HP dons blades to scale Superdome 2 After several months of not talking about it in the wake of Intel's February launch of the "Tukwila" quad-core Itanium 9300 processors, Hewlett-Packard is finally describing what those machines will be. At the HP Technology@Work 2010 conference, which is being held from April 26 through 29 in Frankfurt, Germany, HP is …
OpenVMS customers is who would put an Itanium box in a remote office.
One of the best kept secrects in the Itanium world. Probably the best clustering technology going. You would be amazed as to whom uses it and what they use it for, but lets just say that if the cluster failed pretty much everyone would know about it!
Good thing the cluster has been up for the past 15 years with zero downtime including hardware upgrades (Alpha to Itanium)!
Anon for obvious reason!
"Probably the best clustering technology going. You would be amazed as to whom uses it and what they use it for, but lets just say that if the cluster failed pretty much everyone would know about it!"
I agree. On my large financial company, we have one of our world famous large system on OpenVMS clusters.
".....If you were expecting spec sheets, data sheets, and loads of information on all the new Tukwila systems, you are bound to be disappointed...." TPM needs to check the hp website, he would have found the spec sheets, prices, installation manuals, user manuals, in fact everything he said wasn't there. It seems to have been up there from the day of launch.
Hi Matt,
Could you point to any information on the Superdome 2? I can't seem to find the spec or datasheet for it at all. All I can see is a link to "Have a sales expert contact me". Same for the rx2800 i2. There's not much information about the new Blade systems either.
Also, I don't see any benchmarks released except for a TPC-H@1000GB benchmark which HP compared to a 2 year old Enterprise M9000 and where there are hardly any competitive results. HP seems to have avoided the one at 3000GB since there is a POWER6 result there. Where are all the other common benchmarks like SAP-SD, Specint_rate, specfp_rate, specjbb, TPC-C etc.
".....Could you point to any information on the Superdome 2?...." Nope. If I try www.hp.com/go/superdome2 I get a static page with just the "contact a sales advisor link". Off the main (old) Superdome page there is a link to a brochure (http://h20341.www2.hp.com/integrity/downloads/HP_Integrity_Superdome2_TPCH-1TB_April2010.pdf) but is little more than the type of pretty picture exercise you throw at management to keep them quiet. I suppose you'll just have to call the advisor.
".....Also, I don't see any benchmarks released except for a TPC-H@1000GB benchmark which HP compared to a 2 year old Enterprise M9000...." Personally, I don't put much value in vendor benchmarks, but if it floats your boat I'm sure there will be plenty out soon.
".....HP seems to have avoided the one at 3000GB since there is a POWER6 result there....." Ah, I think I see now why you wouldn't want to call that advisor. If you want to imply that hp won't have posted a bench result just to avoid a P6 one then all I can do is smile. Seeing as the last generation of hp Integrity with Montvale Itaniums sold well against P6/P6+ pSeries I doubt if hp are too worried about comparisons with a chip design that IBM have turned their back on (the P7 is a return to the out-of-order P5 core design, away from the deadend of P6).
/SP&L
"Nope. If I try www.hp.com/go/superdome2 I get a static page with just the "contact a sales advisor link"
So basically your previous comment where you said there were spec sheet and datasheets on the HP site is completely incorrect. You should apologize to TPM.
"Seeing as the last generation of hp Integrity with Montvale Itaniums sold well against P6/P6+ pSeries"
HP lost marketshare against IBM during the 2007-2009 period.
".....So basically your previous comment where you said there were spec sheet and datasheets on the HP site is completely incorrect....." Oh, there's a spec sheet, it's just not one most technical people would find very useful. I'm sure you'd think it was quite informative, though.
"....You should apologize to TPM....." Why? There is plenty of info on the hp webby that seems to have been there since the launch date which TPM seems to have completely missed. I'm putting his missing it down to laziness, of course. But, if you feel the need for an apology, why don't you IBMers apologise for the appalling level of FUD you foist on us users?
"....HP lost marketshare against IBM during the 2007-2009 period." Strange that Gartner and IDC don't agree with you. Even stranger considering the recent Gartner article here on the Reg that showed that the average hp Integrity server was more expensive than the average Power server, which implies hp were also selling more of the top-end solutions than IBM. So, who do I believe, IDC and Gartner or a frothing IBM troll....? I'm guessing you're so deluded you really think it should be you!
By the way, since you're so upset about spec sheets, where is the IBM datasheet for the P795, the supposed competitor to Superdome2? I can't find it on the IBM webby, so please do something unusual for you and actually be useful and find it for us all. Don't worry, we won't miss you whilst you're gone.
/SP&L
Hi Matt,
You still haven't shown me any spec sheets. Your entire first post is a lie. Where is the plenty of info? There seems to be no info on the new machines at all except for some marketing fluff and links to get a HP person to call you.
Also, in case you didn't notice IBM did gain UNIX marketshare over HP in the 2007-2009 period. IBM is currently has by far the largest marketshare thanks to the Power6. No amount of lies you can sporut will change that.
"By the way, since you're so upset about spec sheets, where is the IBM datasheet for the P795, the supposed competitor to Superdome2"
Unlike HP, IBM have not announced the P795. I don't expect them to have datasheets if they haven't announced it. HP has announced new machines but with no real technical information about them at all as well as hardly any benchmarks.
"....You still haven't shown me any spec sheets......" Blimey, you are thick aren't you! There are manuals and spec sheets on the Integrity pages at hp.com. Try here for a start:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/c-class-integrity-bladeservers.html
Then look here for the BL860c i2 Quickspecs:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13624_na/13624_na.html
Here's the same for the BL870c i2:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13620_na/13620_na.html
And the big-daddy blade BL890c i2:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13619_na/13619_na.html
I suspect you will need an adult to cut'n'paste those links for you. Once you've read those, disconnect your PC from the 'net and go stick your head up your rectum. If you couldn't find those items (assuming you even bothered looking) you are simply a complete waste of oxygen.
".....IBM did gain UNIX marketshare over HP in the 2007-2009 period....." As I said before, the analysts that people listen to (i.e., not you) do not agree.
"....IBM is currently has by far the largest marketshare thanks to the Power6....." Get a grip! Even I'll admit Sun has the largest installed base due to the mass of old UltraSPARC out there, not IBM. Even if you mean in sales the last year then you're still wrong as hp did more of the high-end deals and made more money, whilst IBM sold their P6 kit "heavily discounted" (i.e., at a loss) to clear stock before the P7 kit arrived.
"....IBM have not announced the P795...." So all that male bovine manure you lot have been sprouting about P7 beating the new Superdome2 is complete cobblers then, seeing as you don't actually have a top-end P7 system to put up against the new Superdome! Am I surprised you lot have been caught out talking from your nether regions? No.
/SP&L
I still don't see any Superdome 2 or RX2800 spec sheets. I have already said there was some information about the blades.
Also, the latest information I can find still shows IBM outselling HP Unix server in revenue by 50%. The 2009 Q3 share is 39.5% IBM and 26.2% HP. Where are you getting your information from?
Also, IBM does not need to release the p795 at this moment. The old POWER6 p595 already outperforms the Superdome 2. ie. the P595 gets a higher TPC-H score than the Superdome 2 in the more demanding TPC-H@3000GB (156K) compared to the Superdome 2 result@1000GB (140K). It likely the reason HP doesn't want to do a TPC-H@3000GB benchmark.
I'm really not sure if you think you're beng funny or just are a complete twit, too frothed up to realise how stupid you sound.
"I still don't see any Superdome 2 or RX2800 spec sheets....." I didn't say the SD2 or rx2800 spec sheets were up there. TPM said there were no spec sheets at all, I corrected him by pointing out there were plenty of spec sheets and manuals for the blades, then you waded in like a complete ignoramous and insisted there were no sheets up at all. Try READING the posts before raging. I think you should get Snowy to do your research from now on, even a dog could do a better job!
".....Also, the latest information I can find...." Where, up you anus? Post a link or shutup. I'm guessing you're looking at Q2 for 2009 when the market was down 32% overall but IBM actually gained a whisker of share. Yet Gartner and IDC both have hp holding UNIX marketshare over the year, so if IBM made share it was at the expense of Sun/Fujitsu.
".....IBM does not need to release the p795 at this moment...." With hp taking the high-end deals, IBM most certainly do need to get the P795 out as fast as possible. The truth is IBM aren't ready to launch it yet. They dragged the Power7 launch forward two months because they were scared of Nehalem and Tukzilla getting out before P7, but they couldn't drag the P795 launch forward.
