Two of the previous three posts I've made about our upgraded server infrastructure have focused on performance. In the second post I talked about the performance (and reliability) benefits of going with our all-SSD architecture, while in the third post I talked about the increase in CPU performance between our old and new infrastructures. Today however, it's time to focus on power consumption. Our old server infrastructure came from a time where power consumption mattered, but it hadn't yet been prioritized. This was before Nehalem's 2:1 rule (2% perf increase for every 1% power increase), and it was before power gating. Once again I turned to our old HP DL585 server with four AMD Opteron 880s (8-cores total) as an example of just how things...
HP Mini 5103: Looking at the Dual-Core Atom N550
Netbooks are all so similar in terms of performance that it’s difficult to get excited about reviewing “yet another netbook”. Aesthetics and build quality may change, but outside of...
59 by Jarred Walton on 12/17/2010
HP EliteBook 8740w: IPS on the Go
The search for a notebook with a quality screen, at least in the mainstream sector, can often feel like a futile one. Outside of Jarred's recent love affair with...
63 by Dustin Sklavos on 12/8/2010
Dell Latitude E6410: Minding Intel's Business
Business centric laptops are something most people have used at some point or another, but they're not always the first devices to get reviewed. The reason is pretty simple...
51 by Jarred Walton on 12/2/2010
Virtualization - Ask the Experts #6
We conclude our series of Ask the Experts with four questions you all asked about servers and virtualization in previous posts. Thanks to everyone who participated and we hope...
6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/1/2010
10G Ethernet: More Than a Big Pipe
If you are looking to improve your virtualized datacenter, 10Gb Ethernet really deserves your attention. It delivers more than twice as much bandwidth as quad-port gigabit, lower latency, lower...
38 by Johan De Gelas on 11/24/2010
AnandTech 2010 Server Upgrade: The Memory
A couple of months ago we shared with you the CPUs that are going into our new server farm. We've actually started physically installing the machines (hence the brief...
69 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/28/2010
Hybrid Clouds: are we there yet?
Just 9 months ago, almost 1500 out of a total of 3146 readers (46%) told us in a poll that they feel that "Cloud Computing is hot air, it...
26 by Johan De Gelas on 10/18/2010
ZFS - Building, Testing, and Benchmarking
Click to enlarge If you are in the IT field, you have no doubt heard a lot of great things about ZFS, the file system originally introduced by Sun in...
105 by Matt Breitbach on 10/5/2010Virtualization - Ask the Experts #5
A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich Brunner and myself. The goal was to talk about the...
27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/29/2010
HP Mini 5102: This Netbook Means Business
We’ve seen more than our fair share of Pine Trail netbooks since their launch late last year. Performance has never been spectacular, but battery life and portability have been...
24 by Jarred Walton on 9/22/2010Virtualization - Ask the Experts #4
Our Ask the Experts series continues with another round of questions. A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich...
9 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/10/2010
Server Clash: DELL's Quad Opteron DELL R815 vs HP's DL380 G7 and SGI's Altix UV10
Three totally different servers in one test: the dual Xeon X5670 HP DL380 G7, the quad Xeon X7560 SGI Altix UV10 and the Quad Opteron 6174 Dell R815. Three...
50 by Johan De Gelas on 9/9/2010Virtualization - Ask the Experts #3
Our Ask the Experts series continues with another round of questions. A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich...
16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/2/2010
AnandTech 2010 Server Upgrade: The CPUs
Years ago I used to publish a series of articles called Behind AnandTech. We'd occasionally do a massive server upgrade and I'd publish detailed specs, shots and info about...
67 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 8/30/2010
HP EliteBook 8440w: On-the-Go Workstation
HP's EliteBook 8440w is the smallest workstation on the market, making it an intruiging notebook for on-the-run engineers and professionals who do a lot of CAD and simulation analysis...
45 by Vivek Gowri on 8/13/2010
Quad Xeon 7500, the Best Virtualized Datacenter Building Block?
Finding the best building block for a virtualized datacenter has been our quest for a few years now. In this article, we’ll introduce you to our brand new virtualization...
51 by Johan De Gelas on 8/10/2010Virtualization - Ask the Experts #2
Our Ask the Experts series continues with another round of questions. A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich...
16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/27/2010Virtualization - Ask the Experts #1
A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich Brunner and myself. The goal was to talk about the...
44 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/22/2010
Low Power Server CPUs: the energy saving choice?
Keeping an eye on power when choosing the hardware and software components is thus much more than naively following the hype of “green IT”. It is simply the smart...
49 by Johan De Gelas on 7/15/2010
SeaMicro Announces SM10000 Server with 512 Atom CPUs and Low Power Consumption
The past couple of years have shown us a lot can be done with very modest CPU power thanks to Moore's Law. Everything from netbooks to smartphones rely on...
53 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/14/2010