Rob on Hyperscale Cloud Architecture

February 21, 2011

Earlier this month when the Bexar release for OpenStack went live, a meet up was held in Santa Clara.  As a part of the event, a series of lightening talks were given by various OpenStack community members.  One of the speakers was Dell’s very own Rob Hirschfeld, a senior cloud solutions architect, who has been actively involved with the OpenStack project from the get-go.

Here is the short presentation that Rob gave where he talks about some of the key characteristics of a hyperscale environment and how it differs from a traditional enterprise data center.

Some of the topics Rob touches on:

  • “Nested centralized” vs “Flat Edges”
  • Fully redundant vs. cloud non-redundant
  • Fault zones across applications
  • Cloud-ready hardware

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

And on the other end of the spectrum — Microservers

February 16, 2011

Monday I wrote about the announcement of our mega-beefy, 96-core PowerEdge C6145 server, specifically geared to customers solving big problems involving huge and complex data sets in mapping, visualization, simulations and rendering.

At the other end of the spectrum however are customers, such as those offering low-end dedicated hosting solutions, who are looking for systems with only enough processing and storage to serve up straight-forward, focused applications such as those for serving up webpages, streaming video etc.  These “right-sized” systems are referred to as “micro” or “light weight” servers.

Take a listen to Data Center Solutions marketing director Drew Schulke below as he explains the origin of the microserver and walks you through our second generation offering in this space.

Some of the area Drew covers:

  • How did Dell get into the microserver market 2-3 years ago
  • How the progression of Moore’s law caused processing power to out strip the needs of many applications.
  • A walk through of our second generation microserver which packs 12 single socket servers into one 3Uenclosure.

We will continue to be making noise in this space.  Be sure to tune in next time as our topic will be a mini “case study” on Dell’s first generation microserver deployed at a large hoster in France.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Dell DCS unveils its 4th HPC offering in 12 months, and its a beefy one

February 14, 2011

Today Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) is announcing the PowerEdge C6145, number four in our line of offerings targeted specifically at High Performance Computing.  This AMD-based system, which contains two four-socket servers for a total of 96 cores, ranked as the highest performing x86 2U shared infrastructure server on the market based on SPECfp_rate2006 results. In addition, the PowerEdge C6145 can deliver up to a 534% better price performance at 1/5 the cost and 1/4 of the rack space when compared to HP’s ProLiant DL980 G71.

The HPC beat goes on

When we in DCS launched our PowerEdge C line almost a year ago, our first HPC-focused machine was the Intel-based C6100.   We followed it three months later with our C410x expansion chassis to supercharge it and then, three months after that, we came out with the AMD version of the C6100, the PowerEdge C6105.   Now three months after that system debuted we are unveiling the C6145.  All three servers come in the same 2U package but with differing chips and architectures targeted at different HPC application types.

Check out the video below and let the C6145 architect, John Stuewe take you on a quick tour of this new muscle machine.

Hairy problem solver

The PowerEdge C6145 with its 755FLOPS and up to 1T of memory is specifically geared to solving big problems involving huge and complex data sets in mapping, visualization, simulations and rendering, and solving them faster.  With regards to efficiency, the shared infrastructure design of the system can reduce the number of individual fans by 1/4 compared to traditional 2U systems with less power needed to cool and resulting in higher performance per watt, per dollar.

Super charge it

As if 96 cores packed into 2U wasn’t powerful enough, you can take your workloads “to 11″ with the help of the PowerEdge C410x.  The C410x PCIe expansion chassis allows you to double the server to graphics processing unit (GPU) ratio to 1:8 to create a number-crunching uber powerhouse.

Dell DCS has been listening to their HPC customers and rolling out systems to meet their needs, today we’ve announced the latest in our line up, the PowerEdge C6145.

Extra-Credit reading:

Pau for now…

1 Based on testing by Dell Labs. Dell PowerEdge C6145: SPECfp_rate2006 of 1310 in 2U as compared to HP ProLiant DL980 G7: SPECfp_rate2006 of 1080 in 8U.  SPEC® and the benchmark name SPECfp® are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.  Competitive benchmarks stated above reflect results published or submitted to www.spec.org as of Feb 14, 2011.  The comparison presented above is based on the best performing 8-chip x86 servers.  For the latest SPECfp_rate2006 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/cpu2006. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

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Posted by Barton George

Meet Roy Guillen — GM of Dell’s DCS group

February 11, 2011

In case you’re not familiar with it, Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group has been around for nearly four years, acting as a “custom tailor” to some of the largest internet superstars and scale-out leaders, organizations like Facebook, Microsoft Azure and Lawrence Livermore national labs.  A year ago DCS added to this custom capability by bringing out a line of specialized servers paired with software solutions targeted at the tier of customers right below these “biggest of the big.”

