HP announces new DL380 G6, DL360 G6
With yesterdays official announcement of the Nehalem Xeons, all major server manufacturers announced their new product lineup. HPs new announcements are equally interesting as what IBM has announced.
HP DL380 G6 Quickspecs
HP DL360 G6 Quickspecs
There are some interesting things to see there – unlike IBM, HP chose to go with 18 memory slots, allowing each CPU’s three channels to drive three memory modules. HP also offers a flash-based Memory configuration tool, that alleviates having to learn complicated placement rules.
HP also offers more disks per system, allowing a DL 380 G6 configuration with 16 2.5″ drives in 2U server. The DL360 G6 can have up to 8 2.5″ drives – that’s the same number of drives that previous generations had in a 2U form factor!
Having the ability to add lots of local storage is a good thing in smaller businesses. Larger companies probably won’t need that as much. Interestingly, HP choose to stay with a traditional BIOS with their G6 series. IBM is already offering UEFI on their x3550 M2 / x3650 M2.
Another new thing that i gleaned from those documents is the ability to choose a power supply based on the expected load of the server – making it possible to favor higher efficiency (for example, if you do not intend to have local disks in the server, as you’re planning to use your SAN).
Gerard:
HP have focused on efficiency and setup choices for virtualisation. In addition to the different wattage power supplies, each fan on the system board is independently controlled, and it linked to temp sensors in the area that each corresponding fan is located. This means that the fans are only used to cool areas that need it, determined in real time.
It’s a very good direction HP is moving towards, as we are all moving towards virtualisation and data-centre consolidation. This all ensures that each server uses as little power as possible saves massive amounts on power feeds, UPS or data-centre power allocation, in turn increasing the viability of higher density equipment in your rack!
I wonder how long it will take Dell to copy HP’s direction and claim it as their own….:)
16. April, 2009, 01:12