Optimizing servers for the needs of cloud services

When it comes to computing platforms, hyperscale data centers have a unique set of needs. In particular, hyperscale data centers need infrastructure that delivers leading-edge enterprise-class servers. These powerful, lean platforms are one of the keys to delivering cost competitive public cloud services.

Whether addressing distributed computing, intelligent storage, or data analytics, cloud service providers need servers that are optimized to deliver better-than-ever performance and economics. For this reason, Intel has supported Dell to deliver this new line of servers from Dell’s Datacenter Scalable Solutions groupto address the changing computing demands across a range of hyperscale workloads based on the Intel™ Xeon™ E5 v3 processor family.

These rack-optimized servers from the DSS team were unveiled this week at the Dell World conference in Austin. Delivering a combination of performance and value for simple and efficient cloud infrastructure, these servers bring together the performance and energy efficiency of Intel® Xeon® processors, streamlined system design, lifecycle management, and Dell quality systems support.

At Intel, we understand the unique needs of today’s hyperscale data centers. Cloud service providers measure the value of their infrastructure with a simple metric – performance/total cost of ownership for that performance.  That’s where Intel Xeon processors come in. Our latest E5 processor family delivers up to a 3x performance improvement over the previous generation, up to a 24 percent increase in energy efficiency, up to 1.5 times more cores and last-level cache, and up to a 2x improvement in I/O bandwidth.  The new servers offer the benefits of integrated Intel networking, Intel solid-state disk, and up to 16 x RDIMMs of DDR-4 memory. They pack all of this computing punch into dense 1U and 2U form factors.

The significant performance improvement combined with efficiency improvements help service providers lower their total cost of ownership by migrating to servers like the new Dell DSS systems.

This all adds to another example of how Dell and Intel collaborated to deliver the optimized platforms for a specialized market. We worked together to understand the customers’ needs and supported Dell to create a line of purpose-built servers. Those benefits, combined with the ability to enable quick platform technology adoption for large-scale environments, is a big step forward for the operators of hyperscale data centers.

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About the Author: Raejeanne Skillern