"......The old POWER6 p595 already outperforms the Superdome 2...." More horse manure. If that was true then hp would never have sold a single one and IBM would actually have a presence in the high-end. Want to go back to the Java bench I posted above? Want to see how really bad it gets for IBM if the same bench is run on even the old Superdome against P6? I can tell you because we have run a real Java-based app on both, and the SD buried the P595. Just because IBM can rig a test to get a few fast bench results in a carefully crafted lab environment, doesn't mean they can do the same in the real World with real apps and real customer data. And even in their labs they can't match Itanium for benchmarks lik the Java one above, so you really are talking a complete load of cobblers if you think a P595 could outperform an SD2 in every case.
Tintin is supposed to be a great boy detective, not just an inexperienced and demonstrative child. You really need to try harder if you're going to taint Herge's finest.
/SP&L
"I didn't say the SD2 or rx2800 spec sheets were up there"
What you said was: "TPM needs to check the hp website, he would have found the spec sheets, prices, installation manuals, user manuals, in fact everything he said wasn't there"
That sentence lead me to believe that everything is up on the HP website, which it certainly isn't. Nice backpedaling there though.
"Post a link or shutup"
Well you haven't posted any links at all and your previous statement of "montvale sold well against power6" , You don't have any numbers at all.
Here are some links for Q3 2009:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/188951/ibm_hp_servers_wont_stop_x86_onslaught_on_unix.html
IBM: 39.5%
HP: 29.2%
http://blog.itchannelplanet.com/2010/02/ibm-credits-customer-migration.html
Q4 2009:
IBM: +4%
HP:?
"I can tell you because we have run a real Java-based app on both, and the SD buried the P595."
WTF, I am supposed to take your word on this? The industry relies on standard benchmark comparisons which each vendor will run to show off its systems in the best light. In these comparisons the Superdome is buried by the P595. If what you say is true (that HP is faster in performance), why doesn't HP release benchmarks to prove this?
In another thread I posted benchmark on industry standard benchmarks comparing the Power6 p595 and the available results for HP's Superdome. Here they are again in case you missed it:
specInt_rate2006
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2080
128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1650
POWER6 is 2.52x faster / core
specfp_rate2006
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 2,110
128 core HP 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 1,480
POWER6 is 2.85x faster / core
specJbb2005
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 3,435,485
128 core HP 1.6hz Itanium Superdome - 2,054,864
POWER6 is 3.35x faster / core
SAP-SD 2 tier
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 35,400 users
64 core 1.6Ghz HP Itanium Superdome - 9,265 users
POWER6 is 3.82x faster / core
TPC-C
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 6,085,166
128 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 4,092,799
POWER6 is 2.97x faster / core
TPC-H@3000GB
64 core 5.0Ghz POWER6 P595 - 156,537
64 core 1.6Ghz Itanium Superdome - 60,359
POWER6 is 2.6x faster / core
Care to explain why your precious Superdome is mauled by the supposedly inferior performing IBM Power6 595? As I said, post proof which I have done instead and just always saying:
"HP is faster, I've benchmarked them myself and trust me, it is faster" type of proof.
"By the way, since you're so upset about spec sheets, where is the IBM datasheet for the P795, the supposed competitor to Superdome2? I can't find it on the IBM webby, so please do something unusual for you and actually be useful and find it for us all. Don't worry, we won't miss you whilst you're gone."
Why would you try to compare the 16 socket SD2 with the p795 ? I mean the performance stuff (TPC-H)f we have heard about the SD2 looks more like it needs to be compared with machines like the power 780 and the (now with nehalem-EX ) PrimeQuest 1800E.
Surely the SD2 in a 16 socket config would be no match what so ever to the POWER 780, on performance.
// Jesper
Matt Bryant will have to answer yes or no to the "FUD" on Tuesday
1) HP will only announce blade Tukwila systems...no rack based systems
=> We showed a picture of the rx2800
2) HP will not mention Linux in regards to Tukwila systems...ignoring Suse even though only Redhat dropped support
=> Linux? who needs Linux
3) The Tukwila blades will not have SX3000 glue chips so the 8 socket system will require chip hopping as Tukwila only has 5 QPI's
=> ok so only buy the 860 or 870
4) vPar will not be supported wtih Tukwila
=> vPars are static 90% of the time anyways so thats the same as a blade
5) The "Scalable bladelink" is a big connection on the front of the blades which will restrict airflow
=> We had to do that to keep it in the same blade enclosure
6) The BL860 is 8 core, 24 DIMM slots 2 hot swap SAS HDDs 4 GBe and 3 PCIi
=> Yes
BL870 is two BL860s and BL890 is four BL860's cobbled together
=> yes but I would not say cobbled....they have a bladelink
7) The blades will only supports 4GB dimms at release, 8 GB is 3Q 2010, 16GB is 4Q 2010
=> Yes, but 8GB is expensive
8) The Superdome2 has a cute little LCD in the door...maybe HP will give a preview
=> Yes Superdome2 is a great preview. Dates, availability and specs will be later but has a cool rack door.
9) HP will try to slow the defections off of HP-UX by offering socket based pricing but since Tukwila is only 4 cores per chips its not that big of a deal
=> yes coolness
10) Open VMS is not supported till Q3 2010
+> yes...but OVMS customers are never in a hurry
11) nPars is 2Q 2011 and vPar is NEVER
=> Yes....Partitioning is old technology anyways
12) if you want to upgrade a 860 to a 870 or a 870 to a 890 you have to wait for the field upgrade kits in Q1 2011
=> Yes but you can also buy what you need now
13) Want to do FCoE? You have to wait till Q2 2011
=> Yes..but FCoE is over blown and not standard. You want to dump CISCO anyways
Beware of pale imitations!
"....Linux? who needs Linux...." <Yawn> Please go check whom is the leading Linux server vendor and I think you'll still find it is hp by a country mile, as it has been for many years.
"....ok so only buy the 860 or 870...." Interesting that the IBMers are FUDing the 8-socket blade and Superdome2 so hard. By the way, when it IBM going to release an 8-socket Power7 blade? And how big will the new top-end pSeries be when it finally gets here - a whole rack?
"....=> yes but I would not say cobbled....they have a bladelink...." Hold on a sec, didn't you IBMers state that hp wouldn't be able to link the blades together without sx3000? Sounds like you need to do more research for your next FUD guide.
".....=> Yes, but 8GB is expensive...." And will run at full frequency in the new Integrity blades, not 20% speed crippled as in the IBM Power7 blades, which will have 30% speed crippled cores anyway. All that crippling is so IBM can keep the heat and power within the low limits that the H-chassis can cope with. If you have an alternative explanation I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.
".....=> Yes Superdome2 is a great preview. Dates, availability and specs will be later but has a cool rack door....." Specs are out, did you miss that bit? Want me to translate the spec sheet into monosyllabic words for you? And the Superdome2 looks like a big blade chassis that I am looking forward to racking it into a regular cab rather than the extra-wide ones the old SDs came in. Not really too bothered whether it looks "cool" as I'm hoping it will be as reliable as the ones we have now, which means once it's racked in I probably won't have to actually go look at it for a long time. Not surprised you IBMers want something "cool" or "pretty" seeing as you have to spend so much more time with IBM Global Screwups fixing your "solutions".
".....=> Yes....Partitioning is old technology anyways...." Yes, please do go there, we'd all like to laugh if you try and compare the IBM tech to hp's Partitioning Continuum. Face it - even without vpars, hp-ux still has a massively better partitioning and virtualising solution than IBM. Please refer back to my query regarding whether Power7 will actually have real hardware partitioning with electrical isolation, I beleive you IBMers have avoided answering that one for quite a while.
"....=> Yes but you can also buy what you need now..." Well, you can if you do your sizing right rather than blindly believing IBM's benchmarks. Strange that rPerf doesn't reflect IBM's own benchmark FUD.
"....=> Yes..but FCoE is over blown and not standard....." Surely you can try harder than that? Are you seriously going to argue that customers should implement non-standardised kit they may have to swap out in a year's time? Oh, sorry, I forgot - you flog IBM kit! You're used to having to swap it out yearly when it doesn't do the job!
"....You want to dump CISCO anyways" Well, it might be an idea to look at the new hp networking gear seeing as hp offers one-throat-to-choke for your datacenter and front-office hardware. Oh, sorry, you probably didn't want me to point that out seeing as IBM had to pull out of the desktop market, are gradually pulling out of the x64 server market (how much of it is being passed to Lenovo?), and doesn't have an inhouse networking capability.
