The first ProLiant seventh generation

Simultaneously with the announcement of the Opteron 6000 (codename Magny Cours), on March 29, HP introduced the first 7-generation ProLiant dual-socket servers (G7), equipped with these new 12-core AMD processors.

The HP ProLiant DL385 G7 Rack Server is the twin of the Intel Xeon dual-processor HP ProLiant DL380, which, according to IDC analysts, is the world's best-selling standard architecture server. The secret of the popularity of HP ProLiant DL380, the first generation of which came out at the time of Compaq, is a powerful configuration in a compact dual-unit package that allows you to use the server in various tasks and make it a versatile workhorse.

Let's see how the new HP ProLiant DL385 G7 differs from its sixth generation predecessor. First of all, due to the use of the new Opteron, the total number of processor cores in the server increased from 12 to 24. The maximum amount of RAM doubled from 128 to 256 GB. In addition, now DL385 instead of DDRM 800 MHz DIMM modules uses DDR3 memory modules with a clock frequency of up to 1333 MHz, which increases the speed of data exchange with RAM up to 66 percent. The increase in the number of cores and the scalability of the server’s RAM expands the deployment of a large number of virtual machines on it. Among other novelties of the seventh generation DL385 hardware configuration, it is worth noting the built-in SD card reader and the use of second-generation PCI Express I / O slots.
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The HP ProLiant DL385 G7 is the first HP standard-server model to incorporate the third-generation HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) embedded remote control processor, so beloved by system administrators serving HP ProLiant. iLO3, compared to iLO2, speeds up the work of a remote administration console by eight times and three times the loading of software from virtual media. In addition, iLO3 has extended support for standard IPMI 2.0 and DCMI control protocols.

The second HP server based on the Opteron 6000 is a single-unit HP ProLiant DL165 G7 designed for building computing clusters and other horizontally scalable systems (for example, for servicing web sites and search engines), as well as for use in small companies. Like other HP ProLiant 100-series, instead of a full-featured iLO, it has a significantly lighter version of the LO100i. The main differences of this server from the sixth generation HP ProLiant DL165 predecessor:

• double the number of processor cores
• support up to 256 GB DDR3 RAM (only 24 slots for DDR3 standard memory)
• new disk subsystem options - in addition to the four 3.5-inch drives, you can install up to eight 2.5-inch drives, as well as solid-state drives
• four Gigabit Ethernet interfaces instead of two in the DL165 G6
• as an option - SD card reader
• fan redundancy according to N + 1 scheme

Finally, the third presented server based on the Opteron 6000 is the HP ProLiant SL165z G7 computing hub for ProLiant SL6000 scalable systems that HP launched last year . In terms of its characteristics, it is similar to the HP ProLiant SL160z G6 based on the Xeon 5500/5600, with the exception of increased RAM (you can install 24 DDR3 SIMM modules in the SL165z and 18 such modules in the SL160z) and four gigabit network ports instead of two.

Of course, the spring announcements of HP ProLiant are not limited to these three servers with the Opteron 6000 and in the near future four-socket server models will be transferred to these processors. But the most interesting thing is the appearance of the seventh generation of older HP ProLiant models on the Intel Xeon 7500 (Nehalem EX) announced at the end of March, which will allow the use of standard architecture servers to serve critical applications.