RAM | Reseller Advocate Magazine: Issue 74

The How and the Now:
Build Your Business With Intel Server Technologies

By Chris Angelini

Little Things Do Matter
In mid-December, Time Magazine announced six “best inventions of the year” in the Computers category. Making this short list was Penryn, more formally known as Intel’s 45nm fabrication process. Penryn is not just another fab shrink. In fact Penryn, from a technology perspective, is considered to be one of the biggest advancements in fundamental transistor design in 40 years. The use of dramatically different transistor materials allows this next generation of Intel’s Core microarchitecture to deliver record breaking performance while reducing the amount of electrical leakage. This in turn will help extend Moore’s Law (a high-tech industry axiom that transistor count doubles every two years to deliver even more functionality at exponentially decreasing cost) well into the next decade. From a reseller perspective, Penryn is all about opportunity.

For example, Intel’s 45nm processors support the new SSE4 instruction set for faster handling of 32- and 64-bit applications. Servers with these new acceleration enhancements will have an edge over their peers. Similarly, several of these Penryn-based chips are able to support a 1600 MHz front side bus. Not only do Intel 45nm designs incorporate four processing cores, but the smaller feature size also allows for significantly larger L2 caches. Compare the 45nm, quad-core Xeon E5430 (2.66 GHz) to the equivalent 65nm, quad-core Xeon X5355. The part supports more features, runs faster (thanks in part to having 50% more L2 cache), and operates at a 50% lower power envelope—80W versus the older chip’s 120W.

This last point is worth exploring. Businesses are increasingly conscientious of lowering energy consumption. Going green is good; going green and saving money is better. In more and more cases, performance-per-watt is the deciding factor for winning bids. Intel recently posted numbers comparing the Xeon E5440 (2.83 GHz, 12MB L2), Xeon X5355 (2.66 GHz, 8MB L2), and dual-core Xeon 5160 (3.0 GHz, 4MB L2), each running enterprise test benchmarks on the same server platform in an increasing number of virtual machines (up to four per core). You can see in the charts on page 4 that the E5440 handily outperformed the X5355 and predictably blew away the dual-core 5160.

The Promise Behind Penryn
Intel’s new 45nm fab process pays healthy dividends in these benchmark results. Not only does the E5440 outperform its 65nm counterpart on performance, particularly in virtualized settings, but it does so using much less power.

When running 16 VMs, the E5440 used 29% less power than its 65nm counterpart and up to 44% less power than the dual-core model. Figuring 8 cents per kilowatt-hour and associated data center cooling, an operation with 6,000 concurrent, 24x7 server jobs could save over $300,000 in energy costs annually just by upgrading from 65nm dualcore chips to quad-core Penryn.

Here’s the real surprise. According to online pricing checked just prior to press time, of these three Intel processors, the chart-topping E5440 was actually the lowestpriced of the trio.

Intel has a long history of tying environmental responsibility to sales opportunities. Intel processors and motherboards were among the first in the industry to go lead-free and be RoHS-compliant—an essential attribute for dealing with Europe and a burgeoning number of U.S. companies. More recently, Intel championed the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) with the goal of making all computers at least 90% power efficient by 2010 in an industry that today has most servers operating at less than 70% efficiency and desktops less than 50 percent. The power savings of Penryn and future processor design improvements are essential to making CSCI a reality. With RoHS, ENERGY STAR, 80 PLUS, and similar initiatives, being eco-friendly can yield a different type of green for resellers.

For many customers, though, nothing matters more than performance. This is where Penryn shines brightest. Some have challenged the dual front side bus or quad-core architectures used in today’s mainstream Xeon servers. To this there is only one sensible answer; study the numbers. Benchmarks show that 45nm Xeons go toe-to-toe with all comers on floating point tests and emerge the clear winner on integer thoughput. Benchmarks aside, it may be just as important to note that Penryn is available in volume today and is already making healthy margins for many channel partners.

We would guess that Time bestowed its honor on Penryn less out of respect for its speeds and feeds and more for the transformative effect it can have on the computing world. But CPUs don’t operate in a vacuum. They rely on an ecosystem of complementary components that deliver groundbreaking value by building on top of the processor’s performance foundation.

SCALING THE SERVER LADDER
Any small business that thrives will eventually start acquiring server computers. But all too often, businesses needing uniprocessor (1P) servers for seemingly simple tasks will buy cheap tier-one machines that are essentially desktop PCs and run them as servers. In many cases, this is being penny-wise and pound-foolish. The business gets saddled with trailing-edge technology that won’t scale efficiently. Nor will these pseudo-servers be as broadly supported by the professional software world (think Microsoft, Autodesk, VMware, etc.) as systems sporting bona fide server parts. Support is more likely to be needed because desktop hardware isn’t developed and validated with the same rigorous quality expectations as server hardware.