/SP&L
"<Yawn> Please go check whom is the leading Linux server vendor and I think you'll still find it is hp by a country mile, as it has been for many years."
Ehh.. Sure HP runs a sh*tload of Linux servers on x86, but that isn't really relevant with regards to Itanium, and Integrity. You are being evasive.
"Interesting that the IBMers are FUDing the 8-socket blade and Superdome2 so hard. By the way, when it IBM going to release an 8-socket Power7 blade? "
I think it's great a great feat that HP has put 8 sockets in a blade. Quite a feat. But it still doesn't change that Tukwila is slow compared to the competition. IMHO a 8 socket blade is a irrelevant products, that is starved on IO and memory. I mean 384GB for a 8 socket blade server, compared to for example 512GB for a 4 socket power 750 says it all.
"And will run at full frequency in the new Integrity blades, not 20% speed crippled as in the IBM Power7 blades, which will have 30% speed crippled cores anyway. "
Again who cares if the tukwila chips runs at full speed in the blades, a "20% speed crippled" POWER7 processor will still beat the living daylight out of a Tukwila processor and then still have juice to spare. Your arguments are hollow, and you know it.
"All that crippling is so IBM can keep the heat and power within the low limits that the H-chassis can cope with. If you have an alternative explanation I'm sure we'd all love to hear it."
Please document, and please do not just post links to HP's the real story.
"Not surprised you IBMers want something "cool" or "pretty" seeing as you have to spend so much more time with IBM Global Screwups fixing your "solutions"."
That is pretty low, I hardly see the fact that you can buy consultants that can help you as something bad, I mean it's not like HPUX consultants are easy to get your hands on.
".....=> Yes....Partitioning is old technology anyways...." Yes, please do go there, we'd all like to laugh if you try and compare the IBM tech to hp's Partitioning Continuum. Face it - even without vpars, hp-ux still has a massively better partitioning and virtualising solution than IBM. Please refer back to my query regarding whether Power7 will actually have real hardware partitioning with electrical isolation, I beleive you IBMers have avoided answering that one for quite a while.
You've gotta be kidding... *CACLE*
Electrical isolation my butt. So only using npars you mean that you need two whole boards to run just a single partition. You don't really understand what benefit the hypervisor brings you do you ?
When you have a CPU that fries on a HPUX box, the OS has to handle it, which quickly turns it into a incident. On a POWER box the Hypervisor handles it for you, and if you have setup things right then none of your virtual machines will be the wiser.
And HPVM which is basically HPUX running inside HPUX. Sure hp tries to pitch it against the Hypervisors from SUN and IBM. But in fact it has more in common with Wpars and containers.
HP is years behind IBM and SUN.
"....=> Yes but you can also buy what you need now..." Well, you can if you do your sizing right rather than blindly believing IBM's benchmarks. Strange that rPerf doesn't reflect IBM's own benchmark FUD.
Ehhh ? Can we get an example please ? You obvious has no idea about what you are talking about.
// Jesper
"....but that isn't really relevant with regards to Itanium, and Integrity....." Really? So you missed the bit where hp has sold five times as many Integrity servers with Linux as IBM has iSeries then? Not surprised, really, seeing as most Power fanbois don't even talk Linux, they just warble on about AIX on Power, just like the Sunshiners used to go on about Slowaris on SPARC. Of course, it does beg the question how much IBM are paying the Linux disties to keep Power versions of Linux alive - is IBM looking to keep an escape route option?
".....But it still doesn't change that Tukwila is slow compared to the competition...." And you benched both bits of kit.... Oh, you haven't! So, who's talking sh*t?
"....I mean it's not like HPUX consultants are easy to get your hands on....." Just think about that statement for a minute - there's plenty of installed hp-ux base out there, so if it's hard to find a consultant doesn't that imply most customers are happy doing the work themselves, i.e., it is a lot easier with hp-ux? Then again, actually thinking about it might do you some harm, best if you just keep those IBM blinkers on and assume everyone needs the equivalent of a year of IBM GS to get a solution implemented.
".....You don't really understand what benefit the hypervisor brings you do you ?...." Oh I do, but I also understand the limitations of sharing hardware between OS instances, especially in mission critical roles. I'm not surprised you want to avoid the subject as you probably already know the P7 kit coming is going to be just as unable to provide electrically-isolated hardware partitions as the P6 kit it replaces. Don't worry, I'm sure EDS won't use that against you the next time you go up against them....
Oh, and as an aside to the other IBM trolls, please note that TPM states that vPars are supported with the new Integrity kit. You really need to find some better FUD.
".....When you have a CPU that fries on a HPUX box, the OS has to handle it, which quickly turns it into a incident......" Says who? If you have TiCAP you don't even notice as the server simply deactivates the bad core or CPU and replaces it with an inactive one.
"....On a POWER box the Hypervisor handles it for you, and if you have setup things right then none of your virtual machines will be the wiser....." Fantastic! And how many years after hp-ux on Integrity had that capability? Three? Four? In fact, seeing as hp-ux can handle it much better through tools like PRM and GWLM, which have also been available for years, I'd have to say AIX7.x and P7 still won't have caught up.
"....Can we get an example please ?...." Glad you asked. How about the P5+ to P6 leap, you remember that? Remember how IBM was telling customers that they would see "more than twice the performance" because the clock speed had gone up by 2.2 times? Yeah, right! Of course, rPerf let the cat out of the bag when it showed the actual gain was more like 40%! Just for you, Jesper, seeing as you do like your FUD, take a trip over to hp's Elmer site and look at the following:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/messaging/realstory-ibm-power6.html
Then be a good troll, put your stones away and go to bed before you break any more IBM windows.
/SP&L.
"Really? So you missed the bit where hp has sold five times as many Integrity servers with Linux as IBM has iSeries then?"
Eh ? links please ?
"And you benched both bits of kit.... Oh, you haven't! So, who's talking sh*t?"
Oh I forgot you won't believe any sizing tools, benchmarks, it's all a conspiracy :)=
"Then again, actually thinking about it might do you some harm, best if you just keep those IBM blinkers on and assume everyone needs the equivalent of a year of IBM GS to get a solution implemented."
*CACLE* You forget where I work, I work in the outsourcing business in a little country, we don't always have the manpower to handle the peak requirements for AIX skills in my depardement. Nor do we have enough Oracle or DB2 skills to handle peak requirements. For me it's great that I can call IBM ITS and get a few skilled AIX consultants. It is something that makes it easier for me to rely on POWER rather than having to go and find Solaris or HPUX consultants on the grey marked. Sure this might be a purely small country problem, that I can't get people from HP or SUN here. But it is a problem for me.
"Oh I do, but I also understand the limitations of sharing hardware between OS instances, especially in mission critical roles."
Eh what are you talking about ? There are virtually no limits on POWER for this ?
"...TiCAP you don't even notice as the server simply deactivates the bad core or CPU and replaces it with an inactive one." and
"Fantastic! And how many years after hp-ux on Integrity had that capability? Three? Four? "
So you are talking about traditional deactivation of CPU's that suffers from soft errors, something that both HP and IBM servers have been able to do for many years, 10+ AFAIR. Where they have deallocated the failing CPU (based on threasholds of LPMC/Softerrors) and then configure in a TiCap or Cuod CPU. Works quite well on both platforms.
But again you don't understand what a hypervisor can do for you. there are serious limitiations on using TiCap to replace CPU's with soft errors, and the same goes for Cuod Processors on POWER, if used in the traditional way.
You do have to have Spare TiCAP capacity for each partition on your machine, as you are surely using electricical isolation, so worst that is what a socket on each board if you are using npar ?
Furthermore TiCap is only rx7640 or larger.
What about the partitions that only has one CPU (Only a Monarch/CPU 0/boot) processor?
What about stuff that is not LPMC, in practice detecteable parity errors, but HPMC errors ? On a current POWER6 or POWER7 the processor is able not only to retry a failed instruction but also to move it to another processor where it then can then execute without errors. Sure this is not lockstepping as you will do on a But on the other hand it doesn't cost you half the processor in your system, and it is available on UNIX. Not only on Tandem.
And you also have to install and manage the TiCap software.
And what if you don't have TiCap capacity, and you have a physical core that fails in a production system......
Now on a POWER sytem what you would do is you would simply make sure that the sum of entitled capacity for all virtual machines was the number of physical processors -1. This would have virtually no impact on your capacity cause the 1 Processor could still be used, but the system wouldn't guarentee you it. If you then have a core that fails, then you wouldn't even notice it. No action would have to be done besides a hot hardware replacement, if your system is a power 770 or higher.
