Intel Xeon `s rush into the market fault-tolerant RISC-servers, built on the patterns mainframe
Despite the skepticism of many analysts, the Odyssey project , launched by Hewlett-Packard in the fall of 2011, is now implemented in real products.
From March 2015, Hewlett-Packard begins shipping its Integrity Superdome X and NonStop X servers with Intel Xeon E7 processors . These new servers are designed to perform mission-critical tasks running Linux, and a little later they promise support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server - see the article: “HP introduced the Superdome and NonStop servers on the x86 platform . ”
Integrity Superdome X and NonStop X have up to 16 Xeon processors and up to 3 TB of RAM, and combining them into clusters, of which you can build a single system of up to 4080 processors (a real supercomputer )!
')
In addition to Hewlett-Packard, fault-tolerant servers built on the mainframe templates and including mass market processors Intel Xeon E7 are also released today by Fujitsu . And Fujitsu managers threaten with their PRIMEQUEST 2000 server to destroy the RISC server as a class :) - see the article: “FUJITSU against all or the Japanese killer of RISC servers” .
By the way, Hewlett-Packard, those who have historically used Microsoft SQL Server DBMS, and the business has grown to unbelievable limits and really don’t want to switch (fundamentally changing its developed software) to RISC / UNIX systems - now it recommends just buying a new mainframe-like HP server Integrity Superdome X on Intel Xeon and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server DBMS!
For some corporate IT departments, this is news, it may seem like an incredible new opportunity (like the discovery of America by Columbus ), removing a perennial headache.
Microsoft, for its part, promises to throw all its forces into supporting these wonderful HP Integrity Superdome X servers to bridge the gap between two worlds: “widely used x86 servers” and “critical corporate business”!
Of course, for now this market of Xeon `s fault-tolerant servers will be small.
Because they are terribly expensive for those who are used to buying regular mainstream x86 servers.
Because the conflict between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle over the Itanium servers has been exhausted (see: “Itanium servers are saved: Oracle will continue their support through the courts” ), and it seems like “Intel is not in a hurry to put an end to Itanium processors” , and even promises No matter when, release the next generation of Itanium, codenamed Kittson.
And because today, Hewlett-Packard servers on Itanium processors are tied, which turned out to be Hewlett-Packard as a result of development and a series of acquisitions, such famous platforms as: HP-UX , NonStop OS and OpenVMS - which support Hewlett-Packard promises to continue on Itanium- servers.
But once the HP Integrity Superdome X Failover Servers with Intel Xeon processors and under Linux OS appeared, the ice started moving.
And now, some corporations can migrate their critical applications under Red Hat Linux — and this is good news for Red Hat and the entire Open Source community.
Someone might try to experiment and run their important applications on the HP Integrity Superdome X running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server DBMS.
And over time, I think that important Hewlett-Packard corporate clients will want to see on the HP Integrity Superdome X servers with Intel Xeon processors the platforms HP-UX and OpenVMS use in their corporations.
And this means that sooner or later these outdated, but critically important platforms (because the most expensive software is written for them) will be transferred to x86 servers.
And when this happens (after five years), then it seems that Intel Itanium will gradually be bent (as it is not unfortunate), and Xeons will steer in the corporate market, as Intel has long dreamed of.
As far as I understand, once NonStop X servers appeared on Intel Xeon processors, it turns out that the proprietary NonStop OS Kernel operating system and its NonStop SQL database have already been transferred to the x86 processor platform, since HP NonStop servers are deeply integrated hardware and software.
What will happen to the other remaining RISC server platforms (IBM POWER and Oracle SPARC ) is certainly not known, but apparently their market will be at least reduced.
IBM today is undertaking considerable activity in order to preserve its POWER platform - see: "IBM discovers the POWER technology and creates the OpenPOWER consortium."
And trying to concentrate on their POWER-servers, even sold their x86-server business to Chinese Lenovo, which confused all players on the server market — see: “IBM sold Lenovo's server business: what will happen to the market?” .
Many analysts do not understand what is happening: whether IBM in this transaction, selling the business of x86-servers, in fact declared war on Intel, then they started their “Odyssey project” to transfer their RISC-servers to Intel Xeons and do they no longer need the business of cheap x86 servers?
I personally think that all this IBM activity will extend the life of the POWER servers for only ten years and perhaps they will be the last to leave the RISC server market.
Oracle seems to promise to maintain and develop SPARC servers as long as possible, but the number of sales all the time decreases and there may come a time when developing this platform will not be economically profitable.
Business is business - well, they cannot work indefinitely at a loss for the sake of the altruistic idea of ​​preserving another RISC platform.
Moreover, their main business - Oracle DBMS and corporate software work fine on both x86 servers and POWER servers. What else do you need for a software corporation?
So, the appearance of Intel Xeon processors in fault-tolerant servers built on the mainframe patterns is probably the sign of the end of the market for RISC / UNIX servers and another victory for Intel.
Just as the Intel x86 processor platform used to force almost all RISC processors out of the Workstations market, this may also happen soon in the server market.
And perhaps, just like today, we only remember the glorious graphic workstations of the SGI Indy type, which worked under the most advanced graphic OS SGI IRIX , which have sunk into the past, and we will also find in about ten years of computer history stories about glorious RISC- IBM POWER systems or Oracle SPARC Enterprise .
PS: If someone read the article to the end, he didn’t understand what is the epochality of the commented news, and why the failover RISC / UNIX servers are so fundamentally different from ordinary x86 servers, then I would recommend you to read the following article: “Life outside Zion .