Cost is usually the key barrier keeping businesses from buying true servers, but this is really a problem of misassumptions. The two key components in a server are the

SO CLOSE YET SO SEPERATE
The Intel® Modular Server blends the blade-like modularity of compute modules with a wholly separate bed of SAN drives. This way, compute resources are mapped to the SAN, not chained to a given set of attached drives.span>

CPU and motherboard. A CPU from the Xeon 3000 server family costs the same as its Core 2 Duo/Quad counterpart. A genuine 1P server board, such as Intel’s S3200SH, may cost more than a similar desktop product, but the user also gets options for improved error correction, advanced remote management capabilities, a second Gigabit Ethernet connection, and, perhaps most important of all, Intel’s industry-leading advanced replacement warranty and support. When you consider the risk of data corruption and downtime, the long-term savings offered by a true server trounce any small discount on the system invoice. Another reason to target true servers is that they tend to be more powerful. With pseudo-servers, you’re fighting a battle of price points that often requires dropping component performance. Once a business is convinced of a true server’s value, you then have more opportunity to discuss related value points, such as the ability to host virtual machines, consume less energy, and/or complete processing jobs done in less time. The quad-core Xeon 3200 group is a perfect fit for these points. With more cores and efficient horsepower, one server can take the place of multiple cheap pseudo-servers or older systems.

As a small business grows, so will its need for additional servers. A forward-looking company (and reseller) may anticipate this by buying dual-processor (2P) servers rather than 1P machines. With twice as many CPU cores in play, the company has more options for the number of running apps or virtual machines. (Alternatively, many server applications are updating with support for eight or more threads, meaning a pair of quad-core, Penryn-based Xeon 5400- series chips would be ideal for heavy duty SMB tasks.) In short, the things that make a true 1P server attractive only magnify with 2P systems for growing businesses.

When a company can see that it’s going to scale beyond three or four 2P servers and just keeping going, suddenly a rackmounted blade architecture makes sense. Historically, blade servers addressed this concept, but Intel’s Modular Server evolves the blade paradigm by separating storage and compute components in one enclosure. The 6U system fits six 2P compute nodes and 14 RAID-protected 2.5” SAS drives configured as a storage area network (SAN). Essentially, if a customer is going to deploy three or more RAIDprotected 1U rackmount servers, then the Modular Server is the most sensible ROI choice. The remote management facets of the system make it a breeze for admins or servicing resellers to monitor and maintain.

Speaking of management, also be aware that every current Intel server motherboard, including those built into systems such as the SSR212MC2 (see below) and the Modular Server, comes bundled with a full, single-server copy of Microsoft’s System Center Essentials. Essentials was originally designed as a $2,000 tool for medium-sized businesses to perform complete LAN management, including monitoring, asset tracking, and remote remediation. For less than $600, buyers can upgrade to the small business edition of Essentials and achieve a similar level of LAN control. Particularly for resellers building their remote management services, this Essentials bundle is a stellar method for boosting monthly revenue streams.

The New Source for Storage
For a long time, many people believed there was little more to Intel and storage than Matrix RAID, the now-ubiquitous desktop technology that lets two different RAID volumes exist on only two hard drives in a desktop PC. Behind the scenes, though, storage momentum was building on the commercial side. You saw this come to light in bits and pieces, such as the SS4000-E hot-swappable NAS box or the occasional SSR212 storage server.

Matrix remains an important technology baked into nearly every business-class Intel southbridge chip, but small businesses would be smart to bolster their storage strategy with external, LAN-based resources. For SOHO and small workgroup environments, the new SS4200-E is a model of silence and sensibility. The compact, whisper-quiet NAS device is outfitted with four 3.5” SATA bays, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, and USB expandability, and it can operate as a media server. The base model comes equipped with EMC backup and management software, or resellers can buy a hardware-only version (the SS4200-EHW) and customize it with their choice of operating system, such as Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. The SS4200-E offers a great way for your smaller clients to create a storage solution that’s as bulletproof and flexible on their side as it is easy to configure and install on yours.

PC OR APPLIANCE?
Based on the 945 chipset and Celeron CPU, the SS4200-E NAS box sure looks like a PC under the hood. But all of that flexibility gets channeled into one task, small environment storage, once the operating system gets installed.

For larger SMB clients more inclined to blend large amounts of storage with their server applications, one of the most robust and optimized plays available is Intel’s SSR212MC2. This 2U rackmount system blends a dualprocessor Xeon server, 12 hot-swappable 3.5” SAS/SATA drive bays, and an integrated SAS expander. Whether the customer is looking to run one or two apps backed by large amounts of local storage or needs mass archives of nearline video fronted by lots of CPU horsepower for decoding, the SSR212MC2 blends high capacity and energy-efficient processing power in a remarkably short form factor.

Whether an SMB customer opts for the SSR212MC2 or requires an alternative storage server, the performance and scalability needs of today’s businesses all but require having an appropriate controller providing data protection. Intel’s storage card line has mushroomed this quarter, adding three new controllers to its PCI Express storage lineup, each of which supports RAID 6 and volume spanning (such as RAID levels 50 and 60). RAID 6 is particularly important for businesses with mission critical data and low downtime tolerance. In any RAID 5, if two drives fail, the system will lose data. RAID 6 uses two drives for redundant parity, so the array can sustain two drive failures with no loss.