And if you've been smart, on for example a power 770 then you have a VIO server in each CEC drawer, hence when you have to replace a CPU card in that CEC and the SUM of your entitled capacity is less than 75% of the machine you simply power the VIO server in question quice the CEC drawer replace the card and power things up again.
Now if the sum of your entitle capacity equal to the sum of your processors, or lets say a whole CEC drawer needed to be deallocated, then the hypervisor is so clever that it looks at the priority of your systems, hence it will kill off your test, development whatever systems to try to keep your productions running. Now that is pretty clever.
"In fact, seeing as hp-ux can handle it much better through tools like PRM and GWLM, which have also been available for years, "I'd have to say AIX7.x and P7 still won't have caught up."
Again it seems like you haven't really looked at what have happened with power since POWER4. I can move my workloads between physical machines on POWER6-7, without actual downtime.
I don't need the whole Tivoli package from IBM to do that. The last place I 'worked', I did a analysis of all the POWER Gear, and it could actually run inside 2 POWER6 power 595, now if we migrated all the SUN and HP stuff then the whole UNIX workload could have run inside 4-6 physical machines. You don't need GWLM or PRM for such an environment, it's all buildin to the systems... But as usual local management paniced, cause it would be 'to' effective, and they would loose power... but that is how the corporate battlefield work. And now I do the same for the competition... *grin*
So sure if you want to pay HP or IBM for PRM/GWLM/Tivoli whatever..feel free, and where did you work ? I would love to give your company an outsourcing offer.... you seem to be using ALOT of money on IT.
"Remember how IBM was telling customers that they would see "more than twice the performance" because the clock speed had gone up by 2.2 times? Yeah, right! Of course, rPerf let the cat out of the bag when it showed the actual gain was more like 40%! Just for you, Jesper, seeing as you do like your FUD, take a trip over to hp's Elmer site and look at the following:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/messaging/realstory-ibm-power6.html"
So your great trumpf card is 'The Real Story' from HP. *CACKLE*
Lets debunk their/your claim by quoting the HP site:
"Fact 2: IBM’s commercial performance metric for POWER (System p) servers (rPerf ) show that IBM’s POWER6 has not delivered anywhere near two-times (2X) performance per core even though the frequency has more than doubled.
Look at the rperf for the 64 core p595 (POWER5+) and 64 core POWER 595 (POWER6). The frequency of the processor increased by 2.2X but rPerf increased just 41 percent"
Now lets see what the actual IBM press release says that they are quoting.
(http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21580.wss):
"At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6™ processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5™ while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half."
Ok, so you've blindly quoted a HP marketing site. Without actually checking the facts. You do know that POWER5™ and POWER5+™ are two different things right ? The IBM announcement letter clearly states that it is POWER6 versus POWER5. NOT POWER5+. So. either HP can't really read or.. then it's FUD. Take you pick. It's hilarious.
And just to make the point that the terms POWER5™ and POWER5+™ are something different and that IBM uses POWER5+™ when talking about POWER5+™, then look at this annoumcent letter:
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/8/897/ENUS107-288/ENUS107288.PDF
And if you then look at the rPerfs of the POWER5 versus POWER6 then:
The POWER5 p570 with 16 processor at 1.9GHz does 59.57 rPerf and a POWER6 power 570 with 16 processors at 4.7 GHz does 134.35 in rPerf. 235.54 for the p595 versus 553.01 for the power 595 both at 64 cores etc etc...
*CACKLE* and funny enough almost all your favorite preachings of bad things about power are listed here. So this is where you get your 'facts'.
What more do you need debunked ?
// Jesper
No, the proof is it is really easy find counters to your weak FUD. Not only that, but that hp's customers have reported so many instances of the same, repeated FUD that hp put up a website just to make it easy for everyone to see how silly that FUD is. Enjoy!
"....Oh I forgot you won't believe any sizing tools, benchmarks, it's all a conspiracy :)=..." No, I think that some salespeople (and outsourcers) would be a lot happier if us customers just accepted what you said as gospel rather than insisting on POCs. After all, we do know how much harder it makes it for you to screw us customers over if we first make you prove you can actually do what you claim you can. Which you usually can't. Hey, I wonder if EDS do POCs....!
".....I work in the outsourcing business in a little country...." Yeah, I know, I've done contract work in Denmark before. And Holland, France and Germany. Mostly hp-ux. I'm not surprised you're completely reliant on IBM TS given the quality of knowledge - or lack ot if - you have displayed here. I expect EDS is going to be happilly meeting and beating you in many deals to come!
"...Works quite well on both platforms...." Worked on hp-ux long before AIX, and CUOD support was not abvailable with HACMP until November 2008 (well, announced then, I'm told it wasn't actually working until a lot later). Your feature sell just failed, try again!
"....And you also have to install and manage the TiCap software...." Less than five minutes on swinstall, and then can be run by single line commands or via SAM or the web interface SMH. You can even do the swinstall work via SMH. I suppose clicking on a link is too much work in Denmark, you have to call in IBM TS to do it for you?
"....But again you don't understand what a hypervisor can do for you...." No, you completely failed to explain any feature that made it in any way better than npars and/or IVM (you conveniently forgot that IVM does sub-CPU granular virtualisation inside npars), and then completely avoided the big advantage of npars - electrical isolation. That means if the power components on a cell board in one npar go pop they don't affect the boards in other npars. With the IBM method, one power issue affects everything in the server. And seeing as IBM love chucking non-redundant and non-discrete components all over their designs (remember those old IBM blade backplanes?), it is a problem just waiting to strike.
"....Furthermore TiCap is only rx7640 or larger...." Well, seeing as anything below the rx7640 is a four-socket or less that's hardly surprising. Below that level there really is no call for it, customers just use IVM, PRM and WLM to ensure they have resource available for key applications. Not surprised you didn't know that. After all, you live in Denmark and have to send out for consultants with hp knowledge. And Sun, and IBM. Actually, do you have any skills in Denmark?
"....I can move my workloads between physical machines on POWER6-7, without actual downtime....." Not the same as what the combination of IVM, PRM and WLM can offer, which allows you to avoid having to move workloads between servers. And they all work and integrate together with hp's monitoring and reporting software, not like the hodgepodge of IBM tools.
"....And what if you don't have TiCap capacity, and you have a physical core that fails in a production system......" Not much. With hp-ux it just deactivates the core, sends out an alert and carries on. If you have PRM and WLM, then hp-ux realligns CPU and memory resources on the fly to keep your key apps running within agreed SLA limits.
".....This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent ...." So you failed maths in school too? Please try and explain how 40% (your rPerf figure) suddenly equates to a 100% increase in performance? Oh, and Power5+ was the previous generation to Power6. Go check the definition of "previous" in a dictionary. Power5 introduced 2004, P5+ late 2005, P6 2007 - so P5+ preceded, was prior to, and was the previous version to P6. But if you want to compare to Power5 it's even worse - best P5 was 2.2GHz, P6 is 4.7GHz, gain per core is still only 41% for over 100% increase in clock. It would have been even worse if IBM had managed to deliver the production 5GHz P6 they promised. Whilst unstable prototypes hit 6GHz in the labs, IBM just couldn't make a stable version that didn't cook itself, hence the limit of 4.2GHz in the IBM P6 blades. It's even worse with P7 where they had to throttle the blade CPUs back down to 3GHz.
"....The POWER5 p570 with 16 processor at 1.9GHz ...and a POWER6 power 570 with 16 processors at 4.7 GHz...." LOL!! You even try and compare the oldest and slowest P5 chips to the fastest P6 to try and make the P6 look good! That's just dishonest.
"....What more do you need debunked ?" So far you haven't debunked anything, just shown us all why outsourcers and other vendor puppets shouldn't be trusted. I predict an upturn in the demand for POCs in Denmark if you carry on posting your "debunkings". I can spare a few weeks this year if you need someone with actual tech knowledge to come over to do the POCs for you.
/SP&L
"But if you want to compare to Power5 it's even worse - best P5 was 2.2GHz, P6 is 4.7GHz"
You can't even get this right. Best P5+ was 2.3Ghz and best P6 was 5Ghz.
"gain per core is still only 41%"
What is the gain per core for Tukwila? The only released benchmark so far from HP says it is 13.8% (TPC-H@1000GB). That is comparing the latest late 2010 release Superdome 2 (it is not available yet) against a late 2007 Montvale Superdome. Talk about massive speed improvement in 3 years. Clock speed went from 1.6Ghz to a massive 1.66Ghz. I am awed by the great advances by Intel and HP.