A changing of the guard
Last March, Roy Guillen took over the helm as the General Manager of the DCS group when the then current GM, Forrest Norrod was promoted to run all of servers at Dell.  Near the end of the year I sat down with Roy to get his thoughts on what made DCS, DCS and learn what success looked like for him.

Some of the ground Roy covers:

  • His Background
  • [0:49] What makes DCS unique within Dell and the industry
  • [2:01] The customer story that best sums up DCS
  • [3:25] The one thing that isn’t well known about DCS
  • [4:18] What does success look like for you?

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Architecture Overview: The Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications

February 10, 2011

Last November, Dell announced the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications.   This turnkey offering is composed of Dell systems and Joyent Software along with a reference architecture all supported by Dell services.  This solution enables a private Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment to support the development and testing of languages such as PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby and Java.

This solution is designed for hosters and telcos who are looking to provide public PaaS offerings.  An example of this is Uniserve, a Canadian Internet services provider.  Uniserve has adopted the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications to offer on-demand access to a high-performance Internet application and consumer delivery platform, for customers to develop iPhone apps to commercial storefronts, to hosting and delivering Software-as-a-Service.

Check out the short video above where Dell Data Center Solutions architect Brian Harris  provides a high level overview of the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications architecture.

Some of the areas Brian covers:

  • Purpose build hardware
  • Smart OSs
  • Smart machines
  • Self-service portal
  • Dell Support

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

White Paper: A Revolutionary Approach to Cloud Building

February 4, 2011

A while ago, as a follow-up to our white paper “Laying the Groundwork for Private and Public Clouds” Dell and Intel worked with CIO magazine to put together a Tech Dossier that picked up where our previous paper left off.

“A Revolutionary Approach to Cloud Building” consists of an upfront white paper and four related articles:

  • Intel Builds a Private Cloud — CIO Magazine
  • Cloud Computing: The Future of Application Architectures — CIO Magazine
  • How to Build a Hybrid Cloud Computing Strategy — Forrester’s James Staten
  • Cloud Computing Shopping List: 4 Key Ingredients — CIO Magazine

You say you want a Revolution

Here are a few paragraphs from the white paper to whet your appetite:

For many enterprises, building a private cloud is simply the next step on an evolutionary path that began with data center consolidation. When a company has established a strong virtualization underpinning and is working with traditional enterprise applications, an evolutionary approach to the private cloud makes perfect sense…

In some instances, however, taking what Dell refers to as a “revolutionary” approach to private clouds will be more efficient and much more appropriate. The revolutionary approach makes use of “new world” applications that are written for and deployed in the cloud. These cloud-native applications are designed from the ground up for greater scalability and use across a multitude of servers…

The revolutionary approach requires a new way of thinking about the cloud, but one that Van Mondfrans says enterprise IT executives should undertake sooner rather than later. “This is where the application paradigm is going,” he says…

You can access the document here (no registration required :) .

Pau for now..

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Posted by Barton George

DCS’s Chief Geek takes us on a tour of his mini Home Lab

February 4, 2011

Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group has some pretty colorful folks.  One of the more interesting members is Jimmy Pike, the man IDG New’s James Niccolai refered to as the “Willy Wonka of servers.”  Jimmy, the self-proclaimed “chief geek” of the DCS team is the consummate tinkerer whether that involves constructing a data center in a brief case or thinking of new ways of driving down data center power consumption by leveraging alternative forms energy.