For those seeking to keep costs minimal or only needing nearline storage resources, the SRCSATAWB is an excellent fit. This PCI Express x4 controller supports up to 16 SATA drives that are hot-swappable via active backplanes, integrates an optional battery backup for added data protection, and delivers breakneck on-board processing through LSI’s 500 MHz SAS RAID-on-Chip I/O controller. Those with higher speed transactional needs can turn to the SRCSASRB, nearly identical to the SRCSATAWB except that this model adds SAS support. And those who want the best of all worlds should turn to the SRCSASJV, which steps up to PCI Express x8. Like its two cousins, the SRCSASJV features eight 3 Gb/s data channels, but the card can be configured to dedicate all of those channels to either the internal or external SAS/SATA connectors—or send four channels to each. This offers the best mix of internal server capacity with external scalability.

Businesses ranging from garage-based operations to the Fortune 500 understand the value of implementing tiered storage. A tiered strategy that combines performance, protection, and open growth is the best way to keep customer costs down while maximizing ROI. This is the goal of Intel’s increasingly diverse and impeccably supported storage family—whatever the company’s size, there’s an Intel storage solution ready to help.

UPSELLS AND OPPORTUNITIES
There’s a secondary benefit to moving a business buyer out of the pseudo-server mindset and into real servers. Once someone starts to think it terms of long-term solution and less about short-term fix, then you’ve got an open invitation to discuss upsell items—additional or upgraded components that can greatly enhance the value of the server beyond the modest increase in purchase price.

We’ve mentioned the value of higher performance and energy savings in server CPUs. That’s your first and most obvious upsell. In the next breath, you can mention motherboards. Even when you cross into the realm of real server boards versus desktop PCBs, there are still several grades based on features. For instance, all Intel motherboards made to support Xeon 5000-series processors carry features such as dual independent bus architecture (to eliminate CPU bottlenecking risks under high load), increased memory bandwidth via FB-DIMM support, and I/O Acceleration Technology (for reducing CPU load and improving network packet throughput). Now dig into the sub-models for extra features. With Intel’s S5000PSL motherboard, there are three sub-models based on storage options. The SATAR SKU uses software-based RAID (0, 1, and 10) across six SATA ports while the ROMBR model includes an 8-port SAS controller via an included RAID-on-motherboard (ROMB) card that supports RAID 5 in hardware..

This leads easily into a discussion about drives. Pseudoservers invariably use standard desktop hard drives, which were never meant for the 24x7 usage common with server applications. Upselling clients into enterprise SATA or, for those who need faster performance, Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS), should be a no-brainer for any business that values its data. Naturally, you should be configuring with RAID protection for this data, and this usually entails using additional drives—another upsell.

Thanks for the memory
Built on Intel’s S5400SF motherboard and showcasing some of the densest resource layout in a 1U, the SR1560SF/HS features two 45nm Xeon sockets, 16 FB-DIMM slots, hot-swap storage, Microsoft Server Essentials, and more.

With multiple drives comes a discussion about chassis size and construction. A true server chassis will be built to more rugged, reinforced standards than most desktop cases, in part to protect components and reduce drive and fan vibration. Server chassis also tend to emphasize efficient airflow, top-quality power supplies, and plenty of (often hot-swappable) drive bays. Intel’s Server Chassis SC5400 is a perfect example. As with motherboards, the case has multiple sub-models, but the upshot is that there are plenty of options, including hot-swappable drive cages, a SAS/SATA expander, redundant power supplies, and redundant cooling. For customers still in their early server acquisitions, note that the SC5400 is a pedestal design by default but quickly turns into a 5U rackmount server with a conversion kit. Again, this is a great upsell feature for buyers anticipating growth and the need for future consolidation.

Top storage? It's in the cards
Intel’s storage controller group is growing like mad. New SKUs, all of them outfitted with hardware- based RAID acceleration for SAS and SATA drives, come with options ranging from card height to battery backup.

Server upsell discussions will inevitably delve into longterm storage planning. We discussed previously the advantages of Intel’s SMB-oriented storage servers and controllers, but keep in mind that you should help the client to keep an open door to ever more expansion. Having an external SAS port (or two) makes tremendous sense out of the gate rather than incurring downtime with subsequent upgrades. For larger customers with existing Fibre Channel assets, be sure to build FC adapters into your server discussion. It may make more sense for clients to go with a 1U server (the Intel SR1560SF is an excellent example) paired with an external storage JBOD or RAID-enabled RBOD box from a third party. The last thing any storage-minded business wants is accidental data lost to power failure, so encourage the purchase of an uninterruptible power supply on the outside as well as on the internal RAID controller for redundancy. Not least of all, examine the data throughput needs that will be placed on this server, especially if the box is destined for highly transactional use or serving of multiple high-def media streams. One Gigabit Ethernet connection, or even two, may not be sufficient. Intel carries a full line of dualand quad-port Gig cards as well as several 10 Gigabit models. Some of these are low-profile for use in 2U rackmount settings, and all support Intel’s latest remote management technologies.

In a sense, the entire server sales process is one longupsell with a single goal: to make the customer’s business stronger and more profitable. Investing in solid technology pays dividends, and it pays to partner with a provider like Intel that can support a full spectrum of server technologies and solutions.