And I am not even going to comment much on the fact that Itanium reached 1.5Ghz in 2003 and 7 years later it is now pushing along at 1.66Ghz.
And we don't have to guess why you're so intent on shouting any opposing view down, do we?
"......You can't even get this right. Best P5+ was 2.3Ghz and best P6 was 5Ghz......" I think you'll find those high-end Power parts were rare and could only be used in the P595, probably because it was the only frame that IBM could get enough power and cooling fans into to cope. But if you insist on including them it makes Jesper's trying to compare the 1.9GHz P5 with the top-end P6 even funnier!
"....Clock speed went from 1.6Ghz to a massive 1.66Ghz......" <Sigh> And still the persistance with the idea that clock speed is the only thing that matters. It's quite childish. But, to give you an idea of how silly you sound, let's try a little example. I have an old Pentium4 box with a dual-core clocked at 3.2GHz. I also have a newer rig with an AM2+ AMD Athlon 6500 X2 which only has a 2.3GHz core frequency. By your argument, the P4 must be the faster chip, and any system with the P4 will be faster in ALL situations than the Phenom. Please try and explain your viewpoint whilst the rest of us just laugh.
/SP&L
"But if you insist on including them it makes Jesper's trying to compare the 1.9GHz P5 with the top-end P6 even funnier!"
Man you are full of it. You keep insisting that a FUD/misquote on a HP TheRealStory of a IBM press release is more true than the actual press release.
No matter how you twist it, no matter how much you try to make fun of others. Your source of wisdom has been exposed as being HP's TheRealStory, which says a lot about the true level of your IT skills.
// Jesper
Your statement makes no sense what so ever.
"As I already pointed out, I only referred to The Real Story website as an example of FUD and how hp have seen so much IBM FUD they created a whole website to debunk it!"
So the HP site The Real Story is FUD.
But it's FUD that is used to debunk IBM FUD ?
You are not making sense.
// Jesper
"I think you'll find those high-end Power parts were rare and could only be used in the P595"
5ghz P6 made it into the p550, p570 and p595. Please do your research before sprouting more BS.
"And still the persistance with the idea that clock speed is the only thing that matters."
When did I say that? I said that it went from 1.6Ghz to 1.66Ghz and 13.8% performance improvement per core on the only benchmark HP has published so far. I was comparing it to the 41% improvement you were so unimpressed about when going from POWER5+ to POWER6. if you are unimpressed about 41% from IBM then you must be absolutely devastated by HP's improvement.
Aw, ickle Dimdim is still raging away!
"...5ghz P6 made it into the p550, p570 and p595...." Not in any P570 I ever saw. In fact, when we upgraded our loaded P570's we didn't get offered a 5GHz option, so all I can asssume is it can only be fitted into a P570 if you strip out something else.
".....When did I say that?...." Just about everytime you post on El Reg you warble on and on about how much faster the clock is on Power. For example, you posted on the 9th Feb "....Even the lowest bin POWER7 (3ghz) will be faster than the top bin Nehalem-EX (2.26Ghz)...." Has it become so automatic for you IBMers that you don't even notice when you're talking clock male bovine manure? Am I surprised? No. After all, you've been sprouting variations on the same salesong for years, every time a new version of Power is released.
".....if you are unimpressed about 41% from IBM then you must be absolutely devastated by HP's improvement....." As I've explained before, I was neither disappointed or pleased by the IBM labs benchmarks because I know vendor lab benchmarks are worth squat in the real World. Our own experience was a 10% increase when we went from P5 to P6. We saw a bigger improvement just going hp-ux 11i v2 to hp-ux 11i v3, and the v2 was already outperforming AIX5.3 kit. All of which kinda blows big holes in your stupid idea that anyone is guaranteed 41% just because an IBM salesguide says so. But, seeing as it is very obvious you don't get anywhere close to real systems in real environments I can't say I'm surprised you wouldn't know that.
Personally, I'm waiting to actually get the kit form both vendors to test in our environment, with our stack, apps, SAN, etc. Until then I couldn't give two hoots about what IBM say P7 will do or what IBM say Tukzilla won't do as I know it is just marketting male bovine manure and FUD spread by astroturfers like you. Shall we compare? I say "test either before you buy", whereas you just squeal "Power is faster, accept my vendor benchmarks as proof!" Yeah, right, like us customers are going to trust as blatent a fool as you! Please pretend otherwise, just for a laugh. In the meantime, please feel to rage as much as you like and keep on cut'n'pasting IBM benchmarks as that's probably the limit of any experience you're ever likely to bring to the discussion.
/SP&L.
"No, I think that some salespeople (and outsourcers) would be a lot happier .... Hey, I wonder if EDS do POCs....!"
Customers are normally very happy when I leave a project, I Did a project here for a small customer, which just finished the other day, where they ended up with having x2 - x3 the capacity without paying a single red dime for more per month, all they had to do was buy more RAM. Very simple I just redesigned the solution exploiting the capabilities of the system.
All well documented, with design documents changes etc etc. Sure they wanted to see a test first, so we made the changes to their development environment first. And when they then rolled out their whole new SAP release and increased the number of users by a factor of x3, then one change without any downtime and they were were able to run x3 users simply by increasing the utilization of the hardware, by using overprovissioning.
"Yeah, I know, I've done contract work in Denmark ... I expect EDS is going to be happilly meeting and beating you in many deals to come!"
Well I don't recall having meet you, but then again I've bump in to so many 'IT cowboys' in my time, so only the real sharp ones have made an impression.
As for EDS they have tried to pick me up several times, sure the money offered were good. But they don't have an operation here in Denmark. And I don't want to have to go to Germany or India to do projects. I work where I work, cause I can go and talk to people in person, the people we have here are highly skilled, and cause I want to be with my family.
"Worked on hp-ux long before AIX, and CUOD support was not abvailable with HACMP until November 2008 (well, announced then, I'm told it wasn't actually working until a lot later). Your feature sell just failed, try again!"
Again.. you simply don't get it the hypervisor will mask that for you. HACMP will never know, CUOD will be done to the shared pool. Man.. it's like explaining colors to a guy who sees everything in black and white.
Sure if you ran AIX on "Bare metal" on POWER back when that was done you had the problem you are talking about. But honestly who in their right mind have done that for years. Come on keep up with the technological development. You sound like the the old mainframers here who keep talking about punch cards.
"Less than five minutes on swinstall, and then can be run by single line commands or via SAM or the web interface SMH. You can even do the swinstall work via SMH."
*CACKLE* Again the "IT cowboy" favorite remark, "Less than five minutes on ..". Again you don't get it. Now that is also one of the things we do, and actually make quite good money on. Cleaning up people's systems after they have been run by 'Less than five minutes' consultant cowboys. You would be surpriced on how many customers come to us with their systems, saying please help us clean up our systems. Usually after they have had a crash, and have serious trouble recovering cause nothing is documented, cause to many "Less than five minutes" cowboys have been on the system making their expert recomendations.
Do you know what ITIL is ? Change mangement perhaps ? CMDB?
"No, you completely failed to explain any ... the IBM method, one power issue affects everything in the server. "
I have explained, it is you who don't get it.
Let me try again .. the Hypervisor makes an abstraction layer between the physical machine and the virtual machines, so You don't know what physical processors your virtual machine is running on, you don't know what memory modules it uses.
All the nasty hardware stuff is hidden by the hypervisor and the IO by the VIO servers.
So a hardware failure like for example a Processor failure will not have an impact on my virtual machines, if I setup things right, at all. Now if I on the other hand do max out the SUM of entitled capacity, or for example have to deallocate a whole Processor CHIP, so the hypervisor cannot forfil it's entitled capacity guarentees. Then the hypervisor will take the least important virtual machine and give it the hammer, hence keeping production systems running without any dangers to SLA's or customers data.
And what you don't get it that I run perhaps 10-30 virtual machines using somewhere between 40-50 Processors on a machine with 16 physical cores, like the the power 570. On our old POWER5/5+ we are perhaps running 30-60 virtual machines, using 120 Processors worth of CPU power.
And you seem to forget that POWER hardware has even more hotswapable and redundant parts that your favorite HP itanium servers, I mean a POWER7 box like the power 780 can even hotswap the system clock card.
"And seeing as IBM love chucking non-redundant and non-discrete components all over their designs (remember those old IBM blade backplanes?), it is a problem just waiting to strike."
Ehh.. have you looked inside at HP blade chassis backplane recently ? Blades are generally crap, no matter the vendor.
