Outlook Series | HP Launches Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) Portfolio

HP Launches Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) Portfolio

June 10, 2009

The HP Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio has been launched. Companies with “scale-out” business models such as these, which operate with thousands of servers, are pushing the limits of current technology solutions. The HP ExSO portfolio, which includes a new lightweight, super-efficient, modular systems architecture and spans data center solutions, services and support, helps these customers reduce costs, improve facility efficiency and dramatically accelerate time to market on a massive scale. The portfolio enables these customers to save more than $152.8 million in reduced capital expenditures and $13.7 million in energy costs.

At the core of the HP ExSO portfolio is the HP ProLiant SL server family, which uses a ”skinless” systems architecture that replaces the traditional chassis and rack form factors with an extremely lightweight rail and tray design. As a result, customers can dramatically reduce capital, facilities and shipping costs while using a fraction of the space normally required in a data center. Additionally, its ultra-efficient, modular design enables customers to quickly and easily build solutions that meet extreme scale-out workload requirements.

With the HP ProLiant SL portfolio, customers can cut acquisition costs by 10 percent and power draw by 28 percent, while doubling their compute density.

“Customers with scale-out business models need solutions that make every dollar, watt and square foot in the data center count,” said Christine Reischl, senior vice president and general manager, Industry Standard Servers, HP. “The HP ProLiant SL offers pioneering customers like these the most significant design innovation since the blade form factor, allowing them to achieve an economy of scale never before possible.”

The HP ProLiant SL server family offers a breakthrough in server architecture designed specifically for extreme-scale environments. The solution offers customers the following benefits:

Exceptional energy savings – consolidated power and cooling infrastructure and unique air flow design uses 28 percent less power per server than traditional rack-based servers. This can result in a savings of $4.1 million a year in energy costs Overall, the system uses 52,000 fewer megawatts per year, which is enough energy savings to power more than 4,600 average U.S. households for a year.
Ultra-lightweight design – reductions in the metal used in the ProLiant SL servers decrease weight by 31 percent. This dramatically reduces shipping costs, data center floor support requirements and overall facility construction costs. It also eliminates 838.5 tons of server hardware, or the equivalent of nearly four and a half Boeing 747 jets, from a scale-out data center.
Modular configurations – provide rapid installation and deployment through swappable “compute trays.” The new compute architecture delivers double the density with up to 672 processor cores and 10 terabytes of capacity per 42U rack. Built on industry standards, the servers allow customers to easily mix and match storage and compute components to meet the requirements of their applications.
Reduced cost-to-scale – volume packaging significantly reduces acquisition costs for customers who require thousands of server nodes. This adds up to a total savings in capital expenditure of $14.5 million in a scale-out data center.

“Businesses built on extreme scale-out environments, such as cloud, Web 2.0 and HPC, operate at maximum transaction volume and low margins,” said Michelle Bailey, research vice president, IDC. “These customers have very distinct and unique data center requirements, specifically around energy efficiency, cost and time to market. The introduction of technology solutions such as the ExSO portfolio from HP are specifically addressing customer requirements for optimizing capitol expenditures while lowering ongoing operating costs. As a result, these solutions are helping to redefine data center economics.”

To further maximize cost savings for scale-out environments, customers need tools that provide a higher level of visibility into and control of facilities operations. The HP Data Center Environmental Edge solution offers a complete visual mapping of environmental variables so customers can quickly identify and take action on data center inefficiencies. This results in an additional energy cost savings of up to $2.4 million per year and a return on investment within 12 months.

HP Data Center Environmental Edge uses a system of wireless sensors placed throughout a data center to monitor a variety of variables, such as temperature, humidity, air pressure and power utilization. The system provides real-time visualization of environmental variables so administrators can perform root cause analysis to eliminate excess operational costs.

Additional new services for ExSO environments provide customers with a customized engagement experience through their entire technology lifecycle. Packaged ExSO services include scheduled on-site repair options, on-site seed inventory of parts and installation services specifically designed for environments that support thousands of servers. These services can be customized to match customer needs.

In addition, the company’s leasing and lifecycle asset management services subsidiary, HP Financial Services, helps customers expand or renew their IT infrastructures with the entire line of ExSO offerings through flexible leasing and financing solutions.

HP’s existing scale-out computing portfolio includes the HP ProLiant DL1000 Multi Node servers, introduced on June 2, the HP POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter), HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System and the HP ProLiant 2x220c double-density blade server introduced last year.