HP ProLiant SL270s HP Project Moonshot and the Redstone Development Server Pla - Page 2

Introduction HP Project Moonshot is a multi-year, multi-phase program designed to unlock the potential savings of extreme low-energy processors. The roots of Project Moonshot come from HP Labs' research beginning in 2008 that pioneered the idea of low-energy processors within the enterprise space. For more information about its origins, see www.hpl.hp.com/news/2011/oct-dec/moonshot.html. Project Moonshot consists of three key elements: • Low-energy server platforms • HP PathFinder program, a partner program to enable comprehensive solutions built around extreme low- energy platforms • HP Discovery Lab, where customers can test and validate their solutions The Redstone Development Server Platform is a proof-of-concept server for Project Moonshot, so that customer and partners can begin investigating the possibilities of this new architecture. The Redstone Development Server Platform leverages the existing ProLiant SL6500 chassis with server trays that can hold a mixture of storage or compute cartridges. A single tray supports up to 72 compute nodes in a single server tray, or 288 compute nodes (servers) per 4U chassis-four times the density of our space-optimized ProLiant SL platforms. Because it uses an ARM-based processor, it also has drastically reduced power requirements, approximately a tenth that of typical x86-based servers. For specific applications such as highly parallel workloads that don't make effective use of high-end CPUs, the Redstone Development Server can achieve better effective performance per watt while using a simpler, more energy-efficient, and less expensive core. We've written this paper primarily for IT managers or technology decision makers that have or are contemplating extreme scale-out applications in their data centers. The paper gives an overview of the Project Moonshot program and describes the architecture of the Redstone Development Server Platform. It explains some of the target workloads we expect to benefit most from a platform like the Redstone Development Server Platform. Challenges facing today's hyperscale data center Many things that we do every day-such as checking email accounts, posting onto social media sites, browsing web pages, and searching web indexes or portals-are not compute-intensive. They do, however, have high I/O throughput and memory footprint requirements. IT architects working at this scale typically use cluster techniques to run massively parallel workloads that distribute data across many nodes, often in cloud environments. Using typical server x86 CPUs-designed for compute-intensive enterprise applications-in these environments means underutilizing compute capacity and wasting energy. Distributed workloads in cloud environments often run at low processor utilization levels of 20% or less, yet administrators pay for the cost of a premium CPU. Virtualization can address the low CPU utilization problem if you can consolidate multiple workloads that are somewhat balanced, such as enterprise applications or infrastructure-as-a-service. Virtualization does not adequately address the needs of scale-out applications and web serving, where the I/O component is much larger and the amount of processing required per unit of data is much smaller. In these environments, consolidating through virtualization effectively reduces the network, memory, and I/O bandwidth per unit of data, which makes the large I/O problem worse. Project Moonshot takes the approach of using energy-efficient CPUs that balance performance and cost to match the needs of data-intensive applications. Another issue that overwhelms IT managers in hyperscale environments is the sheer number of devices they must manage, power, and cool. With today's rack-mount x86 platforms, you can have between 20 and 40 servers in a 42U rack. Scale-out optimized platforms like HP ProLiant SL can increase the density to 80 servers in each rack. Each server comes with its own management controller, network controllers, storage controllers, OS instance, device drivers, and so on. So every time you add a server, you must also procure 2