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Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:00 |
Weathering a tough economic climate means putting a hard stop on wasteful spending. At times like this, it is essential for IT executives to work proactively with business strategists to devise innovative ways to get the job done while consuming as few resources as possible, through measures such as enhanced energy efficiency, increased server and storage virtualization, smart systems management, and an intensified focus on smooth integration and scalability.Dell servers, storage, and management systems can help IT organizations meet today?s economic challenges while supporting fast, seamless growth. New 11th-generation Dell PowerEdge rack, tower, and blade servers feature the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) memory, and a high-performance, energy-efficient architecture designed for virtualization and easy customization?helping simplify management while helping reduce total cost of ownership. Dell EqualLogic PS6000 series Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN) arrays are designed for energy efficiency as well, and include a virtualized scale-out architecture and a rich set of software features. And Dell systems management tools such as the Dell Management Console powered by Altiris from Symantec as well as the Unified Server Congurator enabled by the Lifecycle Controller help streamline and simplify IT management. Dell Services can help further support business growth through a customized, modular approach.Many business visionaries recognize that the biggest long-term savings may come from strategic capital investments that advance data center efficiency and intelligence?particularly cost-efficient deployments of blade servers and iSCSI storage?as well as best practices for energy management and IT simplification. By increasing overall efficiency and scalability, IT executives can keep pace with ever-changing business requirements while continuing to innovate essential systems and services that give their organizations the competitive edge.
Source : http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q09-20090243-CoverStory.pdf |
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Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:00 |
When evaluating a server, performance and power consumption are two key factors that organizations should take into account. Perhaps most important, however, is the efficiency with which the server can translate energy into useful work performed in the data center?a factor captured by the key metric of performance per watt. Maximizing performance per watt can lead to significant improvements in IT productivity without increasing power consumption.In January 2009, Principled Technologies performed Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) SPECjbb2005 tests commissioned by Dell to compare the performance and power consumption of three AMD Opteron? processor?based blade servers running the Sun Solaris 10 OS: the Dell? PowerEdge? M905 blade server, HP ProLiant BL685c G5 blade server, and IBM® BladeCenter LS42 blade server. In these tests, the Dell server produced the highest peak performance of the three tested systems, providing 4.3 percent higher performance than the HP server and 5.5 percent higher performance than the IBM server. And because the Dell server also used the least amount of power of the three tested systems, it also delivered significantly higher performance per watt?37.6 percent higher than the HP server and 46.7 percent higher than the IBM server.Optimizing energy use can be critical to controlling operational costs in enterprise data centers. As these Principled Technologies tests demonstrate, Dell PowerEdge blade servers are designed to offer high performance while minimizing power consumption?providing the foundation of an effective and comprehensive strategy for data center efficiency.
Source : http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q09-20090307-PrinTech.pdf |
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Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:00 |
New 11th-generation Dell? PowerEdge? R610 and PowerEdge R710 rack servers, PowerEdge T610 tower servers, and PowerEdge M610 and PowerEdge M710 blade servers take advantage of the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, which utilizes Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) memory. By providing the flexibility to configure up to three memory channels per processor and choose from high-performance, balanced-performance, high-capacity, and mirror modes, the DDR3 architecture allows administrators to optimize memory configurations to suit specific requirements for a wide range of enterprise usage scenarios.Each processor in 11th-generation PowerEdge servers includes three separate memory controller hubs (MCHs) within the processor pack, helping avoid the requirement to transfer memory transactions between the processor and an external device; however, this design introduces considerations about the appropriate way to populate and configure a system based on specific requirements for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features and speed. These servers also support both error-correcting code (ECC) DDR3 registered dual in-line memory modules (RDIMMs) and ECC DDR3 unbuffered DIMMs (UDIMMs). The memory interface supports memory demand and patrol scrubbing, single-bit error correction, and multi-bit error corrections. RDIMMs are suitable for a large amount of memory, extensive RAS features, and maximum expandability, and offer address parity. However, unless business requirements call for very high memory capacity, UDIMM ECC is typically a cost-effective alternative to a comparable RDIMM configuration. Memory optimized, advanced ECC, and mirror modes, meanwhile, offer the flexibility to match specific applications or purposes, enhancing long-term cost-effectiveness.DDR3 is designed to support a range of performance requirements for enterprise applications and virtualized environments. Following best-practices guidelines for various usage scenarios helps administrators configure DDR3 memory options for optimal performance, capacity, data integrity, and energy efficiency.
Source : http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q09-20080414-Benson.pdf |
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Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:00 |
Systems management is a key part of the IT administrator?s job, and encompasses tasks such as installing operating systems, updating firmware to be functional and adhere to enterprise policies, configuring hardware, and maintaining IT infrastructures. Although several previous tools have helped simplify and streamline management of Dell? systems, they also required administrators to save the CDs so the tools could be reinstalled if needed, which added clutter and storage requirements as organizations accumulated multiple versions of these tools.The new Dell Unified Server Configurator (USC) enabled by the Lifecycle Controller is designed to overcome these challenges. Based on the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) embedded in new 11th-generation Dell PowerEdge? servers and utilizing a Unified Extensible Software Interface (UEFI) environment, it provides a single place to perform firmware and other updates, hardware and RAID configuration, native deployment of supported Microsoft® Windows® and Linux® operating systems, and system diagnostics?one that functions independently of both media and platform OS. Because the USC is available even when the OS is not, it helps add flexibility when provisioning servers and customizing them to meet specific requirements. In addition, because the tool is integrated with and embedded in the server, formatting the disk or reinstalling the OS does not remove the tool, helping save the time and costs associated with reinstalling system tools.The new Dell USC is designed to provide quick and easy access to system life cycle management capabilities in new 11th-generation Dell PowerEdge servers. This powerful, simplified tool can help administrators rapidly perform systems management tasks and ultimately help increase their productivity.
Source : http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q09-20090226-Phung.pdf |
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Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:00 |
Cost-conscious IT departments have adopted data center virtualization as a way to help increase efficiency and reduce total cost of ownership. As virtualized server and storage deployments increase, infrastructure components are evolving to keep pace. These collective enhancements promise unmatched data center efficiencies, but they pose new challenges too?including escalating network storage and I/O demands that are driving the data center framework toward 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) connectivity.Systems designed for virtualized environments, such as the Dell? PowerEdge? R710 server based on the multi-core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series architecture, can support a large number of virtual machines (VMs). The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series combines multiple processors with architectural features that allow for a high level of 10GbE scalability?including specifications designed to enable faster memory, faster interconnect architecture, and a faster PCI Express (PCIe) bus than previous generations.At the network interface, Intel 10GbE server adapters include Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (VT-c)?which includes Intel Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and Intel Virtual Machine Direct Connect (VMDc)?to enhance I/O performance in virtualized environments. Intel 10GbE server adapters support Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage area networks (SANs) as well as network attached storage (NAS). In the next generation, planned performance-enhancing features include Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) offloads and receive-side coalescing (RSC).Many elements of the dynamic 10GbE data center are already in place. The generation of servers based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series architecture enables the processing power and adaptability needed to support growing VM deployment without increasing power or space requirements, while Intel 10GbE server adapters are designed to take advantage of the capabilities of these platforms and provide the necessary I/O bandwidth for a truly dynamic data center.
Source : http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q09-20090230-Intel.pdf |
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