HP ProLiant DL980 Servers

The summer update of HP model lines this year has not passed by powerful enterprise servers. Why "did not pass by"? The fact is that some very productive models of servers from HP are built with such a serious margin in power and memory density that the company updates them less frequently than other lines. Such servers, as a rule, take in all the current processors and have a solid margin for increasing performance.

However, Moore's law has not been canceled yet, time does not stand still, and those who rest on their laurels risk falling behind the highly competitive market. HP, obviously, does not apply to those, and constantly monitors the situation. Perhaps this is partly why Intel, as if by request, has released eight-core server Xeons of the 6500 and 7500 series. Should I install them somewhere?

Now they can be installed in the new ProLiant DL980, with up to eight pieces at a time. By simple multiplication, we get 64 processor cores, and this figure, you see, inspires respect even by itself. To match the processors and memory. Supports 16 GB modules, which, against the background of 128 memory slots, gives us a good two terabytes. The capacity is very impressive, but the tasks before the server must be serious: the DL980 is designed to work across a large enterprise, under a virtualized load, or within one, but very intensively working with data applications.

The performance growth in the DL980 is achieved not only head-on, with an increase in the number of cores and gigabytes of memory, but also with the help of HP proprietary technologies. Millions of man-hours of research unit work are behind this rather trivial phrase - an HP company is simply obliged to have a serious development team, otherwise there is no way. Producers of comparable size also eat their bread for good reason, and in the high-performance server market, performance optimization technologies and specialized operational technical support are increasingly coming to the fore. Technologically, the DL980 is quite consistent with a serious “iron” filling.
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The server implements several technologies designed to increase processor performance (smart CPU caching), reduce the effects of system failures (self-healing resiliency) and implement full remote control (iLO 3). If, in principle, everything is clear with processor caching and remote control, then a few words should be said about self-healing resiliency. In short, the technology allows you to isolate memory areas where the failure occurred. Thus, you will have to restart only the directly affected application or virtual machine, while the rest will continue to work as if nothing had happened.

For communication are responsible 16 high-speed I / O slots, where you can install any necessary interfaces for flexible integration of the server into the existing infrastructure. Without a "onboard" network controller, the server also did not remain - in all configurations there are four gigabit ports. For local data storage, you can use up to 8 SFF (2.5 inches) form factor disks with SAS interface.

In general, the server looks quite harmonious, especially given the timeliness of the appearance. Companies planning to upgrade or expand the technical park, can now make a DL980 in the plans for the autumn. The presence of a large number of slots for memory and processors leaves a lot of room for growth in server performance over several years.

See also the HP Proliant DL980 photo review from Brontozaurus .