Dell, HP, Cisco Roll Out New Servers Powered by Intel Xeon E7 v2

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A look at the HP Proliant DL580 Gen 8 server, which features the new Intel Xeon E7 v2 processors. (Photo: HP)

As Intel rolled out its new Xeon E7 v2 processors, leading IT vendors promptly announced updated servers integrating the new chips, which support in-memory technology for improved analytics support. Here's a look at the new offerings from HP, Dell and Cisco:

HP Updates ProLiant Gen8

HP announced its new HP ProLiant DL580 Generation 8 (Gen8) server and upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 servers for its x86 portfolio.

The ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server, based on the Intel Xeon E7-8800/4800 v2 processor, leverages in-memory technology to offer improved performance. HP also is touting the DL580's use of intelligent management to lower total cost of ownership.

ProLiant Gen8 innovations include a range of embedded automation and intelligent management features for integrated life cycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration and automated energy optimization. HP says the new servers continuously analyze thousands of system parameters to enhance application performance and improve uptime. The HP ProLiant DL580 Gen 8 is available for order worldwide starting at $13,079.

“With the increased performance and higher memory capacity of HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 servers, we can provide our customers with cutting-edge solutions to dissolve big data bottlenecks,” Christopher O'Malley, chief executive officer, Velocidata. “This technology reduces capital and operational costs, allowing us to continue building the world’s fastest data transformation, data quality and data simplification appliance-based solutions.”

HP also is announcing upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 rack and blade optimized servers. HP said it will be updating these platforms next month with new performance and scalability features.

Dell Debuts PowerEdge R920 Server

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The new PowerEdge R920 server from Dell includes four Intel Xeon E7 multi-core processors and the ability to support dual RAID controllers and up to 6TB of memory. (Photo: Dell)

With up to four Intel Xeon E7 multi-core processors and the ability to support dual RAID controllers and up to 6TB of memory, the new PowerEdge R920 from Dell is ideal for large databases, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications, e-commerce, business decision applications and high-performance computing, the R920.

The 4-socket, 4U PowerEdge R920, built on Intel’s new E7 processors, is also being positioned for customers looking to migrate from an outdated RISC architecture. Dell says the server offers nearly the same performance in an SAP environment as previous generation 8-socket servers, providing up to a 50 percent cost savings in software licensing. The company also says the R920 can process more than twice the number of Oracle OLAP queries than previous generation server configurations, when coupled with a Dell Compellent Flash-optimized solution.

Dell touts several several significant data access enhancement in the PowerEdge R920, including 8 high-performance PCIe Express Flash drives that far surpass the IOPS performance of rotating drives, the new H730P PowerEdge RAID controller (PERC) that doubles the previous cache size, and the dual PERC capacity that lets customers maximize performance across the larger number of available solid state drives (SSDs).

With 6 TB of memory and up to 24 local storage drives, Dell is positioning the R920 as a candidate for threaded HPC applications that require large amounts of shared memory (SMP codes). These “fat nodes” are essential in most modern HPC systems to accommodate applications that scale-up (vs. scale-out). The R920 includes a plug-in for managing or monitoring your HPC environment via Nagios (Linux console).

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A close look at the Cisco UCS B260M4 blade server, a new system loaded with

Cisco Launches UCS B260 M4 Blade Server

The new Cisco UCS B260 M4 Blade Server is the next server building block in Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) solutions.

The new blade server combines the power of the latest Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 product family and accelerates access to critical data, with expandability to 1.5 TB of RAM (using 32-GB DIMMs), two HDDs or SSDs, one modular LAN on motherboard (mLOM), two PCIe mezzanine slots, and up to 160 Gbps of overall Ethernet throughput. I

In addition, the Cisco UCS B260 M4 server’s modular design offers the capability to upgrade to a 4-socket Cisco UCS B460 M4 server by adding another blade module, along with the Cisco UCS M4 Scalable Connector, to double the computing, memory, and I/O capabilities of the server.

In addition, the Cisco UCS B260 M4 provides: