Archive for the ‘HPTF 2009’ Category

For the longest time, we have been told that Blades are better than servers. Well, what would be better than that?

Extreme Scale out.

I talk with Doug about the “Skinless Server”. We look at the DL-6000 SL-160, SL-170z,SL 2×170 a pull out server with the cables in the front for easy access. With the cords in the front, they don’t block the cooling in the back.

Last week we showed off the HP POD system. An impressive Data center in a metal case. However, how do you power the POD?

That is where this POD comes in. It is the ActivePower Powerhouse. A 40 foot container that gives the Data Center the power and cooling it needs.

Andy McCaskey talks with Martin on what it takes to keep the POD running and keep it cool. These PODs have to be ready for any instance – you never know where the POD will be dropped. Andy and Martin also talk about the Flywheel system – to provide a half a megawatt to the POD if needed.

During the week, we learned about how HP has worked on putting a Data Center in a place you would not normally expect. A Shipping POD.

Shipping containers have been used for years to send items overseas. Cars, boats, heavy equipment, or if you’re packing your house, put it in a POD and move it. More recent PODs have been promoted as the next generation in moving. Instead of a moving truck, you load up the POD and call the the company to pick up and drop at the desired location. Even this year, I have seen local Fireworks tents have a POD next to them to lock up all the fireworks.

Yet HP has a different use for them in Datacenters. If your server room runs out of space, or maybe you are building or reconstructing. You could even use this HP POD in an emergency situation.

Andy McCaskey talks with Steve about what an HP POD has to offer.

The show ended with a big bang – well, not that big bang, but we were close to being that philosophical about it. With the Closing Keynote including Dr. Michael Kaku about what we could see in years to come. How Moore’s law is about to come to an end and we need to run on the Atomic level.

The video shows the dismantling of the show floor as I walk through the day. Thanks to Andy McCaskey, Kara Karsten, Shane Pitman, John Obeto, Becca Taylor, Halley Claire, Tom Augenthaler, Calvin Zito and everyone else that was part of this great week.

Well, the day started out with interviews, then more interviews, then a keynote and now we rest until tonight. But there are some great pictures of the day, therefore, here is the rest of Day 4. The Closing Keynote pictures are with the respected post.

HP has a great closing session for you.

Master of Ceremonies: Bill Sales: VP – Industry Standard Servers – Americas

Mike Klayko: CEO – Brocade

Rob Helm: Director of Research on Microsoft – Independent Analysis of MS Tech & Strategy.

Tom Kilroy: VP – GM Intel Digital Enterprise Group

Dr. Michael Kaku: Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics, City University of New York.

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3:20 PM: Event Starts. Bill Sales introduces and tells participants whomever guesses the registration attendance can win backstage passes to the Beach Boys in the evening.

3:30 PM: Mike Klayko from Brocade takes the stage. Mike starts off talking about Roz Savage and how Brocade supports her efforts. He then talked about the acquisitions they have made. Data Center Transition is the next subject. The cost change in the last year was dramatic.

Standards will change to put everything into the cloud. Convergence will come into play in the Data Center. Brocade will be deploying Converged Technologies.

Evolution: 15 Billion devices will be deployed in the years. In the Campus – A Network Evolution will occur. You will be able to roam across campuses without interruption.

3:48 PM: Quick Video from Brocade

Choice, Solutions and Savings are the three focuses Mike wants to convey.  www.brocade.com/technologyday for more information on these three.

3:51 PM: Rob Helm takes the stage. He talkes about On Time Software Releases (in jest). He states the next 12 months will be “Interesting” for Microsoft. Windows 7, Server 2008, Office 2010, SharePoint and Exchange 2010 and Communications Server 2010.

Rob creates the “Enterprise Software RoadMap, which includes releases and retirements, then a best guess of the future. Rob says this next year will be Microsofts’ busiest than ever.

Rob states Windows 7 is available on Oct 22, Server 2008 R2 around that same time. The idea of moving from “Old to New”. There will be some push factors, but also Pull factors.

