HP offers four socket servers with more processing cores and memory for virtualized environments

Hewlett Packard (HP) has rolled out four socket servers, which offer increased processing cores and memory in virtualized environments. This will eventually pave way for deployment of more virtualized machines in the said environments.

“The four socket ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Blade and ProLiant DL560 Gen8 rack servers will offer excellent computing power and that too in the frame of 2 socket servers,” said John Gromala, Director of product marketing, Standard Servers and Software, Hewlett Packard. These two models are first 4-socket servers to be offered in the Gen8 portfolio. The Proliant BL660c Gen8 is almost half of the size of its previous versions.

When compared to HP’s previous versions, Virtual Machine deployments will be 30% faster and will depend on the server type. These two models of servers are presented for hybrid cloud deployments.

Both the 4 socket models of servers are running on Intel E5-4600 processors, which are of 8 cores. The ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Blade will be having a 1TB of DDR3 memory and its cousin ProLiant DL560 Gen8 will be having a 1.5TB of storage capacity. The modules are tweaked in such a way that the memory can be kept in servers like 2-socket server designs.

It is a known fact that, majority of enterprises deploy Server Virtualization techniques in order to save some costs as it balances workload execution and power consumption in a distributed computing environment. So, a better performance-per-watt ratio can be seen and a cut down in power and cooling costs can be observed along with lowering server maintenance costs.

Conversely, some of the customers may forgo virtualization techniques and will think that it’s wise to rely on in-memory transaction processing. However, virtualization will act as a block in between the database and memory and will result in slower response time for transactions.

ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Blade and ProLiant DL560 Gen8 rack servers are offered with sensors which can monitor and power use and can keep a check on it.

Well the news about the availability of ProLiant BL660c Gen8 Blade and ProLiant DL560 Gen8 rack servers is yet to be officially informed. Coming to the price, ProLiant BL660c Gen8 price is $7,970 and ProLiant DL560 Gen8 price is $5,912. Virtualization technologies offered by Microsoft, VMware and Citrix are supported by these rack servers along with Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat or Suse Linux or oracle Solaris Operating Systems.