Hardware Today: HP Server Snapshot
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For the past three years, HP has been the leader of the pack in terms of worldwide server shipments. Its strategy now is to maintain its position with the addition of greater manageability and virtualization features as well as the streamlining of its many product lines under fewer umbrellas. The winning brands are ProLiant, Integrity and NonStop; the casualties are AlphaServer and HP 9000. The latter products are at the end of their respective lives and are being folded into the 64-bit Integrity line. HP continues to streamline its server lines, consigning the HP 9000 and AlphaServers to history in favor of a future filled with ProLiant, Integrity, and NonStop servers.
"We are moving away from proprietary to standards-based servers based upon ProLiant, Integrity and NonStop," said Kate O'Neill, enterprise and storage servers portfolio manager at HP. "This simplifies things for our customers and frees them from the burden of additional personnel and services costs."
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By far, HP's strongest server line is the ProLiant. According to IDC, it dominates the x86 market and brings in nearly one third of the revenue. In 2004, the company increased its shipments by 19.1 percent and revenue by 13.8 percent year-over-year.
Recent enhancements to the many faces of ProLiant are numerous. The grid below highlights the server line and links to the details. As would be expected, the changes center around the latest Celeron and Pentium 4 processors, PCI-Express, more cache, and greater manageability. For example, a 2.8-GHz Celeron or Pentium 4 3.2-GHz processor, PCI-Express support, and a remote management card have been added to the ProLiant ML110 G2 server. The ProLiant DL320 G3 is a 1U server that now includes a Celeron 2.93-GHz or up to a Pentium 4 3.6-GHz processor with 1 MB of L2 cache and two PCI-X slots.
Hewlett-Packard's Server Lines at Glance
| ProLiant | Integrity | NonStop | BladeSystem | Other Servers | |
| Description | Intended for small- to medium-scale applications and databases on the front end and the edge of the network | Positioned for large-scale, mission-critical databases and applications | Designed to meet the need for 24/7 availability, linear scalability, and real-time computing | A virtualized, automated environment for managing a pool of resources | High-performance servers for specific platform architectures and operating systems |
| Processor Type | x86: Xeon DP, MP, P4, Opteron | Intel Itanium-2 (Madison) 9M processors, mx-2 dual processor module | NonStop: MIPS R14000 and MIPS R12000 (moving to Itanium-2) | Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron 200, DP Intel Xeon, MP Intel Xeon | AlphaServers: Alpha; HP 9000: PA-8700, PA8700+, PA-8800; e3000: PA-8500, PA-8600, PA-8700; Telco: PA-8600, PA-8700, P III, Xeon, Itanium-2 (Madison) |
| Processor Range | ML300 Servers (Entry-Level): 1 and 2; Other ML Servers: 2 and 4; DL Servers: 1 to 8 |
Entry-Level: 1 to 2, 1 to 4, 1 to 8; Midrange: 2 to 16, 2 to 32; Superdome (High-End with Itanium-2 mx-2): 2 to 16, 2 to 32, 6 to 128 |
Up to 4080 processors | 1, 2 and 4 processors | AlphaServers: Entry-Level: 1 and 2; Midrange: 4 and 8; High-End: 8 to 64; Supercomputer: Up to 4096. HP 9000: Entry-Level: 1, 1 to 2, 1 to 4, 2 to 4, 2 to 8; Midrange: 8-32; Superdome: 4 to 32, 4 to 64, 12 to 128; Pre-configured 05 Series: 2, 4 e3000 Servers: N/A Telco Servers: 1 to 4 processors |
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux | All: HP-UX 11i, OpenVMS, Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS35 Entry-Level also supports SUSE High-End: 128-way Superdome requires HP-UX 11i-v2 |
NonStop Kernel microkernel-based OS | Windows, Linux | AlphaServers: OpenVMS, Tru64, Red Hat, SUSE HP 9000: HP-UX 11i e3000 Servers: MPE/iX6 Telco Servers: HP-UX 11i, Windows, Linux |
| Servers | ML300 Servers (Entry-Level):
ML110,
ML110-SATA,
ML150,
ML310,
ML330,
ML350,
ML370; Other ML Servers: ML530, ML570; DL Servers: DL140, DL145 (Opteron), DL320, DL360, DL380, DL385 (Opteron), DL560, DL580, DL585 (Opteron), DL740, DL760 |
Entry-Level:
rx1600-2,
rx2620-2,
rx4640-8; Midrange: rx7620-16, rx8620-32; High-End: Integrity Superdome-32, Integrity Superdome-64, Integrity Superdome-128 |
High End: S88000,
S78000,
S780
Midrange: S78, S7800 ((Beginning April 30, the HP NonStop S86000 server and NonStop S76 family of servers will no longer be sold.) |
BL20p (Xeon), BL25p (Opteron), BL30p (Xeon), BL35p (Opteron), BL40p (Xeon) | AlphaServers
Entry-Level:
DS15,
DS20L,
DS25,
TS15 (telco); Midrange: ES45, ES47, ES80; High-End: GS80, GS160, GS320, GS1280; Supercomputer: SC45 HP 9000 Entry-Level: rp3410-2, rp3430-4, rp4440-8 Midrange: rp8420-32, rp7420-16; High-End: HP 9000 Superdome 32,64, or 128-way; e3000 Servers Customers are currently being migrated to other servers, particularly to the HP 9000 running HP-UX 11i. Telco Servers cc2300, cc3300, cc3310, cs2600 |
The ProLiant line also includes plenty of Xeon-based models. The 2P ML370 G4, for example, includes up to two 3.6-GHz Intel Xeon processors with 2 MB of L2 cache, an 800-MHz front side bus, Intel's Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) processor, and PCI-Express technology. The HP ProLiant BL20p G3 is a dual-processor Xeon-based blade server with 2 MB of L2 cache, storage-area network connectivity, up to 8 GB of PC 3200 DDR2 memory, and a 4-gigabit network interface card.
Most recently, HP brought AMD Opteron into the ProLiant blade server fold with the BL25p and BL35p models. In addition, the Opteron-based 2U DL385 is rack-optimized and combines better management and high-availability requirements to facilitate data center deployment.
"Some of our customers have realized a price/performance advantage by opting for the Opteron," said O'Neill. "Under certain workloads, it outperforms the Xeon."