He goes on to show a timeline from XP to Windows 7. He states this is an Incremental release and believes Windows 7 will be the first to put the system on a shared core with the Server OS for the first time since Windows 2000.

Direct Access – like a VPN – to connect to and work. The difference is if the user is out of compliance, Windows Server will manage the client to put the user back to compliance.

End to End: BranchCache – File Caching for branch offices. It will improve network performance and simplify management. The clients manage the files between one another.

Rob then goes into the real advantages of upgrading to Windows 7 and Server 2008. Virtualization is the big one. It cuts down on costs and bandwidth. Virtual Machines that will have failure redundancy with a seamless transition. Load balancing and maintenance schedules will also be big advantages. But as Rob says – If a death ray zaps your server….

Scalability, Managability and Availability are the 3 things in a HP – MS central partnership. Rob believes that HP customers will be in the “Front Row” to the future.

4:12 PM: Tom Kilroy comes up about IT Pains, the Intel Advantage and what it means to us.

Old Age: The longer you hold on to something, the more it’s gonna cost in the long run. By year 3-4, the studies show PC costs go up 33% , then 40% after year 4. A 4 year server will need more wattage than a 2 year old server.

80% of IT spends – 30% Operating and 50% Expense. Data Centers are on track to consuming up to 3% of all US Electricity use. System improvements are helping keep us out of that 3% mark.

People and Virtualization.  Tom notes from IDC:  “Client-side virtualization will outpace server-hosted desktops by almost 2x by 2012.” Data Center virtualization will help with those costs both on the server and the client side. One other factor came into play – how to secure the client-side virtualization. Home devices will be allowed more, but IT will have to be able to confirm this will not hurt their systems.

Tom talks about uPro, which will lower power by managing machines that don’t need to be powered on. vPro will show a 10 Month ROI, as oppose to without, which gives a 17 Month ROI.

Tom talks about the Xeon 5500 processor. He quotes the Financial Times as a “Recession Buster”. Chuck comes out and runs a ROI calculator to see how the new computers will save. The answer: 3 months before you see a savings. Dual core machines will show return in 12 months.

4:39 PM: Dr. Michael Kaku came on to talk about the future. He starts by saying that no one is perfect in predicting the future. He talks about how he built his first Atom smasher as a kid. He goes into the book “Physics of the Impossible”. This brings us to Moores Law. Doubling time for computer power in 18 moths.

He reffered to todays birthday cards. If some people had that power 100 years ago – but instead we discard that technology

Michael puts out a challenge to create seamless access to unlimited information, anytime, anywhere.

- Cloud Computing

-Limitation due to speed of light

-Challenge posed by YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and rapidly evolving social networks, etc.

- Computing viewed like a utility

The word Computer will be obsolete. You will use glasses, contacts or brain waves to get information. Cell phones will have “Virtual paper”. Wall screens will help you with tasks like finding a date.  Even a computerized dog that doesn’t “Pee on the carpet”.

“Smart Barbie dolls”.

Computers will cost the same as paper. You write on it and discard. Files that follow you. The file itself will be more valuable than the computer.

The Boardroom, the cubicle and the car of the future. DARPA ran a contest. A car was developed that can drive itself. It has been tested on the Autobon.

Mass customization – If you want a $10k channel evening gown, customized to you or the spouse.

Michael talks about the end of Moore’s law. Parallel, Quantum, Optical, DNA and molecular computing are some options. By 2020, chips will have layers 5 atoms across. Molecular transistors could mean that Sillicon Valley could become a “Rust belt”.

3×5=15 was calculated on 5 atoms.Yetnothing has a universal consensus.  The age of Silicon must pass.

Another challenge was to reduce biology to computer science. He talks about a smart toilet that will analyze your urine to tell you if you have an issue. Dr. Kaku also talks about a smart pill that can take computers inside a human.

Growing cells into organs. The first Bladder was cloned using your own cells.

Video – Earth in 50 years.

Dr. Kaku says “Aging is error”. By comparing genes, we can work on controlling the process. Alligators and crocadiles don’t get old – they get bigger.

Artificial Intelligence. Why we don’t have AI – They cannot recognize and determine pattern recognition.

