HP Integrity Servers

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HP Integrity Superdome, or the "black" one HP Superdome Itanium.jpg
HP Integrity Superdome, or the "black" one

HP Integrity is a series of server computers produced by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (formerly Hewlett-Packard) since 2003, based on the Itanium processor. The Integrity brand name was inherited by HP from Tandem Computers via Compaq.

Contents

In 2015 HP released the Superdome X line of Integrity Servers based on the x86 Architecture. It is a 'small' Box holding up to 8 dual Socket Blades and supporting up to 16 processors/240 cores (when populated with Intel Xeon E7-2890 or E7-2880 Processors).

General

Over the years HP had support for the Windows Server, HP-UX 11i, OpenVMS, NonStop, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems on Integrity servers. [1] . As of 2019 the two remain operating systems that are supported are HP-UX 11i [2] and NonStop.

Early Integrity servers were based on two closely related chipsets. The zx1 chipset supported up to 4 CPUs and up to 8 PCI-X busses. They consisted of three distinct application-specific integrated circuits; a memory and I/O controller, a scalable memory adapter and an I/O adapter. The PA-8800 and PA-8900 microprocessors use the same bus as the Itanium 2 processors, allowing HP to also use this chipset for the HP 9000 servers and C8000 workstations.

The memory and I/O controller can be attached directly to up to 12 DDR SDRAM slots. If more slots than this are needed, two scalable memory adapters can be attached instead, allowing up to 48 memory slots. The chipset supports DIMM sizes up to 4 GB, theoretically allowing a machine to support up to 192 GB of RAM, although the largest supported configuration was 128 GB.

The sx1000 chipset supported up to 64 CPUs and up to 192 PCI-X buses. The successor chipsets were the zx2 and sx2000 respectively.

Entry-level servers

rx1600 series

The 1U rx1600 server is based on the zx1 chipset and has support for one or two 1 GHz Deerfield Itanium 2 CPUs. The 1U rx1620 server is based on the zx1 chipset and has support for one or two 1.3/1.6 GHz Fanwood Itanium 2 CPUs.

Common for the series is:

Optional features are:

The series support five operating systems:

rx2600 series

The 2U rx2600 server is based on the zx1 chipset and has support for one or two 1.0/1.4 GHz Deerfield/Madison, 1.3 GHz Madison or 1.5 GHz Madison CPUs. The 2U rx2620 server is based on the zx1 chipset and has support for one or two 1.6 GHz Fanwood/Madison or 1.4/1.6 GHz Montecito CPUs. The 2U rx2660 server is based on the zx2 chipset and has support for one or two 1.6 GHz Montvale or 1.42/1.66 GHz Montvale CPUs.

Common for the series is:

Optional features are:

The series support four operating systems:

rx2800 series

The 2U rx2800 i2 server used the Intel Itanium 9300 series chipset with 8, 4 or 2 processor cores available. Among features common for the series: [3]

The series supports three operating systems: HP-UX 11i v3, OpenVMS v 8.4 for Itanium, and Windows Server for Itanium.

rx3600

The 4U rx3600 is based on the zx2 chipset and has two CPU sockets which support Montecito or Montvale processors. It supports up to 96 GB of main memory, using 24 four-gigabyte DIMMs.

Standard features include:

Optional features:

rx4600 series

The 7U rx4610 utilizes Itanium 1 CPUs with support for up to four single-core CPUs, 64GB RAM and 10 PCI 64-bit slots. The 4U rx4640 utilizes Itanium 2 CPUs with support for up to four dual-core CPUs, 128 GB RAM and 6 PCI-X slots.

Both of these models come with integrated USB and video as default, which enables support for Microsoft Windows operating systems. The rx4640 is architecturally the same box as the rp4440, and can be changed from PA-RISC to Itanium 2 support with the flip of a switch.

rx5670

The discontinued 7U rx5670 server has four CPU sockets which support McKinley and Madison processors. It is zx1-based and can have up to 48 DIMM slots, supporting 256 MB to 2 GB DIMMs which must be loaded in matched sets of four (quads). It has 9 PCI-X slots and 1 PCI slot available.

rx6600

The 7U rx6600 is based on the zx2 chipset and has four CPU sockets that support Montecito and Montvale CPUs. It supports 384 GB memory using 48 eight-gigabyte DIMMs.