PPS: What do you think about this?
From March 2015, Hewlett-Packard begins shipping its Integrity Superdome X and NonStop X servers with Intel Xeon E7 processors . These new servers are designed to perform mission-critical tasks running Linux, and a little later they promise support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server - see the article: “HP introduced the Superdome and NonStop servers on the x86 platform . ”
Integrity Superdome X and NonStop X have up to 16 Xeon processors and up to 3 TB of RAM, and combining them into clusters, of which you can build a single system of up to 4080 processors (a real supercomputer )!
')
In addition to Hewlett-Packard, fault-tolerant servers built on the mainframe templates and including mass market processors Intel Xeon E7 are also released today by Fujitsu . And Fujitsu managers threaten with their PRIMEQUEST 2000 server to destroy the RISC server as a class :) - see the article: “FUJITSU against all or the Japanese killer of RISC servers” .
By the way, Hewlett-Packard, those who have historically used Microsoft SQL Server DBMS, and the business has grown to unbelievable limits and really don’t want to switch (fundamentally changing its developed software) to RISC / UNIX systems - now it recommends just buying a new mainframe-like HP server Integrity Superdome X on Intel Xeon and running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server DBMS!
For some corporate IT departments, this is news, it may seem like an incredible new opportunity (like the discovery of America by Columbus ), removing a perennial headache.
Microsoft, for its part, promises to throw all its forces into supporting these wonderful HP Integrity Superdome X servers to bridge the gap between two worlds: “widely used x86 servers” and “critical corporate business”!
Of course, for now this market of Xeon `s fault-tolerant servers will be small.
Because they are terribly expensive for those who are used to buying regular mainstream x86 servers.
Because the conflict between Hewlett-Packard and Oracle over the Itanium servers has been exhausted (see: “Itanium servers are saved: Oracle will continue their support through the courts” ), and it seems like “Intel is not in a hurry to put an end to Itanium processors” , and even promises No matter when, release the next generation of Itanium, codenamed Kittson.
And because today, Hewlett-Packard servers on Itanium processors are tied, which turned out to be Hewlett-Packard as a result of development and a series of acquisitions, such famous platforms as: HP-UX , NonStop OS and OpenVMS - which support Hewlett-Packard promises to continue on Itanium- servers.
But once the HP Integrity Superdome X Failover Servers with Intel Xeon processors and under Linux OS appeared, the ice started moving.
And now, some corporations can migrate their critical applications under Red Hat Linux — and this is good news for Red Hat and the entire Open Source community.
Someone might try to experiment and run their important applications on the HP Integrity Superdome X running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server DBMS.
And over time, I think that important Hewlett-Packard corporate clients will want to see on the HP Integrity Superdome X servers with Intel Xeon processors the platforms HP-UX and OpenVMS use in their corporations.
And this means that sooner or later these outdated, but critically important platforms (because the most expensive software is written for them) will be transferred to x86 servers.
And when this happens (after five years), then it seems that Intel Itanium will gradually be bent (as it is not unfortunate), and Xeons will steer in the corporate market, as Intel has long dreamed of.
As far as I understand, once NonStop X servers appeared on Intel Xeon processors, it turns out that the proprietary NonStop OS Kernel operating system and its NonStop SQL database have already been transferred to the x86 processor platform, since HP NonStop servers are deeply integrated hardware and software.
What will happen to the other remaining RISC server platforms (IBM POWER and Oracle SPARC ) is certainly not known, but apparently their market will be at least reduced.
IBM today is undertaking considerable activity in order to preserve its POWER platform - see: "IBM discovers the POWER technology and creates the OpenPOWER consortium."
And trying to concentrate on their POWER-servers, even sold their x86-server business to Chinese Lenovo, which confused all players on the server market — see: “IBM sold Lenovo's server business: what will happen to the market?” .
Many analysts do not understand what is happening: whether IBM in this transaction, selling the business of x86-servers, in fact declared war on Intel, then they started their “Odyssey project” to transfer their RISC-servers to Intel Xeons and do they no longer need the business of cheap x86 servers?
I personally think that all this IBM activity will extend the life of the POWER servers for only ten years and perhaps they will be the last to leave the RISC server market.
Oracle seems to promise to maintain and develop SPARC servers as long as possible, but the number of sales all the time decreases and there may come a time when developing this platform will not be economically profitable.
Business is business - well, they cannot work indefinitely at a loss for the sake of the altruistic idea of ​​preserving another RISC platform.
Moreover, their main business - Oracle DBMS and corporate software work fine on both x86 servers and POWER servers. What else do you need for a software corporation?
So, the appearance of Intel Xeon processors in fault-tolerant servers built on the mainframe patterns is probably the sign of the end of the market for RISC / UNIX servers and another victory for Intel.
Just as the Intel x86 processor platform used to force almost all RISC processors out of the Workstations market, this may also happen soon in the server market.
And perhaps, just like today, we only remember the glorious graphic workstations of the SGI Indy type, which worked under the most advanced graphic OS SGI IRIX , which have sunk into the past, and we will also find in about ten years of computer history stories about glorious RISC- IBM POWER systems or Oracle SPARC Enterprise .
PS: If someone read the article to the end, he didn’t understand what is the epochality of the commented news, and why the failover RISC / UNIX servers are so fundamentally different from ordinary x86 servers, then I would recommend you to read the following article: “Life outside Zion .
PPS: What do you think about this?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/256033/
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