the new Intel Xeons but also by the latest Opteron 6200 “Interlagos” processors, which Advanced Micro Devices launched last autumn.

HP officials said the new systems are designed to not only offer better performance, but also simpler maintenance and improved uptime. The new servers, aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and powered by Intel’s Xeon ES-2400 chips, include the ProLiant DL360e 1U and DL380e 2U rack servers, which feature better serviceability, compute capabilities and storage capacity.

A tower system, the ProLiant ML350e Gen8 for remote and branch offices, and the BL420c blade server for midmarket and cost-conscious enterprises, which offers better manageability for applications that need high-availability and performance, also are powered by the Xeon ES-2400 processors.

HP also is putting AMD’s Opteron 6200 Series chips into the ProLiant DL385p 2U rack server for virtualisation, database and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, and the BL465c Gen8, which HP officials said is the first blade server with 2,000 cores per rack for virtualisation, database and HPC tasks.

The new servers are expected to be available in June. Also this summer, HP will start shipping ProLiant scale-up servers – both racks and blades for highly dense environments – powered by Xeon E5-4600 chips.

IBM systems

IBM also is rolling out new Xeon-based servers that include an energy-efficient blade and a rack system that enables businesses to migrate from two- to four-socket systems.

The blade system is the BladeCentre HS23E aimed at SMBs that includes support for various networking technologies. It offers up to eight networking ports of Ethernet for other networking protocols, and brings up to 42 percent better performance than previous IBM systems, company officials said. In addition, IBM’s FastSetup feature offers automatic server setup, speeding up deployment time from days to minutes.

IBM also unveiled a four-socket rack server, the System x3750, aimed at technical computing environments. Included in the server is IBM’s eXFlash storage technology and up to 25 percent more memory performance, according to officials.

In addition, IBM is introducing new rack servers for SMBs, including the System x3630 M4, a storage-dense system for cloud, department-level virtualisation, virtual storage and database workloads, and the x3530 M5, a dense dual-socket system for financial applications, web services, retail point-of-sale and network infrastructure workloads.

Dell PowerEdge

IBM’s new Flex System x220 is an entry-level compute node that fits into the OEM’s Pure Systems portfolio of expert integrated systems. The Flex System x220 is aimed at entry-level virtualisation applications and tasks such as office email and collaboration.

Dell is adding to its 12th-generation PowerEdge systems, which officially launched in March, with new blade, rack and tower systems that officials said are aimed at offering both improved performance and greater value. Sally Stevens, vice president of platform marketing at Dell, said that while there has been a recovery in the economy, that recovery has been “inconsistent”, and businesses are still conscious of the situation.

“They’re still very focused on optimising value and improving efficiency,” Stevens said in an interview with eWEEK.

Dell on 8 May got a jump on servers running the new Intel chips, and introduced the PowerEdge C5220 microserver, which uses use Intel’s Xeon E3-1200 v2 chips. Dell officials said their new microserver offers almost twice the performance and 50 percent greater density than similar systems based on previous Intel processors.

Efficiency and performance

New PowerEdge systems unveiled on 14 May and running on Intel’s Xeon E5-2400 and E5-4600 chips give businesses greater energy efficiency and performance as well as scalable storage, networking and security capabilities, Dell officials said.

Included in the offerings are the PowerEdge R820 – a 2U, four-socket system – and the PowerEdge M420 – a quarter-height two-socket blade server that enables extreme computational density, performance and efficiency. Businesses using Dell’s PowerEdge M1000e chassis can fit up to 32 M420 blades in a single 10U chassis, according to officials.

The 12th-generation PowerEdges also come with a host of other features designed to improve performance and energy efficiency, including Fresh Air cooling configurations that enable greater density and reduced cooling costs, and the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC7) with Lifecycle Controller 2.0 for agent-less deployment, maintenance and monitoring.

Blade systems

The M820 blade systems offer extra memory to enable businesses to grow as demand requires, and Dell is adding more memory capacity and I/O bandwidth in its newest generation of rack and tower servers.

A host of other systems makers also are leveraging the capabilities in Intel’s new Xeons. Appro officials said they are deploying the Xtreme-X supercomputer with four-socket configurations based on the Xeon E5-4600 chips at Kyoto University in Japan.

The system will offer better HPC performance and lowered infrastructure costs with the new processors. SGI officials said they will bring the E5-2400 and E5-4600 chips to future shared-memory platforms, and that the E5-2400 is the base chip in SGI’s Hadoop Starter Kits and is available in the Rackable server line.

Lenovo is rolling out the ThinkStation E31 entry-level workstation and two new ThinkServer systems – the RD530 and RD630 – powered by the new Xeons. Supermicro unveiled several single-socket systems and motherboards featuring the Intel chips.

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