Reality Check: Server Insights

[#1]

Today, HP refreshed its ProLiant G6 portfolio of tower, rack-mount, blade and scale-out servers with the newest processors from Intel, the 5600 series code named “Westmere”. The ProLiant G6 portfolio, introduced last spring, introduced innovations in energy efficiency, virtualization capabilities and management aimed at helping customers maximize business return on their server investments. These new servers have been “selling like hotcakes,” as the saying goes, making them the fastest adopted x86 server platform in HP’s history 20-year x86 server history.

Now souped-up with faster processors, our latest set of ProLiant G6 servers shipping worldwide starting March 29th, reset the bar in terms of server performance. These new servers provide customers with a 27x performance increase over ProLiant servers just 2 generations old (ProLiant G4s). We compare the latest ProLiant G6 servers to G4s since server refresh cycles tend to be at least 2 years (on the low end) to 5 years (on the high end), so its highly unlikely customers would be upgrading from an early ProLiant G6 server with Intel’s 5500 processors to one of these new servers based on their latest 5600 processors.

These updated ProLiant G6 servers also enable customers to jump their server consolidation ratio from 11:1 when we introduced our initial ProLiant G6 servers last spring (meaning 1 ProLiant G6 sever can do the work of 11 ProLiant G4 servers), to an incredible 20:1 with these new boxes, which means signifigant op ex savings. With Intel claiming 15:1 consolidation ratios tied to the new processors, that extra “5” is thanks to the technology innovations within to the ProLiant G6 platform that go beyond the processor. What I like to think of as ProLiant’s “secret sauce”.

This secret sauce includes awesome energy innovations like our Sea of Sensors technology, which came out of HP Labs. This innovative technology leverages tiny sensors placed throughout the server (on the processors, near the power supplies, etc) to monitor server activity and adjust server fans automatically, dramatically slashing power waste. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Visit www.hp.com/go/proliant to learn more about HP ProLiant servers and G6 innovation.

Already using HP ProLiant G6 servers in your datacenter? Tell us your story.

[#2]

When will the refreshed servers be available?  There is absolutely no mention of the Xeon 5600 on the HP site.

[#3]

These refreshed ProLiant G servers will be available worldwide beginning on Monday, March 29th and all the updated website content will go live then as well. Sorry about any confusion in the meantime.

[#4]

Erin,

The HP lineup to date for the Proliant ML110 G6 has the Core i3 and the Xeon X3400 (Lynnfield) CPU's.  It leaves out the Core i5-600's (eg, i5-660) that have the AES-NI instructions for accelerating encryption and decryption.  I'm an end-user.  I use full disk encryption and EFS to secure protected medical data in my practice.  Of all the features the encryption acceleration is the most important to me.  I don't know why HP left out the Core i5-600's from this line since these are socket- and chipset-compatible with the rest.  Maybe you can put a word in to the server group about it?

In the Z200 workstation line, the Core i3's and Core i5-600's are included.  However, the data sheet and QuickSpecs don't even mention the encryption acceleration that some of the Core i5-600's have.  Maybe marketing isn't aware of the feature.  I ordered a Z200 a few days ago with the Core i5-650 and the encryption acceleration is the first thing I'll evaluate.  I have a Z400 with a CPU (W3570) of the same frequency to compare it with.  

[#5]

It's March 29th and still not servers with the 5600 series.  When will they be availabel?

[#6]

The website content doesn't appear to have been updated and it is Monday. When will the info appear?

[#7]

30th March and unfortunately, no information on the HP web site.

Dell I believe has the latest details and pricing for the new Xeon 5600 processors on their site.

Any idea when HP will be making this information available please?

[#8]

All- our hp.com ProLIant pages have now been updated with info on our newest servers:

h18004.www1.hp.com/.../new.html

[#9]

The new processors still are not avilable for the DL 300 series.  When are they going to be avaialble?  Per-sales says they arenot avaialbe for another month

[#10]

I heard IBM announced their Xeon 5600 series offerings two weeks ago and are already shipping.