Common sense. Water is wet and when you die, you don’t come back. Dr. Kaku asked how you know that? Common sense. Robots do not have the common sense.

He asks “Can AI become dangerous?” The answer: Yes. But control will have to be programmed into the system. Jobs will be lost, but those jobs that are repetitive. Intellectual Capitolizm.

He then repeats the 5 challenges thrown out to everyone.

-Create seamless information anytime, anywhere
-Replace Moores law
- Reduce biology and medicine to computer science
- Solving pattern recognition problem
- Solving common sense problem.

5:20 PM: Dr. Kaku opened it up to questions.

That is the end folks! Beach Boys play later on! Here are some of the pictures of the Keynote.

TCO stands for Total Cost of Ownership. One of the big points at the HP Technology Forum was how much money you can save if you update your servers. With the new designs and smaller, cooler archetectures, you can reduce your Data Center and the power and heat it expells.

Andy McCaskey talks with John Pickett about the TCO challenge – how much you will save with newer systems. How much will you save? If you have a big system, you could save enough to golf with 3 friends at Pebble Beach everyday for 42 years.

John shows a program you can run from home to see what types of savings you may get.

Day 3 went fast and hard. We got to the interview booth and we were interviewing right away. The one-on-one walk by interviews were also being recorded. All in all, it was a great day.

We learned about Cooling and Heating elements. We learned about a program that could find free nodes on a network and use them. We found a program that could make legacy equipment obsolete. We even learned about OM3 Fiber that is 10 times better than OM2.

Here is the full video. Thanks to Andy McCaskey, Kara Karsten and Shane Pitman for all their great work.

Well, we survived another day and are ready for the upcoming barrage of interviews and video:

8 AM: Planning Meeting Halley Claire joined us and we talked about Blogging and Marketing.

10 AM: Got the Booth set up for interviews with Brian Ignomirello and Chris McCall. Shane Pitman of NeoWin

11:30 AM: Tons of Video Uploading

12:30 PM: Lunch

1:30 PM: Walking the Expo Floor. We talked with many of the vendors around the conference and their products from Rack mount storage to Fiber cabling and even software Programming. Andy, Kara and myself did one – on – one interviews with each vendor.

4 PM: Expo closed until the Reception. We went over to Conference room I for appetizers and live music. Came back in and recorded a couple videos and the wrap up.

6 PM: Interviews with Shane Pitman and Halley Bass. Went over and did some backchannel at the Intel Booth. Tried to guess all the videos on the screen and failed miserably. I’m gonna try again tomorrow.

8 PM: Expo closes. We run through the Wrap up videos.

10 PM: Still working… Will post wrap ups soon.

Photos:

Day 2 had brought upon a lot of cool stuff. We put together the booth for uStream interviews, we walked the floor of HPTF and we had a great time at the Luau.

Here is the Wrap Up Video for the HPTF 2009 Day 2. I am at awe of the 1000 videos playing right behind me. I think there is a market in turning that into a tanning booth – watch your favorite shows while getting a nice tan.

Day 2 started out a little slower – not the expo, but us. We burnt the midnight oil, which with the time zone difference was 2-3 hours later than what we are used to. Nonetheless, we got all the audio and video up for the day.

8:00 AM: Started with a hearty breakfast. Recorded the Morning rundown.

8:45 AM: Got to out Stand and started setting up. Walked around the show room before they opened the doors.

11 AM: POD interview. Datacenters in a POD storage unit.

uStream of the HP Expo floor is up

12 PM: Lunch

1 PM: Started walking the Expo floor. Interviews with Gresham, Emulex, Fusion 10 and Q-Logic. Andy and Kara started getting interviews going at the SDR booth

5 PM: Gathering at the POD for munchies. Cirque Du Soleil performers were on hand. We all got some nice gift boxes with juggling balls enclosed.

6 PM: Andy, Kara and myself stayed behind to record the daily wrapup.

6:30 PM: I stayed behind more to do my weekly podcast from the show floor.

7:30 PM: Luau commences (I am still working…)