HP NetServer Rack Storage 12/FC Innovative technologies in HP ProLiant Gen8 se - Page 8

have to wait for the next ProLiant generation to begin utilizing them, and even can upgrade existing deployed ProLiant Gen8 servers if desired. FlexibleLOM modules available for rack servers include 4x 1 Gb Ethernet, 2x 10 Gb Ethernet, 2x InfiniBand, and FlexFabric options. HP 1 GbE and 10 GbE FlexibleNetwork Adapters for ProLiant Gen8 servers support the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) standard, which provides precise timing and synchronization over Ethernet networks, which, when implemented, can ensure that a set of servers all are in lock-step with consistent time. This can be important in certain applications such as financial transactions where multiple systems may be responsible for executing trades and the need is to log each of them in the proper sequence regardless of which system actually processed the trade. FlexibleNetwork Adapters let ProLiant Gen8 servers offload synchronization processes. So, there is minimal impact on processor performance and network bandwidth. Please note that all devices that will be handling traffic carrying the PTP information (for example, network switches) have to be IEEE 1588-compliant to participate in this scheme. Additionally, some FlexibleNetwork Adapters are Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE)-compliant. EEE increases energy efficiency by automatically adjusting adapter power consumption based on actual network traffic. During low activity, a FlexibleNetwork Adapter will enter sleep mode and use less energy than it would idling at full power. The adapter lets connected devices instantly re-engage when data transmission occurs. This can reduce adapter power consumption by up to 70%. HP ProLiant Smart Storage ProLiant Gen8 servers use HP Smart Array P-Series Controllers and H-Series Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). The servers also accommodate HP IO accelerators, which can drive down costs in high performance computing (HPC) environments. For more information about ProLiant Smart Storage technology, read the technology brief ―Selecting storage controllers: technology considerations.‖ Find it at www.hp.com/servers/technology. HP Smart Array controllers We embed HP Smart Array P-Series Controllers on the system board or offer them as low-profile cards. The controllers support the PCI Express 3.0 host interface and the 6 Gb/s SAS or 6 Gb/s SATA storage interfaces. Technology enhancements for the P-Series controllers include increased performance and Smart Array Advanced Pack (SAAP) 2.0 features. P-Series controllers also support up to 227 drives, Active Health Logging, and Predictive Spare Activation. These controllers use an embedded RAID-on-Chip (ROC). Predictive Spare Activation technology protects data by automatically servicing a predictive failure drive without degrading the fault tolerance of the RAID logical drive(s). The drive can report a predictive failure before an actual drive failure occurs. Predictive Spare Activation automatically copies the data from a predictive failure drive to a global spare drive. The copy operation reduces the time before the spare drive becomes active. After the copy completes, the predictive failure drive is marked as a drive failure. You can then remove it from the RAID set for servicing. A new feature of the Smart Array Advanced Pack 2.0 is support for Advanced Data Mirroring (ADM). ADM uses additional drives for redundancy, but data are actively read from and written to the drives. ADM allows triple mirroring of RAID 1 and 1+0 configurations, which provides the highest level of fault tolerance offered by Smart Array. ADM is over 1000 times more reliable than two-drive mirroring. Flash backed write cache (FBWC) is now standard on most Smart Array Controllers. FBWC uses a large capacitor and flash memory instead of battery power to hold write cache data. FBWC provides 8