Dell is rolling out its third-generation PowerEdge C5000 micro servers, which leverage low-power, energy-efficient processors from both Intel and AMD.
Dell is unveiling two new micro servers in a move that brings the small,
highly energy-efficient form factor to a wider customer base.
The
new additions to the PowerEdge C5000 line-the C5125 and C5220-are the third
generation of micro servers created by Dell's Data Center Solutions Group. The
first two generations were primarily custom-designed systems built for large
customers. The newest systems are targeted more at mainstream businesses-they
can be purchased via Dell's Website, for example, rather than having to go
directly through the Data Center Solutions unit.
However,
these new micro servers target the same customers as the first two generations,
those companies looking for highly energy-efficient systems for such
environments as cloud computing and Web hosting, where low power, low cost and
high density are important. The servers offer a shared infrastructure-such as
power supplies and cabling-that enables high density, putting up to 12 nodes
into a 3U (5.25-inch) chassis.
Dell
officials said the new micro servers offer four times the density of comparable
1U (1.75-inch) services from Hewlett-Packard and IBM,
while cost significantly less to cool.
"Over
the last four years, we've had the pleasure of working with some of the biggest
data center operators in the world, whose complex environments require optimal
efficiency," Andy Rhodes, executive director of marketing for Dell's Data
Center Solutions group, said in a statement. "Our new PowerEdge C
microservers further solidify our position as the premier vendor of specialized
server solutions, leveraging our experience working with this unique set of
customers and placing that power into the hands of a broader customer base
including Web hosting and IT service providers."
The
C5125 is powered by Phenom II and Athlon II chips from Advanced Micro Devices.
The C5220 is based on Intel's new Xeon E3-1200 processors.
Intel
officials in 2009 announced their efforts to create a micro server market based
on energy-efficient, low-power Xeon processors, targeting such environments as
large data centers and service providers. On March 15, Intel unveiled the latest
generation micro server Xeon processors based on the company's "Sandy
Bridge" microarchitecture.
Officials
with the chip giant unveiled the 45-watt quad-core Xeon E3-1260L and the
20-watt dual-core E3-1220L, both built for single-socket systems. Those two
chips are in production now and will be released within the next few weeks,
company officials said. Another unnamed Xeon chip, a 15-watt version for
dual-socket servers, will be released in the second half of 2011.
In
addition, Intel next year will release three more Xeon chips, as well as an
Atom processor that will have a power envelope of under 10 watts.
During
a press conference to announce the new chips, Boyd Davis, general manager of
Intel's Data Center Group, said such low-power servers can eventually account
for as much as 10 percent of the systems market, with demand coming from such
areas as cloud computing and Web hosting. Davis
said there are some tasks where applications running on a single micro server
are preferable to running multiple virtual machines on larger, more traditional
systems.
For
example, also at the press conference, Gio Coglitore, director of Facebook
Labs, said the social networking powerhouse will leverage micro servers as an
alternative to virtualization for front-end workloads. Such an environment
would enable Facebook to more easily scale its workloads, as compared with
using virtualization. They also would be easier to manage and to replace,
Coglitore said.
Pushing
forward with a micro server strategy also will help Intel address the rising
threat of chip makers that are looking to push their low-power mobile chips
based on designs
from ARM Holdings into the data center to address such large-scale data
centers like Facebook's.
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