HPE Moonshot

The Moonshot project relies on ideology of Convergent infrastructure of HP and was for the first time submitted in 2011. Its purpose — ensuring sharing of network equipment, storage systems, a power supply and cooling in the superscalable environments including thousands of servers. The program defines the direction of development of platforms with ultralow energy consumption which are demanded by suppliers of cloud services and web services.

This nitsiativa is capable to increase energy efficiency of DPCs; for some types of loadings and applications economy will be just fantastic — the new systems will consume 89% less energy in comparison with traditional servers and to take 94% less places that will mean decrease in operating costs by 63%.

In the Moonshot project the last developments of HP in the field of decrease in energy consumption are used. Among them there is a technology of HP of Data Center Smart Grid which allows to double or treble the power of DPC and also recently provided platform HP EcoPOD, the most energy efficient DPC in the world. The server platform checked by time HP ProLiant based on x86 processors from the companies is the cornerstone Intel of the Project Moonshot program and AMD. Today it is the most popular brand of servers in the world winning first place in the rating of Worldwide Server Tracker 61 quarters in a row (2).

Key initiatives of the program

The program includes three initiatives:

• HP Redstone Server Development Platform is the first platform for development and applications testing based on servers with new architecture. Originally in it Calxeda EnergyCore ARM Cortex processors will be used; later versions will support Intel Atom and other processors. Originally the Redstone HP platform will be used for testing and tests. It includes more than 2800 servers mounted in one rack that allows to simplify for 97% IT infrastructure due to reduction of quantity of cables and peripheral devices. The first systems based on HP Redstone will be available to limited number of customers in the first half of 2012.

• HP Discovery Lab is the organization of laboratories for testing by customers of applications on the Redstone HP platform, on other platforms with ultralow energy consumption and also on traditional servers. The first laboratory will be open in Houston (USA) in January, 2012; then similar laboratories will appear in Europe and in Asia. Customers will be able to work as directly in laboratories, and in the remote mode. Together with engineers of HP they will be able to test work of the applications on servers with ultralow energy consumption.

• HP Pathfinder Program is the part of the affiliate program of HP AllianceONE designed to stimulate development of the Project Moonshot elements within open industry standards. The program is expected independent software developers and technology partners. It is expected that the first AMD, ARM Holdings, Calxeda, Canonical and Red Hat companies will take part in it. Other partners will be announced later.

Hardware basis

2014

HP ProLiant Moonshot m800

HP ProLiant Moonshot m800 - the server is optimized for difficult operational processing of large volumes of data.

On October 16, 2014 the HP company announced an output to the market of the server on the basis of the ARM processor - HP ProLiant m800.

HP ProLiant Moonshot m800

The ProLiant m800 server is equipped with the 32-bit ARM processor of production Texas Instrument, with the integrated cores of DSP and is intended for processing of data bulks in real time, such as analysis of network traffic regarding suspicious activity, the analysis of consumer behavior, etc.

ProLiant Moonshot m800 HP chassis

Installation of a cartridge of a HP server of ProLiant Moonshot m800 in the chassis

At the heart of the server a system on a crystal of Texas Instruments 66AK2Hx KeyStone from four 32-bit cores of ARM Cortex - A15 and the built-in digital signal processor. ProLiant m800 is equipped with the software of Canonical company, the system of interconnections of HP 2D Torus Mesh Fabric and the Serial Rapid I/O interface.

Cost of HP of ProLiant Moonshot m800 ~ $82 thousand.

HP ProLiant Moonshot m400

HP ProLiant Moonshot m400 is the 64-bit server on the platform of ARM processors. The server belongs to the ProLiant Moonshot HP family.

HP ProLiant Moonshot m400

On October 16, 2014 provided to HP the server on the basis of the ARM processor - implementation of an enterprise-level system, the first for this architecture, on the 64-bit chip - HP ProLiant Moonshot m400.

HP ProLiant Moonshot m400 is the cartridge placed in the form factor chassis 4.3U.

The server is equipped with the 64-bit processor X-On Gene architecture of ARM v8 of production Applied Micro Circuits and is model of the corporate level of a line of HP ProLiant Moonshot for IT infrastructure of the next generation. The ARM technology provides the high level of energy saving processing, broad range of the solutions necessary for mobile devices and a large-scale economy of scale of production in combination with server technologies of HP ProLiant Moonshot.

