HP Odyssey Program: whose Grave digger?

Not long ago, Hewlett-Packard released its financial year 2011 quarterly report, with the biggest drop in the key business systems sector (bcs,business unacknowledged system), with revenue down 23%. Hewlett-Packard CFO Cathie Lesjak also admitted in a media communication meeting that HP's BCS revenue decline was linked to Oracle's no longer supporting integrity Kinetic servers based on the itanium® processor. Obviously, to change the BCS slump, HP needs to make changes-either at the software level or at the hardware level. On the November 22, Hewlett-Packard launched the Odyssey program, which will be an important part of HP's future revival. In the Odyssey program, HP has applied the x86 processor to its top Superdome 2 server and will use HP-UX innovative technology to strengthen the Linux and Windows environments-an unprecedented change, meaning that traditional minicomputer The gap between the overall solution and the x86 server will be eliminated. As the x86 processor grows stronger and the UNIX market is only sustainable, the Odyssey program will dramatically change the UNIX marketplace and may even be the grave digger for RISC servers.

Deferred unified platform Plan

Before we make the Odyssey plan that will change the UNIX market landscape, it is important to review the history and analyze HP's strategic choices in key Business Server areas. The first thing to say is that the Odyssey plan existed long ago, when it was designed to get Itanium processors into the mainstream server market. "HP and Intel's Itanium processor development teams are currently using the same circuit design library, process technology, and so on to develop new Itanium and Xeon processors in an integrated way." "Intel will begin to unify the common architecture platform for Xeon and Itanium processors after 2007 years, using the Universal Serial Interconnect bus (Sci,common serial)," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president of Intel and general manager of Digital Enterprise Division. Interconnect bus) standard, and embed the memory controller module. ”

In fact, the general plan for the Xeon and Itanium processors has been introduced several years ago to launch the corresponding 9300-processor platform in 2010, which is universal for peripheral design (bus, chip-level) and Intel Xeon E7 (7500 of the successor). Therefore, according to the original roadmap, the Odyssey program is a natural choice in order for Itanium processors to better borrow the advantages of the x86 platform. But, in today's environment, things seem to have changed. "Because of the cost problem, users currently running high-end itanium® systems need to simplify the computing environment of their software partners or require their critical applications to migrate to x86 based systems." Most customers are exploring the migration of these key applications, "said Lorraine Bartlett, vice president of global marketing and strategy at HP's key business Systems (BCS) group," Adding the Odyssey will allow them to easily migrate their applications from the already running environment to the platform the customer wants. "In other words, the goals and intentions of the Odyssey have been subtly changed to allow customers to make appropriate choices based on their needs, rather than being a bridge to the Antenping on the x86."

Optimize BCS critical business assets

Second, the positive significance of HP's Odyssey project is that it can better optimize HP's existing key Business Server assets, as well as its consistent concept of integrated infrastructure architecture. "The key business is not to see what kind of processor you're using, but to see what level of RAS your infrastructure can meet." H-P's CI structure, within the same infrastructure, according to customer requirements to provide different RAS levels to meet the different needs of customers. "said Kirk Bresniker, vice president and chief technical expert of HP's key business systems." "The market for key businesses is not shrinking, it's merging." "May 2010," said Zhang Ju, general manager of China HP's key Business Server.

HP's philosophy also reflects the positive significance of the Odyssey project. With the introduction of the Odyssey Project, the x86 processor will play a more important role in HP's key Business Server unit-indeed, in the case of weak UNIX server growth, HP has often looked to the task of completing its annual sales target for example ProLiant DL980 8-Way x86 server. "The current 8-way DL980 plus Fusionio run Microsoft SQL Server is a more balanced configuration, which is the first step for many financial companies to leave minicomputer." Compared with IBM, HP has a much bigger stride. "A person in the industry said. In fact, it is no secret that higher expectations for x86 servers are already within HP. "Capital Preservation look integrity, growth hope (ProLiant) 980." "One HP employee said.

The Odyssey program means that customers can upgrade from servers such as ProLiant DL980 to traditional minicomputer areas such as Superdome 2 without migrating their operating systems. Previously, although HP has already applied the x86 server in the Key Business Server department, and the x86 server can enjoy the corresponding key service, there is still a gap in RAS. "Key business Servers form an ecosystem. In the case of RAS, although the corresponding RAS features have been provided on the chip, these features require support from the OS, applications, and so on to truly manifest. "said Kirk Bresniker. Clearly, this is something to say, such as HP Serviceguard solutions that guarantee critical business operations that have not previously been applied on x86 based servers. In other words, the x86 server lacks the most critical operating system and the RAS feature support for applications in the entire ecosystem of critical businesses.

Who's the grave Digger?

"HP will strengthen Windows and Linux with HP-UX innovations, and technology such as zoning technology will also be applied to Superdome processors based on x86 chips," Hewlett-Packard said in a press release. In fact, this already means that the RAS barrier between minicomputer and x86 has been broken by HP's Odyssey program. The rapid development of the x86 processor, coupled with HP's Odyssey program to make up for the x86 of RAS in the ecological environment, will have a strong impact on the traditional RISC server.

"At present, u2l (UNIX to Linux) is the industry's trend." "said the product director of a famous IT company. Previously, RAS features and UNIX-specific software solutions built the last line of defense for RISC servers to withstand x86 server shocks. Solaris Open Source, the Linux kernel that supports x86 chips has made significant strides in key features, unveiling the prologue to key business for Linux, and Hewlett-Packard's innovation in HP to strengthen Linux and Windows, It will further contribute to the key business ecosystem of x86 server, eliminating the gap between hardware and software and application solutions of traditional RISC servers. So these, with the x86 server itself high enough for performance-price ratios, will the Odyssey plan become the Grave digger of the traditional RISC server? Let time prove it.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)