HP DL585 HP ProLiant DL585 G2 server technology - Page 2

Abstract The second generation (G2) HP ProLiant DL585 server offers the performance and efficiency of AMD Opteron® processors, enhanced by improvements to all major subsystems in the server. This paper explains the technologies implemented in the HP ProLiant DL585 G2 server that make it an excellent choice for enterprise customers needing increased performance and investment protection with a 64bit migration path. This paper is intended for IT professionals familiar with system administration and HP ProLiant industry-standard servers. It discusses only key technologies of the ProLiant 500-series servers. For complete specifications of each server, see the HP website at www.hp.com/go/ProLiant. Introduction For the ProLiant DL585 G2 server, HP improved upon the first-generation design by integrating higher performance components and enhancing all major subsystems in the server. The DL585 G2 provides excellent system performance by using powerful processors, on-chip memory controllers, a large memory footprint, and fully redesigned I/O and disk subsystems. The server is well suited for many computing environments: • High-performance technical computing (HPTC) • Electronic design automation (EDA)/semiconductor • Financial applications • Petrochemical applications • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications • Large database applications • Life science and material science applications • Video rendering applications Operating system support The DL585 G2 supports the following operating systems and virtualization software: • Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, or R2 Edition (32- and 64-bit) • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition • Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 • Microsoft Windows Server "Longhorn" • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 or Linux 5 • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 or Server 10 • VMWare ESX virtualization software • Microsoft Virtual Server • Xen virtualization software1 For a complete and up-to-date listing of supported OSs and versions, please visit the ProLiant OS Support Matrix at http://www.hp.com/go/supportos 1 Xen virtualization software is an open source project that allows multiple virtual machines to share the physical hardware of a single host machine. Some virtualization products run virtual machines as guests on top of a host operating system (which requires a large amount of overhead). By contrast, Xen operates as a thin layer directly on top of the underlying hardware. Xen coordinates the interaction of the virtual machines and the physical hardware. HP is a key participant in the development of Xen. For more information about the Xen project, see the xensource website at www.xensource.com 2