Standard features include:

Optional features:

Mid-range servers

HP Integrity rx7640 servers NodosHPIntegrityrx7640servers.jpg
HP Integrity rx7640 servers

HP's mid-range and high-end (Superdome) servers are based on cell boards, sometimes called cells, [4] which contain the chipset, Processors, memory, and I/O bus. This design allows the servers to be divided into hardware partitions, or groups of cell boards. Each partition is able to perform as if it were a separate server.

rx7600 series

The 10U rx7620 is based on the SX1000 chipset which supports both PA-RISC and Itanium 2 CPUs. The 10U rx7640 is based on the SX2000 chipset which supports both PA-RISC and Itanium 2 CPUs.

The rx7600 series are the smallest cell-based servers from HP. Just like the bigger rx8600 (see below) and the HP Superdome (see below), these servers can be partitioned, either as one big partition (two cells in one partition) or as two independent cells.

rx8600 series

The 17U rx8620 is based on the SX1000 chipset which supports both PA-RISC and Itanium 2 CPUs. The 17U rx8640 is based on the SX2000 chipset which supports both PA-RISC and Itanium 2 CPUs.

Just like the smaller rx7600 (see above) and the HP Superdome (see below), the rx8600 can be partitioned using any combination of the four available cell boards (minimum of one, maximum of four separated partitions).

The maximum number of partitions is four when used with an I/O-expander unit. Because each partition requires an available I/O slot, and the rx8600 series' integrated I/O-chassis statically maps its two I/O slots to cell board 0 and 1, an rx8600 series system is limited to two partitions unless an IOX is installed.

Cells can be freely moved from a rx7600 series to a rx8600 series as long as the chipset is the same on the cells, and the firmware is compatible.

High-end servers

Superdome

The Superdome server is available in several models, including the SD-16, SD-32, and SD-64. HP announced Superdome 2 in April 2010, offering resiliency improvements, a modular, bladed design, common components and crossbar fabric that routes transactions to the optimal pathway between blades and I/O. [6] Superdome 2 addresses requirements for high-performance computing by providing flexible scalability and fault tolerance necessary for mission-critical workloads. [7]

In November 2011 HP announced Project Odyssey, a development roadmap to unify server architectures on a single platform. The roadmap includes blades with Intel Xeon processors for the HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code name “DragonHawk”) and the scalable c-Class blade enclosures (code named “HydraLynx”), while supporting Windows and Linux environments with features from HP-UX within the next two years. [8]

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Power Macintosh G3 series of personal computers by Apple

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PCI-X computer bus and expansion card standard

PCI-X, short for Peripheral Component Interconnect eXtended, is a computer bus and expansion card standard that enhances the 32-bit PCI local bus for higher bandwidth demanded mostly by servers and workstations. It uses a modified protocol to support higher clock speeds, but is otherwise similar in electrical implementation. PCI-X 2.0 added speeds up to 533 MHz, with a reduction in electrical signal levels.

HP 9000

HP 9000 is a line of workstation and server computer systems produced by the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). The native operating system for almost all HP 9000 systems is HP-UX, which is based on UNIX System V. The HP 9000 brand was introduced in 1984 to encompass several existing technical workstation models previously launched in the early 1980s.

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HP Superdome

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Ultra 24

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nPar partitions are electrically isolated from other nPar partitions within the same chassis. Cells make up nPar partitions. Being electrically isolated means that if a nPar partition were to fail due to hardware failure, then the other nPar partitions would continue to work. This is contrasted with vPar partitions which exist within nPar partitions in which a failure at the hardware level for a nPar would affect all vPars within that nPar.

Dell M1000e

The Dell blade server products are built around their M1000e enclosure that can hold their server blades, an embedded EqualLogic iSCSI storage area network and I/O modules including Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand switches.

The Ultra 60 is a fairly large and heavy computer workstation in a tower enclosure from Sun Microsystems. The Ultra 60 was launched in November 1997 and shipped with Solaris 7. It was available in several specifications.

References

  1. "HP Integrity Servers". Web site.
  2. "HPE INTEGRITY WITH HP-UX". Web site.
  3. (HP Integrity Entry-class rx2800-i2 Overview)
  4. User Guide hp Integrity Superdome/hp 9000 Superdome, Ch. 1
  5. https://www.pcworld.com/article/113249/article.html
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on May 20, 2011. Retrieved May 19, 2010.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center/hps-superdome-2-bigger-badder-computing.php
  8. "HP to Transform Server Market with Single Platform for Mission-critical Computing". Press release. HP. November 22, 2011. Retrieved June 3, 2013.