Did you miss HP Technology Forum this year and are interested in VDI and Client Virtualization?  Check out this session video that talks about the HP P4800 BladeSystem SAN for Client Virtualization.

By Tim Ellerbe, Product Manager

Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate applications and database performance problems by running them 100% in DRAM? RAM's nanosecond latency makes it ideal as a temporary workspace for operating systems and applications. However, its volatility makes it unsuitable for applications that need to persist data. It's also difficult and expensive to cram enough DRAM into a server. Additionally, its expense makes it impractical to purchase the capacities most applications need. 

Consider this...

The HP StorageWorks IO Accelerator brings high I/O performance and low latency access to storage, with the reliability of solid state. It's a mezzanine card for HP StorageWorks BladeSystem c-Class servers (and soon to be released PCIe version for selected ProLiant DL/ML servers) that provides the performance boost that IO-starved applications need without sacrificing reliability. These NAND Flash-based cards add terabytes of DRAM-like acceleration to blades in a new persistent memory tier with advanced error checking, self-healing and RAID5-like redundancy.

But isn't a persistent and reliable memory tier with RAM-like speed even more expensive than RAM? The IO Accelerator costs roughly $48/GB.  Compared to DRAM (roughly $125/GB MSRP), it's a bargain.

The benefits added up for one BladeSystem customer who added IO Accelerators to its MySQL database clusters to get the following benefits:

• 30x faster database replication-during testing, a new read database caught up to the master in 12-1/2 minutes compared to 6-1/2 hours for a standard serve


• 6x faster complex query processing, from 2700/sec to 350/sec per blade


• 30% faster query response times


• 8x faster worst-case disaster recovery

Any other solid state storage success stories to share? Let us know. In the meantime, catch the latest views on the state of solid state storage-and other StorageWorks products supporting solid state.

(Editor's note: You can follow HP StorageWorks on Twitter here)

  By Calvin Zito, aka @HPStorageGuy

I've been in the storage industry a long time - before we had RAID.  I've stayed here because to me it's fascinating.  And the pace of change and technology development just seems to accelerate.  So you can imagine I was more than a little excited when I was able to get Paul Perez, VP and Chief Technologist of the HP StorageWorks division to come and spend some time with the bloggers at the HP BladeSystem Tech Day.  I knew since so many of the bloggers are focused on storage that they'd appreciate hearing from Paul.  I've captured the video and here it is in four parts:

I'm hoping to bring you more of Paul on the blog in the near future.

 By Calvin Zito, aka @HPStorageGuy

At last week's HP BladeSystem Tech Day, one of the session was an overview of Virtual Connect.  There was also a lot of discussion about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) that had many of the bloggers very interested.  Mike Kendall and Mike Witkowski from the BladeSystem engineering team led this discussion.  There's also a post about this session by my colleague from the BladeSystem team Dan Bowers that you can read to get his perspective on the session. 

I was scrambling to grab my video camera and missed the first minute or two of the session though I think you'll get the idea. 

 By Calvin Zito

Here's the next set of videos from last weeks HP BladeSystem Tech Day.  This is a pretty interesting set of videos talking about the design of the C7000 BladeSystem, focusing on power, cooling, and various blade modules.  Here are the videos.

This is part 1 of 6 with James Singer and Gary Thome talking technical details of the HP BladeSystem C7000.  Discussed are management and power supply design of the C7000 BladeSystem.

In part 2, James continues the power discussion

In part 3, we're taking about the technology behind the cooling system and begin a discussion on the C7000 mid-plane.

In part 4 continues the discussion about the mid-plane and other modules including Virtual Connect.

In part 5, James talks about various server blades and the Green500.org listing.

In this final part, James and Gary continue to discuss different server blade options as well a storage blades.

 By Calvin Zito, aka @HPStorageGuy

My daughter won a Flip camera for a video contest at her school.  I brought it with me to the BladeSystem Tech Day and got video of many of the presentations.  However, the video format and included editing software doesn't allow me to easily chop the video up into 10 minute segments (requirement of YouTube) so it may take me a few days to get them posted here.  Check back over the next week and I'll continue to get them posted.  But first up today is the opening session Gary Thome did.  Gary is our BladeSystem strategist and a very smart guy.  You can read a summary of his session (as well as the other morning sessions) on our Eye on Blades blog.  Again, because of the YouTube limit, I have the session broken up into 5 parts.  The first video is the bloggers around the table, though Greg Knieriemen had stepped away and isn't in this video.  You can play each video in sequence and see most all of Gary's opening session.

 By Calvin Zito, aka @HPStorageGuy

I'm writing this post from a conference room in our Houston campus, waiting for our great group of bloggers to arrive and our HP BladeSystem Tech Day.  As with our StorageWorks Tech Day back in October, we'll be tweeting real-time and I'm sure most of the bloggers will be too.  You can follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #HPBladesDay and you don't need to be on Twitter to see the conversation stream (just click on my hashtag link).  Here's a list of who is here, a link to their blog (click on their name) and Twitter account:

• Rich Brambley, @rbrambley


• Chris M. Evans, @chrismevans


• Stephen Foskett, @sfoskett


• Kevin Houston, @kevin_houston


• Greg Knieriemen, @Knieriemen


• Martin McLeod, @martinmacleod


• Frank Owen,  @fowen


• John Obeto, @JohnObeto


• Devang Panchigar, @StorageNerve


• Simon Seagrave, @kiwi_Si

Follow the conversation and learn more about our industry leading BladeSystem!