Last Spring I visited Jimmy’s home to check out what he was working on in his “free time.”  Here’s what I saw (he keeps telling me he’s got much cooler stuff since I shot this so I may have to do a “geekquel”)

Some of the things Jimmy show us:

  • The low-power chips he’s playing with
  • His experimentation with user interfaces and superman glasses
  • His mini rack of servers
  • The various forms of desktop virtualization and OS’s he uses
  • Laying out and designing boards by mail
  • His micro recording studio

Extra-Credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Dell provides Ubuntu-powered IaaS-in-a-box

February 3, 2011

Yesterday, the announcement went out that the Dell | Canonical Enterprise Cloud, Standard Edition was out and ready for consumption.  What this cloud-in-a-box allows folks to do is to set-up affordable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas)-style private clouds in their computer labs or data centers.  The cool thing is that, because the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) software  is compatible with Amazon Web Services EC2 and S3 services, it enables IT admins and developers to move workloads between public and private clouds.

Who cares?

Application developers and IT service providers and admins who are setting up cloud POC’s are perfect candidates for this pre-configured testing and development environment.  With regards to industries, areas where there is a lot of software development work like Hosters, Telco & Communications, Media & Entertainment and Web 2.0 businesses are prime markets for the Dell UEC solution.

So what’s in it?

The solutions’ basic components are Dell PowerEdge C systems plus a Dell-specific download of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (made up of the Ubuntu operating system and the Eucalyptus platform for private cloud computing).  To simplify getting the whole shebang up and running Dell and Canonical are providing the following:

Here’s a peak at the hardware that supports it:

The Dell UEC cloud solution pod.

  • Cloud Compute Server – PowerEdge C6100 that embeds four discrete compute nodes in a single enclosure
  • Cloud Front-end Server – PowerEdge C2100 server that acts as an all-in-controller and runs all shared UEC-related services
  • Infrastructure Server – PowerEdge C2100 that runs two components of the cloud infrastructure:
    • Cloud Deployment and Landscape Management
    • Cloud Storage
  • Network switch – PowerConnect 6248

And on the software side…

The architecture looks something like this:

The Dell UEC cloud solution architecture

The software components are:

  • Cloud Controller (CLC) – the cloud portal
  • Walrus Controller (W) – the cloud’s storage repository
  • Cluster Controller (CC) – the controller for a up to 1024 compute cores grouped together as a cluster
  • Storage Controller (SC) – the controller for cluster’s storage repository
  • Compute Node (CN) – cloud’s compute node

And on the support side…

If you’re looking for systems management and support services with your order, you are in luck.  Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has put together UEC Assist, a support service built specifically for Dell customers deploying SE Edition and which is delivered by Canonical’s Global Services and Support team.

Its all about efficiency

From a Dell DCS (the group at Dell behind this) point of view, this offering fits in well with our strategy of bringing total solutions to market that optimize efficiency at every layer, from code to servers to storage.  The open source Dell UEC solution is tailor made to deliver a ready to go IaaS solution.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now..

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Posted by Barton George

DCS systems, solutions and MDC steal show at Dell sales kick-off

February 1, 2011

Every year at the end of January Dell holds a giant kick-off meeting for our enterprise and public sales forces.  The event, which has been held in Las Vegas the last two years, is a four-day happening consisting of keynotes, sessions and a full-scale expo where the sales team can touch and learn first-hand about the latest and greatest in Dell solutions and offerings.

Setting up the DCS Modular Data Center on the expo floor

At last year’s sales kick-off, the Data Center Solutions (DCS) group had our big coming out party, letting the sales force know that we would be expanding beyond our elite custom system business, with a specialized PowerEdge C line and a set of cloud solutions.

This year the systems and solutions have been out in the market for a little while and we were able to share actual case studies with the attendees showing how our systems and solutions have been able to solve real customer problems.  The big new addition to the DCS line up was our Modular Data Center (MDC) which, until just a few months ago, was reserved only for a very small group of select customers.

Gearing up for day two of both duty at the DCS booth.

As you can tell from the picture above, the MDC took up a big part of our booth.  It served to house our PowerEdgeC servers and host a selection of our cloud solutions:

Additionally, to provide a peak at what PowerEdge C systems we have up our sleeve, we had several units in an uber secret whisper suite.

Our overall message at the booth was that although these components can be used individually, if you want to run “the world’s most efficient hyperscale data center” you’ll want to combine these optimized solutions and systems with the MDC into one hyper-efficient, integrated system.

Well received

Now as a member of the DCS team I may be a little biased but I really think we had the coolest booth there :)   It was great to hear comments from the sales force such as “this is awesome!” and “why didn’t I know about this?!”

We’ll have to start now to figure how we will top this next year.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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