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However, in keeping with the Green IT ethos sweeping the world, HP is touting energy savings as much as performance improvements for its new G6 server range.
Claiming HP ProLiant G6 to be the most energy-efficient x86 servers in the industry, HP lists energy-saving features, such as:
- HP Sea of Sensors – automatically track thermal activity and optimise system cooling across the server through a collection of 32 smart sensors.
- Common Power Slot design – which aims to help minimise power waste by allowing customers to choose from four power supplies to match their specific workload.
- HP Dynamic Power Capping – reallocates power and cooling resources in the data centre by dynamically setting or “capping” the power drawn by servers.
Ray Maisano, business manager for Enterprise Servers HP South Pacific believes the energy saving features will be particularly attractive to Australian businesses.
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“In this economic climate, any IT investments that can drive down costs and provide a quick return on investment would be attractive to Australian businesses. The added pressure of the data centre, as a key component of corporate energy use, is a concern for business technology executives facing capacity issues, power limitations and increasing energy costs,” says Maisano.
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Maisano says: “We’re currently working with a major Australian financial organisation to review the new HP ProLiant G6 range in light of the current challenges to the business.
"Their feedback has highlighted to us that the accelerated return on investment makes a transition to the G6 range more feasible. These returns are being realised in a time frame of as little as 3 months compared with the usual period of around 12 months.”
According to HP, the new HP ProLiant G6 servers are available in 11 standards-based tower, rack and blade platforms, representing the largest HP ProLiant rollout in company history.
As far as productivity is concerned, the new server platform claims a comprehensive set of embedded technologies and flexible tools, including:
- HP ProLiant Onboard Administrator – designed to simplify server set-up and enable customers to inspect server health from any location, including when a server is offline.
- HP Insight Control Environment (ICE) management console – claiming to reduce operational expenses up to $48,000 for every 100 users by allowing customers to control the management and monitoring of the server infrastructure on-site or remotely.
- HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet module – claimed to be the industry’s first interconnect technology to allocate the bandwidth of a 10Gb Ethernet network port across four network interface card connections. This is claimed to eliminate the need for additional network hardware equipment, and to enable customers deploying virtual machines to realise savings of up to 55% in network equipment costs.
Most new HP ProLiant G6 platforms are available today and shipping worldwide; DL 360, DL 370 and BL280c models are expected to be available in the coming weeks. Starting prices for HP ProLiant G6 servers range from US$999 to US$2,105 and vary based on specific configurations.
