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...
SSD versus Enterprise SAS and SATA disks
We compare RAID configurations of up to 16 SATA drives, up to eight SAS drives, and up to eight Intel X25-E SLC SSDs in different situations and try to...
66 by Johan De Gelas on 3/20/2009
The Best Server CPUs Compared, Part 1
This article is different from the previous ones, as we have changed the methodology we use to evaluate a server CPU. Read on, and find out why we feel...
29 by Johan De Gelas on 12/22/2008
AMD Shanghai Launch - Database Testing
AMD's new 45nm Shanghai CPU launches today and we ran tests using database workloads. What changes, and what remains the same?
27 by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on 11/13/2008
An Introduction to Virtualization
For those readers finding our in-depth studies of various technologies a bit too daunting, we've created an introductory piece that should allow anyone an easy entry into the fascinating...
16 by Liz van Dijk on 10/28/2008
Intel Xeon 7460: Six Cores to Bulldoze Opteron
Despite the huge die size and 1.9 billion (!) transistors, the six-core Xeon 74xx is a wallflower, for both the public as Intel's marketing. If you've invested in a...
36 by Johan De Gelas on 9/23/2008
Container-Based OS Virtualization
Taking a dive into the inner workings of another form of virtualization: Container-based OS virtualization.
1 by Liz van Dijk on 7/8/2008
Sixteen Cores, Four Sockets
The quad-socket market is extremely interesting and exciting as AMD's quad-core Opteron and Intel's quad-core Xeon MP are well matched. We show you our first sixteen core benchmarks.
0 by Johan De Gelas on 6/17/2008
Sun Fire X4450: Challenging the HP and IBM bastion
Sun challenges market leaders IBM and HP by claiming that the Sun Fire X4450 can deliver the performance and the functionality of their best 16-core 4U servers in a...
0 by Johan De Gelas on 5/25/2008
Hardware Virtualization: the Nuts and Bolts
If you like to understand how binary translation, paravirtualization, and hardware virtualization work, this article is for you. We delve deep into the heart of VMware ESX, Intel VT-x...
1 by Johan De Gelas on 3/17/2008
The IT view of CeBIT 2008
We look at the newest AMD and Intel servers and some of the newer storage devices presented at the CeBIT 2008 show.
0 by Johan De Gelas on 3/13/2008
VMworld Europe 2008 Coverage
Bits and pieces of what we learned about virtualization at VMworld Europe 2008, which took place in Cannes around the end of February.
0 by Liz van Dijk on 3/10/2008
Application Virtualization
We provide an introductory look at a versatile answer to safe software deployment and distribution. We have a short overview of the different approaches, and we'll check out some...
11 by Liz van Dijk on 2/25/2008
The Google Mini - A look at Google's entry-level search appliance
Google's Mini laid bare: we take a closer look at its functionality and put its performance to the test.
19 by Liz van Dijk on 12/21/2007
AMD's 3rd generation Opteron versus Intel's 45nm Xeon: a closer look
The new Xeon 45nm (or Xeon 54xx series) arrived in the lab weeks ago, so a server CPU benchmark update is overdue. However, there is another reason we decided...
43 by Johan De Gelas on 11/27/2007Affordable storage for the SME, part one
This is the first article of series of articles in which we explore the world of Storage Area Networks (SANs) in search of affordable storage solutions for SMEs. We...
21 by Johan De Gelas on 11/7/2007Intel "Harpertown" Xeon vs. AMD "Barcelona" Opteron
Intel and AMD release new-and-improved quads: AMD ships Barcelona and Intel tweaks the current Xeon. We see how the two stack up against each other in the IT world.
77 by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on 9/18/2007Low Power Server CPU Redux: Quad-Core Comes to Play
We take a look at the latest low voltage G-stepping quad-core Xeon and compare it to AMD's current low voltage offering.
36 by Jason Clark & Ross Whitehead on 9/13/2007AMD's Quad-Core Barcelona: Defending New Territory
Today AMD's third generation Opterons launches - only at 2GHz, but packed with many clever tricks to improve the IPC and with a surprise update coming in the near...
46 by Johan De Gelas on 9/10/2007AMD's Opteron hits 3.2GHz
AMD launches four new Opterons, two at 3GHz and two at 3.2GHz. How do they perform compared to the Intel alternatives? What about performance per watt? Well find out...
30 by Johan De Gelas on 8/6/2007Killing the Business Desktop PC Softly
It's 2007, and a serious attempt on the life of the PC is in the works. Shockingly, the murder is planned by nobody less than the "parents" of the...
39 by Johan De Gelas on 7/19/2007