"Not surprised you didn't know that. After all, you live in Denmark and have to send out for consultants with hp knowledge. And Sun, and IBM. Actually, do you have any skills in Denmark?"
Actually I am so fortunate that most of my Unix sysadmins actually have at least a bachlor degree in CS, and not one of those that you buy over the internet. Again one of the reasons I like to work here. People actually have skills and know what they are talking about. It's not all hot air.
"Not the same as what the combination of IVM, PRM and WLM can offer, which allows you to avoid having to move workloads between servers. And they all work and integrate together with hp's monitoring and reporting software, not like the hodgepodge of IBM tools."
*CACKLE* Yeah right. Just buy the whole HP Infrastructure solution pack.. yeah.. Lets see.. we need to architect, setup and manage.. vPars, nPars, Ticap, IVM, PRM and WLM, to acomplish what the hypervisor does out of the box, sure you also have to architect setup and mange the hypervisor, and to be honest the hypervisor doesn't yet do cross hw workload management.
Ok, I get it now.. you like the HP Itanium solution, cause it is your meal ticket, if it wasn't this complex you would have less work. Now that is what you don't like about a AIX/POWERVM/POWER solution, it's simple and easy to manage.
With regards to the whole quote from HP's real story.
The POWER release, counting from POWER4 and forward, work like the Intel x86 Tick Tock release strategy. So I couldn't care less what you say. You are just plain... wrong.
Amazing.. You are really will go to great length to defend a HP marketing site.. amazing.. no wonder why people don't like you here. But again your arguments are flawed and to be hones not in connection with reality. I am actually a bit shocked. It's very simple, the HP Marketing site is wrong. Nobody besides you and HP.. well SUN marketing counts POWERX+ processors as a new generation. Even wikipedia got it right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER
And simply just repeating something that is wrong doesn't make it right.
"LOL!! You even try and compare the oldest and slowest P5 chips to the fastest P6 to try and make the P6 look good! That's just dishonest."
No, it is what is mentioned in the IBM press release. The first released POWER6 was the 4.7GHz in the power 570, the fastest POWER5 was the 1.9GHz POWER5. And I even picked the same physical machine. You can twist and turn. But you are wrong, but hey you have also clearly demonstrated that you will continue to push something you clearly can see is wrong just for the .. well.. whatever makes you tick.
"So far you haven't debunked anything, just shown us all why outsourcers and other vendor puppets shouldn't be trusted."
Well we all know who is the vendor puppet here. The only quotes you can make is from HP marketing sites. It is all you have besides denying clear facts. It is in fact rather pathetic. Matt.. people are laughing at you, not with you.
"I predict an upturn in the demand for POCs in Denmark if you carry on posting your "debunkings". I can spare a few weeks this year if you need someone with actual tech knowledge to come over to do the POCs for you."
Well I love POC's done alot of those these last 20 years, in the role of everything from tech guy over architect to Technical Project Manager. But I've cut down on those. Being a family man now doesn't really allow me to spend 1-2 months somewhere in the US, Ireland or even in other parts of Denmark 3-4 times a year.
And no thanx I don't like using 'cowboys' for POC's. I know your type, worked with many of them, you might even say I was one myself 15-20 years ago. But today I am the wiser man. And I have no use for people who can't/won't admit they are wrong. Nothing wrong with making errors, we all do. But I ran a POC as the Technical responsible person what 7 years ago, where all the aprox 20 people I got to execute this projects were cowboys, from all over the world. 80% of them had nowhere the skills they should, and had been brought in for, and half of them would not tell the whole story, when they had a delivery, and would deliver undocumented. So I and a college ended up having to do most of the work ourselves, so I ended up having to be a Oracle,SAPbasis, C++ developer, AIX, Alpha/POWER, EMC DMX specialist and had to write the whole POC report myself. After that I have never used Cowboys, unless I either know them or can verify their skills.
I like to win, and do 89-90% of the time, cause I am very good at what I do. But also cause I pick the right tools and the right people to work with.
// Jesper
"....Customers are normally very happy when I leave a project...." yeah, happiest if you leave before the project finishes more likely!
"....Again the "IT cowboy" favorite remark, "Less than five minutes on .."...." Well, if you actually knew anything about hp-ux you'd know it was that easy, but seeing as you only know AIX that's not really surprising. Oh, I know you pretend to know about hp-ux, but it is patently obvious you haven't a clue, so stop the charade now.
"....Now that is also one of the things we do, and actually make quite good money on...." Yeah, cleaning up IBM AIX servers - what a surprise! You admitted you had to send out for hp-ux resource so you obviously don't have the skills.
"....Well I don't recall having meet you..." I can think of a few reasons why that would be. Firstly, despite your God complex, I have to inform you not even Denmark revolves around you. I'm sure there are quite a few Danish companies you haven't worked with, let alone European ones, and the biggest project I worked on was government related so probably above your paygrade. As to you having met many cowboys, all I can say is you work in outsourcing, so I can't say I'm surprised you find your field so poorly skilled.
"....Ehh.. have you looked inside at HP blade chassis backplane recently ? Blades are generally crap, no matter the vendor...." Yes, I have looked, actually, seeing as I have actually used the hp blades kit, unlike you. And I know the hp designs have redundant power paths, use only discrete companents on the backplane, and can survive power issues. You obviously just don't know anything about blades. Not surprised an IBMer and Power fanboi would want to diss them seeing as hp are the number one blades vendor.
"...Again one of the reasons I like to work here. People actually have skills and know what they are talking about...." So why do you have to send out for resources then? How come I was doing work hp-ux in Denmark if you're all so skilled and clever?
Jesper, all you do is avoid the questions, not answer them. Your fixation with saying that the hypervisor cures all issues is just stupid, how is going to cure a power issue? If the power subsystem goes on one part of an IBM system and it is not electrically isolated then it can affect other parts of the server, which means that your clever hypervisor simply dies along with all the instances running on it. One power issue, you lose all the servers, got that? You can talk male bovine manure to the cows come home and no-one is going to believe that the hypervisor will survive a loss of power! What, does it run in some extra dimension where IBM magic beans keep it running? Rediculous!
This is a key high-availability feature of the cell-board designs in hp Integrity, that they can lose a cell completely and it doesn't affect the others. With Power, if you have electrical problems with one processorbook then it can affect all of them. And if you're sharing I/O as you often do with a hypervisor, then the loss of one I/O component can affect all your OS instances. With hp Integrity the I/O is owned by each electrically isolated cell or npar, so a problem in one npar doesn't affect the others.
"....And you seem to forget that POWER hardware has even more hotswapable and redundant parts that your favorite HP itanium servers...." Yeah, please do list them, otherwise we might conclude you were just talking more male bovine manure as usual.
".....Yeah right. Just buy the whole HP Infrastructure solution ...." Apart from the fact some of it comes bundled in with the OS, it also seems to be very popular with us customers. The superior management capabilities of hp-ux is just one of the reasons it is taking the high-end deals from AIX. We seem to value an integrated stack rather than the colection of individual and often incompatible IBM tools. The first thing we do with new IBM servers is set them up to run with hp monitoring software as it just works better.
".....you like the HP Itanium solution, cause it is your meal ticket...." This coming from the outsourcer that specialises in IBM Power....
"....And no thanx I don't like using 'cowboys' for POC's. I know your type...." I doubt if you have worked with a company the size of ours for a start, let alone that I can comfortably predict you never will. For a start, I do mission critical work, so out of your league already. And then, when I do look for people to work with me on projects, they actually have to know something about the technology, and not just repeat IBM FUD and quote IBM labs benchmarks. And if I did come work in Denmark it would probably be on an hp-ux project, which means you also wouldn't be involved as you not only don't know squat about hp tech but you already admitted you have to send out for hp-ux skills. Can't say I'm upset.
"...And I have no use for people who can't/won't admit they are wrong...." Put yourself back on the shelf, then, as so far you've not only been proven wrong but also avoided most of the questions. Beyond useless!
"....I like to win, and do 89-90% of the time, cause I am very good at what I do...." Yeah, in the tiny little Danish IT market, where you have to send out abroad for skilled people. Nothing like being a big fish in a tiny puddle. And I often meet consultants from Denmark and other Scandinavian countries here in London, who say they moved to London not just to get jobs but because they wanted to work in challenging roles just not available back home. I guess it was just easier for you to stay at home and work on what there was in Denmark.
"...But also cause I pick the right tools and the right people to work with..." So apart from the times EDS hand you your butt on a plate? But I can see you do sometimes work with the right kit as that means hp if you're sending out for hp-ux resource.
