Proximity? How intel it uses its own technology to build clouds

In the last article in this issue of it extras, we have 263 stories to illustrate the Intel platform's support for its server virtualization and cloud computing strategy, and we will share a more "special" customer story about using Intel technology to promote server virtualization and cloud computing practices, Is Intel's own IT department.

Say Intel it is special, because its experience in cloud computing is important for all users who have implemented or intend to implement cloud computing-after all, now that the vast majority of the public cloud is built on the infrastructure of the Intel architecture, the private cloud embracing the open architecture has become a consensus among many enterprises, In this context, Intel it, which is able to "Tun" and take full advantage of and test Intel's latest related product technologies as quickly as possible, will naturally attract everyone's attention.

From Intel It's own perspective, the goal of implementing the cloud computing program is to "improve employee productivity, help business units develop, provide flexible delivery patterns, and support new business" four visions. Intel IT Engineering Computing team information technology manager Zhou said: "Intel needs a private cloud architecture that is efficient, flexible, secure, and available, and will maintain its strategy of driving cloud development from within, from a managed platform to a future private cloud, hybrid cloud, and joint IaaS, This allows employees to shorten business deployment time from days to hours, and workflow automation can support consistency, flexibility, and resilient business tuning. ”

To achieve these goals, the optimization of the data center, the cloud or the carrier of the service, will be the highest priority and necessary. Zhou and his colleagues have been prepared for this: "We propose a balance rule for data centers, which is to achieve a balance between improving computational load and reducing resource consumption, achieving management needs and reducing capital investment, sound development and positive innovation to enhance competitiveness". To this end, Intel it has developed three major strategies: "One is the continuous optimization of the data center, covering the server, storage, network, infrastructure and other aspects, to make it match the business development, and the second is to improve data center utilization, that is, through business optimization and technical means to maximize the use of existing infrastructure, reduce resource input The third is to implement the regional planning strategy of vertical integration of data center on the basis of considering local demand. ”

According to the requirements of these three strategies, Zhou and colleagues have been actively cooperating with data centers located in other parts of the world, using Intel's leading processor platform to promote the implementation of virtualization technology to achieve full integration, management and utilization of IT resources at the Shanghai Zi Zhu Data Center. Zhou says Intel's multi-core Xeon processors can provide more robust support for virtualization with each replacement, such as a 20:1 virtualization consolidation of servers with Intel's newest Xeon processors, while reducing power consumption by up to 90%. With the support of these optimized products, the Intel Data Center virtualization program has grown from 12% in early 2010 to 42% at the end of the year, and is expected to reach 75% in the next few years, leading to a flat path for implementing Intel's cloud computing applications, he said.

The task of further enhancing the degree of virtualization falls to the Shanghai Zi Data Center, Zhou and colleagues ' calculations are: "At present our data Center server utilization is the most use of the blade for EDA design, its usage can reach more than 80%, while others are responsible for daily ERP system and supply chain Service server utilization only 30% , it is the main goal of integration or substitution with virtualization. "Zhou said they were considering the latest Intel Xeon E7 processor-based servers, and tested their EDA-designed servers to achieve a 8:1 consolidation rate while running ERP and conventional applications to achieve higher virtual machine consolidation rates.

If the initiative to upgrade virtualization reflects Intel it's full knowledge and application of Intel-related products, the Pue value of the Shanghai Bamboo Data Center, which accommodates more than 330 servers in 340 square meters, is the argued of Intel it's ability to optimize energy efficiency in data centers! and optimization of energy efficiency, in the data center is built more and more, the growing era of cloud computing is so significant that, from the data center operator or user, it lowers TCO and gets a higher return on investment; For society as a whole, the more energy-efficient data centers, the better the energy-saving effect, Better environmental protection.

So how does intel optimize its data center energy efficiency? This first relies on the increasing application consolidation ratios and the ever-increasing efficiency performance of Intel-related products, it also comes from the sharing of relevant experience in Intel's it world, as well as the Zhou team's in-depth research and bold experimentation in data center thermal energy-saving technologies and methods-they isolate both hot and cold air lanes, The cable layout in the datacenter was adjusted to increase the overall temperature from 18 degrees Celsius to 22 degrees while ensuring that the data center was working properly, and they also boldly enabled natural wind cooling-cooling with the natural wind when the outdoor temperature was below 18 degrees.

It is worth mentioning that, in sync with the infrastructure that optimizes the data center, the Zhou team has made a proud contribution to the application of Intel's cloud computing based on high-performance, energy-efficient platforms built on Intel products. "Within Intel's cloud computing practice, the Chinese team is not a follower, but a pioneer," Zhou said: "There are two successful cloud computing projects--platform validation cloud and production environment cloud, all of which we developed based on Intel platform and Open source technology." "The former is primarily for developers, it takes only 3-5 minutes to deploy a test environment, while the latter runs a lot of real-world applications in a production environment, and it takes only 3 hours to deploy a production environment for a new application, up to 720 times times faster than it would have cost 90 days in 2008."

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)