ZT Systems, SGI, Supermicro Unveil New Xeon Servers

Once Intel announces a new processor, it doesn't take long for server vendors to unveil new systems integrating the technology. That was certainly true Tuesday, as Intel's introduction of its Xeon E5 processors was followed by a flurry of announcements from OEMs. Here's a roundup:

ZT Systems announced a range of new server platforms featuring the powerful Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family. Having worked closely with hyperscale cloud and supercomputer customers on early implementation of custom platforms featuring this new generation of processors ZT Systems offers its unique experience in design, integration and delivery of precision-fit solutions to unique technical and business requirements. “More and more customers with scale-out workloads like cloud computing and web analytics are discovering the benefits of server platform customization,” said Casey Cerretani, ZT Systems Chief Technology Officer. “From board level design to custom enclosure options, our clients demand that every possible optimization has been made to ensure the best performance within their data center design and cost parameters. Our experience with large deployments of the new Intel Xeon processor E5 product family has demonstrated that custom ZT servers featuring this new technology can cost-effectively maximize application performance and data center efficiency.”

SGI announced that it is continuing its march toward exascale computing with the integration of the Intel Xeon processor E5 family into all of its high performance compute (HPC) server and storage platforms and product families. The E5-2600 processors will be placed into Rackable, ICE and Modular InfiniteStorage (MIS) platforms. SGI recently announced that with over 60 miles of InfiniBand cabling in place at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, a scientist was able to utilize 25,000 SGI ICE Intel Xeon processor cores on Pleiades to run a space weather simulation. "SGI focuses on speed and scale," said Bill Mannel vice president of product marketing at SGI. "The E5-2600 family is the perfect 'engine' under the hood for our products. The SGI Rackable line, ICE X high performance compute line, and storage servers with Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 family will be ideal for private enterprise workloads as well as public cloud, Hadoop and HPC. Based upon our measurements, replacing 2007 systems with those based upon this new processor will yield up to a 66% reduction in their total cost of ownership (TCO)."

Supermicro Computer (SMCI) unveiled its new generation server platforms supporting the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 families at CeBIT 2012 in Hannover, Germany this week. Additionally, the company has created a new platform architecture dubbed "FatTwin", an evolution of Supermicro's Twin architecture, offering enhanced system cooling, power savings, lower TCO and ultimate flexibility to support any application or upgrade path."With the launch of our extensive lineup of new generation server solutions optimized for Intel's new Xeon processors, computing and cooling power savings and greater storage capacity, Supermicro is delivering a superior computing platform for data center, enterprise, cloud and high performance computing," said Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. "We offer customers a time-to-market advantage with early deployment of production ready solutions across our major new lines of products. In 2012, Supermicro is leading the industry with the widest selection of high-performance, high-efficiency server building block solutions and creating the new paradigm in scalable computing."

Dell announced a portfolio of blade, rack and tower next-generation PowerEdge servers that are built on the Intel Xeon processor E5 product family. The new PowerEdge R820, R720, R720xd and R620 rack servers, the M620 blade server, the T620 tower server and C6220 are the foundation of a complete IT solution including Dell’s portfolio of storage, networking and client components and professional IT services. Late last month Dell announced a full portfolio of 12th generation servers for the enterprise.  Dell also announced OpenManage Essentials, a new management console, which monitors the health of Dell servers, storage and switches. “Dell’s PowerEdge 12th generation servers take advantage of the Intel Xeon processor E5 family’s leadership performance and breakthrough I/O capabilities to offer optimized solutions for customers’ most important workloads," said Boyd Davis, VP & GM of Intel’s Datacenter Infrastructure Group. "In small scale deployments, private clouds, and enterprise datacenters, customers will also benefit from key innovations such as Dell OpenManage Power Center, which is built on top of Intel’s Node Manager solution for monitoring and implementing policies for greater energy efficiency.”  Five new Dell PowerEdge servers are available immediately.

HP has introduced new multicore updates and increased expandability on its powerful line of HP Z Workstations. The new workstations feature the latest eight-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family, offer up to 512 gigabytes (GB) of DDR3 memory and support multithreaded workstation applications. The latest additions to the line of HP Z Workstations also feature third-generation PCI Express technology, providing customers increased performance and seamless integration of new graphics cards.

SoftLayer Technologies says it will be the first hosting provider to offer servers featuring Xeon E5 2600 series processor. The E5-2600 series is based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture and delivers more cores, memory support and I/O bandwidth making it ideal for powering cloud applications, virtualized computing and content streaming.
“We have always prided ourselves on making the most advanced technology available to our customers, and the Xeon E5 2600 series is no exception,” said Sam Fleitman, Chief Operations Officer for SoftLayer. “We are ensuring that the newest Sandy Bridge processors are publicly available on day one for our power-hungry customers, who are looking to create tomorrow’s leading Web applications and advanced online services.”

Hitachi Data Systems will expand its family of blade and rack server products for the enterprise market. The forthcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will be based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family introduced today by Intel Corporation. “By leveraging the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family, upcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will feature faster performance, higher density and greater energy efficiency,” said Roberto Basilio, vice president, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems. “Hitachi Compute Systems offer innovative designs with unique advantages in scalability, flexible I/O configuration and high availability. They are ideal servers upon which to build converged data center solutions. Seamless management integration with Hitachi Data Systems storage and data networking components give customers an easy operational interface. This saves costs, reduces errors and allows faster, more effective deployment and management of virtual IT environments – all of which create greater efficiencies across the data center.”