HP sets industry bar for power and cooling of blade servers in real-world environments

In addition, BladeCenter-H generates 2.5 times as much airflow as BladeSystem c-Class which is a significant component of IBM's higher power draw. These documented and verified results demonstrate the power and cooling advantages of HP's BladeSystem c-Class featuring HP Thermal Logic technology. (1)

The study, carried out by Sine Nomine Associates, examined the overall power consumption and external airflow requirements of the blade systems in a typical heavily-utilized data center workload. These conditions are an important factor for customers to consider because data centers must be provisioned to handle the maximum expected thermal and electrical load from the number of servers planned for installation at full capacity.

Recent industry studies reveal that data center power density has increased ten-fold in the last 10 years and that cooling represents upwards of 60-70 percent of the total data center power spend for customers. (2) These costs are driven by the data center power requirements and the cubic feet per minute (CFM) of cooling airflow.

HP's Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio addresses these needs holistically across the data center, and without sacrificing performance, offers the industry's broadest range of power and cooling solutions, including HP BladeSystem c-Class and the recently announced data center-wide Dynamic Smart Cooling solution.

HP Challenges IBM to Develop and Conform to Common Industry Benchmark

To help ensure customers are able to evaluate blade technology on an even level, HP is working with partners, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, to develop a standard to measure energy efficiency in the data center.
Today, HP is challenging its competition to work with them to form a common benchmark that measures throughput per watt for an entire workload or system and ensures comparison of similarly configured systems. By implementing an industry standard, all vendors will drive towards a common goal of delivering energy efficient products to customers.

'Power and cooling are serious issues for customers and not subjects for misleading benchmarks,' said Ryan D'souza, Product Manager, Industry Standard Servers, HP Middle East. 'HP BladeSystem c-Class and its Thermal Logic innovation offers customers a leading-edge answer to their power and cooling requirements. We applaud Sine Nomine for taking an objective look at this real-world customer problem and feel the test results clearly show what we already knew - BladeSystem c-Class featuring Thermal Logic is the clear choice for power and cooling leadership.'

In the past 10 years, HP has received more than a thousand patents for advances in power and cooling technology. In addition, since 1992, energy efficiency has been a key part of HP's global citizenship program. Today, HP continues to address power efficiency issues across the data center by constantly introducing new technology solutions fitting all its customer needs, particularly those building next-generation data centers. Customers today benefit from:


• HP Thermal Logic - A key innovation pillar of HP's c-Class architecture, HP Thermal Logic encompasses numerous technologies to help customers efficiently manage power and cooling within their c-Class architecture. Through the design, customers can instantly access thermal information from all of the components within the c-Class enclosure and manage component power allocation on the fly. In addition, HP Active Cool Fans within the enclosure move more air than traditional fan designs and use less power to cool the servers. Lastly, Dynamic Power Saver provides power load shifting and maximizes power supply efficiency.


• Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) - The first solution of its type to bridge the gap between facilities and IT, DSC can reduce cooling costs by 20-45 percent for most data centers. DSC leverages Thermal Logic technology to address data center power and cooling issues effectively and efficiently.


• HP Modular Cooling System (MCS) - The closed-loop rack system, MCS uses chilled water technology to triple the standard cooling capacity of a single rack to 30 kilowatts, matching almost any rack cooling need.


• HP Power Regulator - An innovative power management feature for HP ProLiant servers, Power Regulator automatically adjusts the server's processor power usage and performance to match CPU application activity.


• HP Insight Power Manager - This management tool helps customers optimize server density and power efficiency throughout the data center by accurately measuring and reporting power consumption and inlet air temperature across groups of ProLiant or BladeSystem servers. Through this product, systems administrators now have the tools to confidently forecast power and cooling requirements as opposed to consistently over-provisioning these resources. In addition, allowing administrators to set power regulation policies across server groups reduces power consumption by ensuring that application workloads receive the power they need instead of the maximum power available.