Nattering nabobs of negativity nixed by Nehalem 30 March, 2009 By Steve Wexler

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According to Foremski, Intel puts the x86-based server market at $28 billion annually, with RISC servers close behind at $27 billion. "Nehalem performance is potentially so great, and the lifetime ownership costs are so low, that the Intel architecture can finally, and decidedly, take on the RISC market with a vastly superior product."

The cost savings are incredible, agreed HP's John Gromola, director, ProLiant product marketing, industry standard servers, and that should be a very attractive value proposition for customers who are stretching server lifecycles from two to three years to four to five years. Customers can see a return on investment in as little as three months, he stated. The HP ProLiant G6 server line offers doubles the performance of its predecessor, four to five times improvement on dual-core-based servers and up to a 40 times improvement on single-core chips.

"I think this is a case where people can really justify moving," he said. "We're giving them a rare opportunity to really change the rules."

HP is using the Nehalem roll-out as an opportunity to completely redefine everything it delivers, said Gromola, starting with 11 new platforms and more than 1,000 SKUs. It includes advances in energy efficiency, virtualization and automation, such as: the HP Sea of Sensors which tracks thermal activity across the server; the Common Power Slot design allowing customers to choose from four power supplies to match their specific workload; the HP ProLiant Onboard Administrator that simplifies server setup; HP Insight Control Environment (ICE) management console that reduces operational expenses up to $48,000 for every 100 users; and HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet module, the industry's first interconnect technology to allocate the bandwidth of a 10Gb Ethernet network port across four network interface card connections. More information is available at www.hp.com/go/proliant.

As part of its channel activities, HP will be doing a 100-city ProLiant University tour, a free day-long education and training initiative. It's a way for existing -- and new -- partners to get up to speed, said Gromola. And he calls the ProLiant Solution Central HP's biggest venture on field selling and channel enablement. It's based on the MP Growth Program which helped increase HP's MP market share over 50 per cent. The company is sending out 370,000 invitations and will eventually consist of seven different communities.

Both IBM and Sun Microsystems had their RISC products -- Power and Sparc -- trashed by Intel from a competitive performance perspective during the Intel's Webinar, but both vendors stepped up with x86 launches. IBM is raking in the most cash for servers, and it rolled out a new generation of System x racks, blades, iDataPlex hardware and management software. Big Blue is also trumpeting its numbers, including up to 3.5 times more bandwidth for technical computing; 2.25 times more performance for enterprise computing; nearly double the power capabilities for compute-intensive software; and lowering energy costs by up to 50 per cent.

Designed for data centers bumping up against floor space, power and cooling infrastructure restraints, the iDataPlex dx360 M2 provides up to five times the compute density versus 1U rack servers and can cool the data center 70 per cent more efficiently. Additionally, the company has revamped and simplified IBM System's Director management suite. Version 6.1 blends the best of IBM software brands such as Tivoli and allows clients to manage multiple, virtualized environments.

"These solutions represent thirty plus years of IBM systems excellence," said Adalio Sanchez, general manager, IBM Modular Systems, in a company release. "The System x family continues to add powerful hardware and simplified management tools using an open engineering approach. The result is a base of open-source software support that is wider and deeper than anything competitors can offer in the commodity server market."

For more information, visit www.ibm.com/systems.

Sun called the Xeon 5500 "a real-world game-changer in the commodity x86 marketplace; Sun's systems and Solaris optimization provide record-breaking performance, scalability and huge energy efficiency to help customers maximize their business results," stated John Fowler, executive vice presient, systems group.

For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/solaris/intel.

Lenovo also jumped on the Nehalem bandwagon, announcing that its latest ThinkStation workstations and upcoming ThinkServer RD210 and RD220 rack servers will offer Xeon 5500 versions. And Dell unveiled its enterprise platform -- which is Xeon 5500-ready -- last week.