/SP&L
" yeah, happiest if you leave before the project finishes more likely!"
Well I often do that, cause I am normally do a lot of putting out fires in projects, so I often leave when the problems are fixed and the project is back on schedule. But I see you have yet again brought yourself down to a level where all you can do is namecalling and insults. Again that says more about your character or rather lack of.
"Well, if you actually knew anything about hp-ux ..."
*YAWN*
"Yeah, cleaning up IBM AIX servers - what a surprise!"
The customers we have have more or less it all, so it can be everything from Windows/Linux over HPUX to Solaris or even platforms that can no longer be bought og that you can even get support for anywhere. Hence we fix it for the customer. Sure make cheap shots, it is basically what you do. Take cheap shoots.
"You admitted you had to send out for hp-ux resource so you obviously don't have the skills."
Again your lack memory and understanding of IT on a higher level is well not a credit to you. As I wrote, we don't have the ressources, and will never have to absorb peaks in demands for people with particular skills. Hence we use subcontractors, as it's cheaper and often better than having to much excess staff. It's a balance.
"... European ones, and the biggest project I worked on was government related so probably above your paygrade."
Sure Denmark doesn't revolve around me, it revolves around the right wing loonies that are keeping our current government in power. And the only Biggish Government projects I can think off of some substance that run/ran on largish HP Itanium servers are today run by the last company I 'worked' for. And I know the guy who did those personally. I can ask him if he knows you, now he is perhaps the best HPUX guy I have ever meet. He btw. now does AIX, mostly. Now the really big government SD projects, have been migrated to AIX, then there are the ones left that you don't have the security clearence to have worked on. So must have been a small insignificant project.
And as for paygrade, here in Denmark we normally measure people after skill, not some rigid obsolete paygrade system.
"As to you having met many cowboys, all I can say is you work in outsourcing, so I can't say I'm surprised you find your field so poorly skilled."
Again your maners are rude and you have just labeled everyone who works in the outsourcing business as poorly skilled. Again this says more about you and your poor attitude towards other people, than your rather pathetic point, which btw. aren'e even true.
"I have looked, actually, seeing as I have actually used the hp blades kit, unlike you. And I know the hp designs have redundant power paths, use only discrete companents on the backplane, and can survive power issues. "
*CACKLE* That is why all the half hight blades only have one midplane-connector ? And have you ever in real life seen a real c-Class power backplane ? Not just looking inside an empty c3000 chasis, but the actual part. It's not like there are two of them. Redundant my butt. Try a RTFM for a change. I mean not even the midplane is redundant.. Sure it's only a passive piece of eq., and that is often good enough, but you can make mechanical failures. Hence it's not redundant.
Have a look at figure 12 in this piece of HP documentation:
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00810839/c00810839.pdf
and figure 11 shows you a the single connector for the half height blades.
"You obviously just don't know anything about blades. Not surprised an IBMer and Power fanboi would want to diss them seeing as hp are the number one blades vendor."
Sure HP is the number one blade vendor. They, or rather Compaq, have been very successfull in selling people 8U x86 servers, then 6U, 4U, 2U, 1U, full height blades and here last half height blades... *CACKE* I have great respect for the HPQ selling machine, and as I wrote above it has contributed to a lot of revenue streams in the outsourcing business, when companies have nearly choaked on their x86 server sprawl, we have been able to come in and rescue them. Great! We owe a great deal of revenue to our business partner HP, but that doesn't mean that I myself buy their coolaid. I can see it, for what it is.
"So why do you have to send out for resources then? How come I was doing work hp-ux in Denmark if you're all so skilled and clever?"
Again cause sometimes we are so clever that outsourcing is actually an export business in Denmark. As we can do it smarter and cheaper than many other places. So sometimes we have so much work going on that we need outsiders to come and help.
"Your fixation with saying that the hypervisor cures all issues is just stupid, how is going to cure a power issue? "
By having a single redundant Main power supply, and a redundant DCA's ? It's called electrical isolation. And power on a POWER 595, isn't just 6 more or less stupid powersupplies that supply power. No, it's acutally one POWER supply, that is fully redundant. It even has two small buildin computers that talks to the redundant power converters that are on each book, through a redundant network. It also talks to the redundant Service processors and even the redundant HMC. So you have this whole lille grid of computers that controls and recovers from power problems. It's called SPCN, the System Power Control Network.
It's a totally different aproach than for example the SD has. It has 6 power supplies and has n+1, redundancy. That is something completely different, than basically having only 2 fully redundant power supplies, that are redundant all the way out to the Books.
The reason you are trying to make board power issues a problem on a POWER server is cause it's a problem on the board based Integrity machines you love so much, why is it a problem ? Cause the OCPB on a SD board is a nonhowswap single point of failure, that are getting their power from 'fairly stupid' n+1 redundant power supplies.
Again Welcome to 2010, Traditionel board machines are so last century.
"If the power subsystem goes on one part of an IBM system and it is not electrically isolated then it can affect other parts of the server, which means that your clever hypervisor simply dies along with all the instances running on it. "
Again. see above. And you don't get it.. the POWERVM hypervisor is not something you lose. It is not a kernel extension to a LINUX kernel like VMware, or a HPUX os instance like IVM. It's more like a shared library that you can call. So actually it is much more robust than both Vmware and IVM, but again you have to RTFM to get that. Sure it can be brought down, when you look at it on slideware it is just as non redundant as IVM and VMware. But again it's only a 'shared library', a well protected shared library, that on POWER7 will be.. how not to break the NDA .. even more well protected.
"One power issue, you lose all the servers, got that? You can talk male bovine manure to the cows come home and no-one is going
to believe that the hypervisor will survive a loss of power!"
Again.. read the above.
// Jesper
So now you're getting tired of insults and FUD after you do nothing post insults and FUD? Oh, wait a sec, you just carry on posting more insults and FUD.....
"....And the only Biggish Government projects I can think off of some substance that run/ran on largish HP Itanium servers are today run by the last company I 'worked' for....." I can tell you now that you actually don't know all the substantive hp-ux projects then.
"...And I know the guy who did those personally.....btw. now does AIX, mostly...." I'm guessing that's because any company that you worked for probably isn't getting government contracts anymore.
"....then there are the ones left that you don't have the security clearence to have worked on...." Bingo! Oh, sorry, does it upset you to know others have worked on projects you wouldn't be considered for, even if you did have the technical skills required?
"....looking inside an empty c3000 chasis...." Ah, I see you had to select the remote office c3000 offerring rather than the datacenter c7000 version. Don't tell me - that was all the FUD your IBM friends could supply? Hey, wasn't there an hp Real Story articale on just why IBM were FUDing the c3000 "Shorty" chassis so hard?
"....Sure HP is the number one blade vendor...." So you admit this, but then try and pretend it is all down to the hp "selling machine", despite IBM actually having more salespeople than hp! Of course, in your blinkered worldview, it couldn't possibly be because customers prefer the hp blades to IBM ones, because the hp designs, tools and service are just better.....
And then you try and pretend the fully-redundant power supply design in the old Superdomes in not as good as pSeries where the loss of one of those "two small buildin computers" means you lose power redundancy. And then you want to look at the OCPB that is on the old PA-RISC cellboards? Gee, I wonder why you'd want to focus on that old FUD? Could it be because you have no idea about how power works on the new SD blades? Still waiting on teh IBM Elmers to make you some up-to-date FUD? Probably.
"....Again Welcome to 2010, Traditionel board machines are so last century...." Well, ones that can't be electrically isolated are so last century. Oh, doesn't that cover the exisitng pSeries and probably the new P7 ones?
"....And you don't get it.. the POWERVM hypervisor is not something you lose....." Really? So you are seriously stating that the PowerVM Hypervisor will survivge a power issue in every case? Please, please, please stay in Denmark as I actually want to try Power7 kit at some point, and if you come over here and start talking that sh*t then there's no way IBM will sell any!
/SP&L
"What, does it run in some extra dimension where IBM magic beans keep it running? Rediculous!"
Jup, magic smoke, that is what makes it run.
But if you had actually bothered ever to read a manual or other documentation, rather than just sticking to what you know... hmm.. well ok know.. then you would know that the Books in a power 595 are electrical isolated, just as the CEC drawers in the power 5/770's are, or the IO drawers. You are echoing what 5-10 year old HP marketing FUD. Now go back to an old p690 and you have a point, and even more on a machine like the S80 and the whole RS64 series.
