HP promises ProLiant performance boost

HP today introduced two eight-way ProLiant servers that mark the debut of HP/Intel's F8 chipset in the manufacturer's hardware.

The servers, the new HP ProLiant DL740 and the second-generation HP ProLiant DL760, also feature hot-plug RAID memory capabilities and improvements to HP ProLiant Essentials management software.

Designed for applications such as high-performance databases and IT consolidation projects in mind, HP says the servers offer great strides in both availability and performance over previous models. Each is built to run either Linux or various flavours of Windows Server.

HP's partners, such as VMware, provide technology that allows customers to run multiple, and even disparate, operating systems and applications on the same ProLiant server.

And what server launch would be complete without benchmarks? In this case HP highlights how the ProLiant DL760 server achieved 115,025 transactions per minute (tpmC) with a price/performance of $7.69/tpmC in the relevant TPC benchmarks.

HP gives credit for this performance to use of the F8 chipset, a follow-on to the Profusion chipset that HP jointly developed with Intel. The F8 chipset has been designed for higher performance and bandwidth by combining PCI-X input/output technology, Gigabit Ethernet, Ultra3 SCSI and Intel Xeon processor MP technology.

Last July we reported that HP was quietly "killing off" the F8 chipset. Now it seems reports of its mothballing in some (HP cupboard somewhere, perhaps) were greatly exaggerated.

Also announced today are two new additions to the HP ProLiant Essentials management software product line: HP Insight Manager 7 SP2 and the HP ProLiant Essentials Performance Management Pack. HP Insight Manager 7 has an enhanced user interface that provides an integrated console for the Performance Management Pack.

The Performance Management Pack features the ProLiant Performance Analyser, which identifies and explains hardware bottlenecks on ProLiant servers, so helping users get the most out of the hardware.

Available today, the HP ProLiant DL740 server starts at $24,999. Each
ProLiant DL760 server costs $27,999 or above.

Licenses for the HP ProLiant Essentials Workload Management Pack are $499 per server. Estimated US licenses for HP ProLiant Essentials Performance Management Pack are $99 per monitored server. The two management packs are currently available only for Windows environments but the lesser HP Insight Manager 7 SP2 ships free with ProLiant servers.

Additional information about can be found here. ®

Related Stories

IBM preps 32-way Intel server
IBM, HP quibble over Xeon MPs in midrange servers