When we first looked at the Opteron 6276, our time was limited and we were only able to run our virtualization, compression, encryption, and rendering benchmarks. Most servers capable of running 20 or more cores/threads target the virtualization market, so that's a logical area to benchmark. The other benchmarks either test a small part of the server workload (compression and encryption) or represent a niche (e.g. rendering), but we included those benchmarks for a simple reason: they gave us additional insight into the performance profile of the Interlagos Opteron, they were easy to run, and last but not least those users/readers that use such applications still benefit.

Back in 2008, however, we discussed the elements of a thorough server review. Our list of important areas to test included ERP, OLTP, OLAP, Web, and Collaborative/E-mail applications. Looking at our initial Interlagos review, several of these are missing in action, but much has changed since 2008. The exploding core counts have made other bottlenecks (memory, I/O) much harder to overcome, the web application that we used back in 2009 stopped scaling beyond 12 cores due to lock contention problems, the Exchange benchmark turned out to be an absolute nightmare to scale beyond 8 threads, and the only manageable OLTP test—Swingbench Calling Circle—needed an increasing number of SSDs to scale.

The ballooning core counts have steadily made it harder and even next to impossible to benchmark applications on native Linux or Windows. Thus, we reacted the same way most companies have reacted: we virtualized our benchmark applications. It's only with a hypervisor that these multi-core monsters make sense in most enterprises, but there are always exceptions. Since quite a few of our readers still like seeing "native" Linux and Windows benchmarks, not to mention quite a few ERP, OLTP, and OLAP servers are still running without any form of virtualization, we took the time to complete our previous review and give the Opteron Interlagos another chance.

For the majority of the history of AnandTech we've hosted our own server infrastructure. A benefit of running our own infrastructure is that we're able to gain a lot of hands on experience with enterprise environments that we'd otherwise have to report on from a distance.

When I first started covering SSDs four years ago I became obsessed with the idea of migrating nearly every system over to something SSD based. The first to make the switch were our CPU testbeds. Moving away from mechanical drives ensured better benchmark consistency between runs as any variation in IO load was easily absorbed by the tremendous amount of headroom that an SSD offered. The holy grail of course was migrating all of the AnandTech servers over to SSDs. Over the years our servers seem to die in the following order: hard drives, power supplies, motherboards. We tend to stay on a hardware platform until the systems start showing the signs of their age (e.g. motherboards start dying), but that's usually long enough that we encounter an annoying number of hard drive failures. A well validated SSD should have a predictable failure rate, making it an ideal candidate for an enterprise environment where downtime is quite costly and in the case of a small business, very annoying.

Our most recent server move is a long story for a separate article but to summarize the move, we recently switched hosting providers and data centers. Our hardware was formerly on the east coast and the new datacenter is in the middle of the country. At our old host we were trying out a new cloud platform while our new home would be a mixture of a traditional back-end with a virtualized front-end. With a tight timetable for the move and no desire to deploy an easily portable solution at our old home before making the move we were faced with a difficult task: how do we physically move our servers half way across the country with minimal downtime?

Thankfully our new host had temporary hardware very similar in capabilities to our new infrastructure that they were willing to put the site on as we moved our hardware. The only exception was, as you might guess, a relative lack of SSDs. Our new hardware uses a combination of consumer and enterprise SSDs but our new host only had mechanical drives or consumer grade SSDs on tap (Intel SSD 320s).

In preparing for this move I realized we hadn't publicly discussed the performance and endurance issues associated with using consumer SSDs in an enterprise environment. What follows is a discussion of just that. Read on...

As promised in our last Opteron "Interlagos" review, we have been taking the time to deepen our understanding of AMD's newest Interlagos server platform and the "Bulldozer" architecture. Server reviewing remains a complex undertaking: some of the benchmarks take hours to set up and run, and power management policies, I/O subsystems and configuration settings can completely alter the outcome of a benchmark. That sounds very obvious right? It is not in practice.

Let me give you an example how subtle server benchmarking can be. One of the benchmarks missing in the original review was the MS SQL server benchmark, and for a reason. We did some extensive scaling benchmarks and our gut feeling told us that some of the results were a bit off the mark. So we kept the benchmark out of the original review until we pinpointed the problem.

Just a few days ago, we found out that a tiny bit of time-outs (1%, caused mostly by a data provider time out setting) can boost the results by about 20% erroneously as the actual workload is decreased. So our MS SQL server benchmark was not as accurate as we thought it was. Luckily we have solved all problems, and the benchmark is now more accurate than ever. You can expect to see the MS SQL server benchmarks on different server platforms and an in depth analysis in a forthcoming article.

While solving the MS SQL Server benchmark issues required a lot of testing, analysis and debate with Dieter, the lead developer of our stress testing tool vApus, we missed a more obvious tweak that could have improved our blender benchmarking. Luckily, we still have a community that is willing to give us valuable feedback. Greg Wereszko point out that our Blender benchmark cuts the render job up into only 64 tiles (X=8, Y=8). The result is that near the end of the test several cores are inactive, especially on the Interlagos Opteron (32 cores/threads).