"This is a key high-availability feature of the cell-board designs in hp Integrity, that they can lose a cell completely and it doesn't affect the others."
Again read above.
"With Power, if you have electrical problems with one processorbook then it can affect all of them."
Nope. You should stop reading all that old HP marketing FUD. It's just as non up to date as the stuff that SUN and IBM is putting out..
"And if you're sharing I/O as you often do with a hypervisor, then the loss of one I/O component can affect all your OS instances. "
*CACKLE* Now you are using the knowledge you have from IVM or VMware to project over the POWERVM hypervisor. Just cause it is like that on IVM and Vmware doesn't mean it's like that on POWERVM. On POWERVM you can have physical devices as well as virtual devices on your Virtual machine, no problem. You can even do multipathing where you have one phyiscal and one virtual device. Or mirror across physical and virtual devices. You can let your physical devices be owned by a VIOServer, or you can do virtualization direct in HW, or you can simply just have physical devices like on a board machine.
It's quite clear from your statements that you have no skills on POWERVM, it's so bad that you refere to it as magic beans.. come on welcome to the year 2010.
"With hp Integrity the I/O is owned by each electrically isolated cell or npar, so a problem in one npar doesn't affect the others."
If you use nPars, yes. But that basically means that you have to buy a bloody SD just to run 8 partitions, well 7 cause you have to have a spare board if something fails.. at least that what I've seen done in RL: Now there is the real secret behind HP's moneymachine.
"Yeah, please do list them, otherwise we might conclude you were just talking more male bovine manure as usual.""
Books, Cec drawers, IO Drawers, System clock cards etc.. I mean the rest are just subcomponents. So no problem there.
"Apart from the fact some of it comes bundled in with the OS, it also seems to be very popular with us customers. The superior management capabilities of hp-ux is just one of the reasons it is taking the high-end deals from AIX. We seem to value an integrated stack rather than the colection of individual and often incompatible IBM tools. The first thing we do with new IBM servers is set them up to run with hp monitoring software as it just works better."
*CACKLE* Eh.. I get it.. You work in HP sales.... "taking the high-end deals from AIX", what is taking the high-end deals from AIX is the fact that you only need midrange 'AIX' to bead highend HP and SUN, or then it's Linux on x86, and even there POWER is competetive.
And your whole integrated sw stack with all your many expensive HP products, can be done by AIX+POWERVM+Director. All just standard system components. No fancy expensive software company software.
"This coming from the outsourcer that specialises in IBM Power...."
Better that than what, to be quite frank, sounds like a HP sales drone, well perhaps even a junior technical sales support or sumthing.
"This coming from the outsourcer that specialises in IBM Power...."
Better that than what, to be quite frank, sounds like a HP sales drone, well perhaps even a junior technical sales support or su
mthing.
"I doubt if you have worked with a company the size of ours for a start."
I couldn't care less. If there is one thing I have learned then it is that the size of the company has absolutely nothing to do
with the quality of their IT infrastructure. I would actually say on the contrary. I've been involved in the IT infrastructure o
f quite a few of the WW Fortune 100 companies, and their IT infrastructure sucked major. And much of their staff were under skil
led, and overpaid. And they had a megalomanic air to them, 'Cause we work for company XXX which is in the top 10 on the fortune
100, what we are doing is right.' Nahh.. IT is still 'just' there to support the real business of the companies. That is something that one should remember and be humple about.
"let alone that I can comfortably predict you never will. For a start, I do mission critical work, so out of your league already. And then, when I do look for people to work with me on projects, they actually have to know something about the technology, and not just repeat IBM FUD and quote IBM labs benchmarks."
*YAWN*, you have constantly been proven wrong. Your documentation links are to Marketing sites. Honestly... try looking in the mirror. First it's the POWER5 versus POWER6 where you quote TheRealStory.
Next it's inorder POWER6 versus OOO POWER7 and POWER5.. ever in your life read a book on Itanium tuning try to lookup what the "+DS<architecture>" on the HP compilers mean, it's not like Poulson/Montecito and classic I2 is exactly the same. Man you even called POWER7 a shrink of POWER5, I mean how little knowledge can one have on the subject.
And you haven't really demonstrated any real deep mission critical knowledge.
"And if I did come work in Denmark it would probably be on an hp-ux project, which means you also wouldn't be involved as you not only don't know squat about hp tech but you already admitted you have to send out for hp-ux skills."
Well there aren't many of those projects anymore.. EDS killed the biggest one you know. They thought it was to costly, and they wasn't able to compete if they had to use it :)= So the largest HP SuperDome customer just shifted from being a SD customer to being a x86 blade customer. Actually I meet the Best HP hardware technician, who used to do SD's the last place I worked, the other day.. guess what.. he now works at IBM. *CACKLE* True story... true story..
"Put yourself back on the shelf, then, as so far you've not only been proven wrong but also avoided most of the questions."
Not really. Proven wrong is not you saying that I am wrong, with the only documentation being a HP marketing site. Only link you have come up with yet, have been to a FUD website. Honestly...
"Yeah, in the tiny little Danish IT market, where you have to send out abroad for skilled people. Nothing like being a big fish in a tiny puddle. And I often meet consultants from Denmark and other Scandinavian countries here in London, who say they moved to London not just to get jobs but because they wanted to work in challenging roles just not available back home. I guess it was just easier for you to stay at home and work on what there was in Denmark."
Well again you can't hold your ground in the technical debate so you just go after the man, his country, or other things that can boost your ego. I actually have pity with you.
// Jesper
Hmmm, so tedious you posted even more FUD and insults over many paragraphs. Oh, I see that the problem is you are runnign out of FUD and don't want to answer any questions!
".....Jup, magic smoke, that is what makes it run....." So you're still dodging the question.
"....the Books in a power 595 are electrical isolated, just as the CEC drawers in the power 5/770's are, or the IO drawers...." No they're not! An IBM engineer had to explain to us why a power issue in one of our p570s took out the whole server, and he told us it was because there si not true electrical isolation in the p570. So, should I believe what I aw happen with our server and was then explained by an IBM engineer, or should I go with the fanboi from Denmark...? You lose!
"....Now you are using the knowledge you have from IVM or VMware to project over the POWERVM hypervisor...." Nope, I'm saying that if you share a resource in PowerVM it is a common point of failure, and you then even admit this by saying "You can let your physical devices be owned by a VIOServer, or you can do virtualization direct in HW" - yes, that would be sharing devices in a virtualisation layer with one managing bit of software, so one I/O failure can affect more than one instance. And worse still, a problem with the VIOServer will affect all instances! Now, please try and tell me VIOServer NEVER fails, has never had any bugs, and is made of magic software (big clue - "magic software" is a term used to describe software that has zero potential or actual bugs because ALL software has some potential or actual bugs). This will be fun! Before you try and deny VIOServer has ever had any issues, you'd best get IBM to remove all records of the patches for it, and then go round the Web and remove all the discussion groups that go on about problems with stale mirrors and the like! Have fun!
"....AIX+POWERVM+Director...." Almost fell of the chair laughing at that one! Director is such junk we manage all our IBM servers - xSeries and pSeries - from hp management software.
"....you have constantly been proven wrong...." Not by anything you posted! Oh, please do insult those Fortune 100 companies some more, I'm sure that will really help with your outsourcing pitches!
"....Actually I meet the Best HP hardware technician, who used to do SD's the last place I worked, the other day.. guess what.. he now works at IBM...." I wouldn't expect you to know any real hp techies. I'm guessing he's as real as the magic beans and smoke bit above.
"....Well again you can't hold your ground in the technical debate...." What debate? You haven't answered any questions; you tried to pretend PowerVM doesn't actaully require electricity to run, that it is magic software; pretended to have known all the hp-ux and all the government projects in Denmark and the UK (and then had to admit you didn't); and regurgitated IBM FUD on the c3000 office blade chassis to avoid admitting you were wrong on the c7000 datacenter blade chassis. Holding your ground? You didn't have any ground to stand on in the first place! But then your whole intention was never to have a technical debate, it was just to FUD and flame any forum that had anything about the new Tukzilla kit because you make a living outsourcing on IBM Power servers.
/SP&L
Actualls AC your missing a quite valid point.
You are right the FCoE standard has been apporoved. Unfortunately it relies on CEE to work, and this standard has NOT been fully ratified, more importantly the multi-hop capability is not there yet which means FCoE throughout the datacenter is not feasable for at least another year (when all the CEE protocals are fully ratified and I can start getting certified kit)! So actually Matt is right.!!
Unfortunately no one seems to have told Cisco this!!
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