To take care of those extra 5% of customers it estimates require the kind of compute power and storage not provided by its standard symmetric multiprocessing server lines, Hewlett-Packard Co this week unfurls its expected interconnect technology for clustering systems into what it describes as Virtual Data Centres. Designed for very large-scale decision support users, typically with 1Tb of data or more, the Data Centres will incorporate HP 9000 Enterprise Parallel Servers equipped with a quarter-speed Fibre Channel links running at 266Mbps and a ‘TCP Lite’ protocol to provide 70 microsecond or 80 microsecond message latency. By the time Fibre Channel standards reach 1Gbps, Hewlett-Packard said it will have implemented its own message protocol to drive latency down to 30 microseconds or 40 microseconds, in a year or so. The interconnect will be used specifically to link fully-stacked T500/520 12-way or K-Class quad servers initially, in configurations that support up to 32 nodes. The interconnect board will come bundled where required, or can be retro-fitted to existing systems to create Enterprise Parallel Servers nodes. Oracle Parallel Server and Parallel Query will be up on the systems from day one, as will Informix Extended Parallel Server, which is still in beta test. Surrounding technologies include support of processor allocation to applications within the Process Resource Manager (PRM/9000) and HP GlancePlus integration of administrative functions. OpenView Operations Center 2.0 comes with additional round the clock management functions and the HP MeasureWare agent software can now collect global, process and application data. There’s no additional programming model, so the company defers to whatever the databasers provide. Hewlett-Packard’s parallel technology does not provide support for clustered file systems – it said it is working on it. The company said users looking for those levels of functions, including global shared memory and memory-mapped technologies, should be using the Exemplar SPP parallel processing servers supplied by its Precision Architecture RISC partner and soon-to-be-subsidiary, Convex Computer Corp.