So we increased the number of tiles beyond 8x8, to check if this improves performance on our 32 and 24 thread machines, and it did. (Quick note: the Blender benchmark on Windows is one of the worst benchmarks for the Opteron Interlagos, so see this as "worst case" performance point.)

Instead of trailing behind the Opteron 6174, the Opteron "Interlagos" 6276 manages to perform a tiny bit better than its older sibling when we use 256 (16x16) tiles. The Opteron 6276 improves performance by 24%, the Xeon X5650 and Opteron 6174 by 19%. 

Using more tiles, all CPUs are able to show their top performance. It also shows the rather "fragile performance profile" of the new Opteron. Many users are going to use standard settings and will never bother with this kind of tuning. As a result they are not going to use the full potential of the new Opteron. The Xeon's higher single-threaded performance makes it less vulnerable to less optimal software settings.

At the other side of the coin, once well tuned the Opteron 62xx offers an interesting performance per dollar ratio and this "fragile performance profile" may become very robust in FP intensive applications once the use of AVX gets widespread. We are taking quite a bit of time to make sure that the next server article can give more detailed information, but rest assured that we did not give up: we will update our server benchmarking...when it is finished.

Last month, AMD launched their Bulldozer architecture on desktops, and the result was rather underwhelming; however, there are plenty of indications that Bulldozer simply wasn't architected to excel at desktop use models. AMD's "Interlagos" Opteron is now available, doubling the core count of the desktop part and placing its sights firmly on the enterprise server market.

The massive Multi Chip Module (MCM) contains eight processor cores (“modules” as AMD likes to call them) and can process 16 integer and 16 floating point threads per cycle. Each of the 16 integer threads gets their own integer cluster, complete with integer executions units, a load/store unit, and an L1-data cache. The Cluster Multi-Threading (CMT) architecture of Bulldozer should be perfectly suited for server applications that are mostly limited by memory accesses and integer processing. The 16 floating point threads have to share eight clusters of two 128-bit FP units, but those units can process FMAC and AVX instructions; recompile your HPC application with an FMAC and/or AVX capable compiler and the chip could become an HPC monster as well.

Server applications also like large caches, and Interlagos has plenty of SRAM cells. The Interlagos package has 32MB cache onboard (L2 and exclusive L3 combined). If all caching fails, it can access four memory channels of DDR3-1600, good for 51.2GB/s of theoretical bandwidth per chip. AMD also added power gating to the cores, so inactive cores can enter a very deep (C6) sleep state and save quite a bit power. This should significantly reduce power in idle and light loads.

With all of that potential, the initial clock speeds that AMD could be fit inside a 115W TDP envelope are a bit underwhelming. The fastest 115W Interlagos part right now, the Opteron 6276, has a 2.3GHz base clock. The current Opteron 6276 reaches the same clock speed at the same TDP using a less advanced 45nm SOI process. However, the longer pipeline of the new Bulldozer architecture allows the chip to use Turbo Core to boost to 2.6GHz when running most server workloads, and if only half of the cores are active, the chip is capable of 3.2GHz.

The initial desktop launch of Zembezi may have left us wanting more, and Interlagos might offer that. For server workloads at least, this all looks very promising. Let's see what the first "Bulldozer" based Opterons can do.

Netgear's ReadyNAS lineup is well respected in the sub-$5K SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market. In November 2010, Netgear updated their Ultra lineup meant for the high-end prosumer / SOHO market. In the economical prosumer market, Netgear's last introduction was the ReadyNAS NV+ and ReadyNAS Duo in June 2008. Today, Netgear is launching the update to their economical prosumer lineup with the 2-bay ReadyNAS Duo v2 and 4-bay ReadyNAS NV+ v2.

The products being introduced today are the first Marvell based units from Netgear. We were given early access to the 2 TB version of the ReadyNAS NV+ v2. Read on for our review.

Facebook had 22 Million active users in the middle of 2007; fast forward to 2011 and the site now has 800 Million active users, with 400 million of them logging in every day. Facebook has grown exponentially, to say the least! To cope with this kind of exceptional growth and at the same time offer a reliable and cost effective service requires out of the box thinking. Through a combination of software optimizations and a careful selection of hardware, Facebook set out to create a platform that would meet their needs, and then they open sourced the design to the world.

The Facebook Open Compute server design was ambitious: “The result is a data center full of vanity free servers that is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers.” Even better is that Facebook Engineering sent a couple Open Compute servers to our lab for testing:

As a competing solution we have an HP DL380 G7 in the lab. Recall from our last server clash that the HP DL380 G7 was one of the most power efficient servers of 2010. Is a server "targeted at the cloud" and designed by Facebook engineering able to beat one of the best and most popular general purpose servers? That is the question we'll answer in this article.

We’ve reviewed just about every line of laptops that Dell makes over the years, but we haven’t had a chance to look at the Vostro line until today. Vostro is essentially Dell’s entry-level business laptop brand, with an emphasis on business-class support while maintaining a lower price point than the Latitude line. What that means is you give up some of the performance options of the consumer Inspiron and XPS lines, but you usually get better support and a matte LCD. Build quality is a bit of a question mark, and something we’ll discuss more in the review. The V131 we received for review is also quite thin, nearly at ultrabook levels, which raises an interesting question: how does an $800 (often less) business laptop compare with the upcoming ultrabooks and other thin and light laptops?

We’ve already had our first ultrabook review with the ASUS UX21E, and we expect more ultrabooks in for review in the next month, which makes this review of the Vostro V131 all the more pertinent. It supports full-power Core 2011 dual-core processors and uses integrated graphics, but it also has a standard battery that can easily be swapped out—and a larger battery capacity as well. If you’re interested in seeing how the Vostro V131 stacks up against the recently reviewed XPS 14z and ASUS UX21, or you’re wondering what you give up in moving from Dell’s Latitude line down to the Vostro, we should have all the information you need in this review.

Each time we publish a new server platform review, several of our readers inquire about HPC and rendering benchmarks. We're always willing to accommodate reasonable requests, so we're going to start expanding beyond our usual labor intensive virtualization benchmarks. This article is our first attempt. It was a bumpy ride, but this first attempt produced some very interesting insights.

The increasing core counts on modern servers makes finding useful benchmarks difficult, and given how many businesses have chosen to use virtualization that has been our major focus. For this article, we decided to run the latest version of Cinebench and Stars Euler 3D CFD, as both seemed like they would be fairly easy to work with. That didn't end up being the case, but at least our testing results are a lot more interesting than we imagined they would be.

If you've been following along for a while, it should be pretty clear that around here, we're fans of doing a little computing. Awkward turns of phrase notwithstanding, we thought we'd seen the smallest HP had to offer when we tackled the Z210 SFF desktop not too long ago. But we were wrong, and today we present you with the smallest desktop computer in HP's enterprise lineup. Wearing its power supply on the outside, meet the HP Compaq 8200 Elite Ultra-Slim.

The SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) and Corporate NAS market is a highly competitive one. Over the last one year, we have been expanding our coverage of this market. Having reviewed a high end 5-bay unit from LaCie and a couple of 2-bay units from Synology and LG, it is now time to take a look at a unit from QNAP.

We have been playing around with the QNAP TS-659 Pro II unit over the last month or so. Based on the Intel Atom D525 platform, it has 6 bays and dual GbE ports, making it a candidate for the high end SMB market. Read on to find out more about the TS-659 Pro II and how it fares in our benchmarks.

Public Cloud Computing services are growing fast despite the fact that a lot of people do not fully trust them. Just look at the number of launched Amazon EC2 instances in the datacenter US East 1 region (Courtesy of Jack of All Clouds). In 2008, the highest peak reached 20K instances, at the end of 2010 customers launched up to 140k instances, an increase with a factor of 7!

And Amazon is not the only dog in town. According to the same measurements, the Rackspace Cloud Servers have to serve up just as much instances per day. Translation to us hardware nuts: many people are hiring a virtual server instead of buying a physical one. 

But if you are reading this, you are probably working at a company which has already invested quite a bit of money and time in deploying their own infrastructure. That company is probably paying you for your server expertise. Making use of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a lot cheaper than buying and administering too many servers just to be able to handle any bursty peak of traffic. But once you run 24/7 services on IaaS, the Amazon prices go up significantly (paying a reservation fee etc.) and it remains to be seen if making use of a public cloud is really cheaper than running your applications in your own dataroom. So combining the best of both worlds seems like a very good idea. 

Read on for Johan's thoughts!

We're taking our second excursion into enterprise-class desktop territory with the kind of machine that should be of interest both to IT management and enthusiasts alike: HP's Z210 SFF (small form factor) workstation. Desktop computers are capable of getting smaller and smaller these days, and with the Z210 SFF, HP is hoping to make serious number crunching power available in even the tightest of spaces. It's always interesting to see just how much performance can be crammed into a tiny computer, but did HP have to make any sacrifices to hit this target?

Just over ten months ago, we had a chance to take a look at a very big, reasonably impressive mobile workstation: HP's EliteBook 8740w. It sported HP's DreamColor IPS screen at a glorious 1920x1200 resolution and had fairly beefy hardware under the hood, including the at-the-time fastest mobile workstation GPU, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000M. But since HP unveiled the dramatic redesign of their enterprise notebooks earlier this year, we've been anxiously anticipating the 8740w's refresh. Today we have it, specced to kill with a shiny new DreamColor IPS screen, Sandy Bridge quad-core processor, and an even faster NVIDIA Quadro GPU.

Last year we ran a little series called Ask the Experts where you all wrote in your virtualization related questions and we got them answered by experts at Intel, VMWare as well as our own expert on all things Enterprise & Cloud Computing - Johan de Gelas.