The server is equipped with 64 GB of memory, / with works with the two-port Ethernet network controller of 10 GB running the Ubuntu operating system. ProLiant m400 is intended for execution of processes of caching in Web servers and high performance applications. The server has twice more high density, by 4 times higher speed and for 30% lower total cost of ownership in comparison with servers on Intel Xeon processors, representatives of vendor said.

In the delivery:

• the tools of the orchestration of Juju services and the solution Metal-as-a-Service of Canonical company helping to unroll quickly difficult working tasks;

• the IBM Informix installation — still only, from available in the market, commercial DBMS, for new architecture of microhP servers of Moonshot is possible.

According to preliminary data, the cost of HP of Proliant m400 is expected about $58 thousand for a set from 15 cartridges, one network switch and three power sources.

2013

In April, 2013 provided to HP a new line of servers of the Moonshot family. The first model of a new line of software-defined HP servers Moonshot is intended for cloud computing. In general the line is intended for cloud computing, support of mobile platforms, social networks and Big Data.

The Moonshot servers are designed to solve a problem of growth of the computing equipment. If the public cloud was the state, then on energy consumption it would take the fifth place in the world and would consume twice more energy in comparison with Great Britain.

The company claims that the Moonshot servers consume 89% less energy, occupy 80% less spaces and require 77% less maintenance expenses in comparison with traditional servers. These data are based on results of internal tests.

One Moonshot server is the module which is located in format 4.3U body. In one such body 45 servers are located. Thus one rack (format 26U) can contain 1.8 thousand servers, at the same time the occupied space will be 8 times less in comparison with the traditional systems. The HP chassis of Moonshot 1500 contains the general components - connections, the mechanism of management of Integrated Lights-Out HP servers, the power supply and fans.

One server contains the 2-core Intel processor Atom S1260 under the code name Centerton which was announced in December of last year. The processor is executed based on 22-nanometer technology, works at clock rate of 2 GHz, has 1 MB a cache memory and support of 64-bit commands. Its TDP value is 8.5 W. The chip maintains single-channel memory of DDR3-1333 error correcting of ECC, with a maximum capacity of 8 GB.

Deliveries of servers to the USA and Canada already started. Clients in Europe, Asia and Latin America will be able to purchase them since May, 2013. Cost is from $62 thousand for the chassis, 45 servers with Atom processors and the integrated switch.

In addition to processors with architecture of x86, servers can be completed with processors with architecture of ARM and also DSP, FPGA and GPU chips. Thus, construction of the module can be different. Within the coming 6 months of HP is going to release servers with ARM processors. Among partners of the company in a line of Moonshot AMD, AppliedMicro, Calxeda, Intel and Texas Instruments are stated. The first server works running Linux, in general the line of Moonshot is compatible to Windows, VMware and traditional corporate applications.

2012

On June 25, 2012 the HP company began the next stage of the Moonshot project and represents a hardware basis of new servers — the server cartridges equipped with Centerton processors from Intel.

HP made the decision to use in the first commercial system with the code name Gemini server cartridges on the basis of Centerton processors which have a number of the functions demanded in data processing centers: support of 64-bit calculations, hardware virtualization (VTx), error correction of memory of ECC, low power consumption, the increased performance and a wide ecosystem of software developers. These functions — together with revolutionary infrastructure of Gemini — do platforms based on Centerton by the ideal choice for hyper scalable environments where a set of the servers of ultralow energy consumption "packed" into the compact body can work much more effectively in comparison with separate — let more powerful — servers.

The Gemini platform offers a number of the innovations allowing to create shared media which do not depend on features of processor architecture. The new Gemini system on the basis of cartridges of Centerton represents the solution for web applications, autonomous environments of analytics and a hosting. It is expected that a new system will provide the indicators of energy consumption, maintenance expenses and density of placement similar to the characteristics of the pilot platform stated earlier.

The program of development of the Gemini HP platform also assumes use of processors of other producers. HP is going to expand functionality of the Gemini systems for support of broader spectrum of loadings and also to increase quantity of available configurations for compliance to different requirements of density and performance.

Competitors

Dell: we for five years outstripped Moonshot HP servers

In the first decade of April, 2013 the HP company presented a new line of the Moonshot servers which, according to the head of the company Meg Whitman, will change rules of the game in the market. Distinctive feature of these servers is for 89% more low power consumption, they also take 80% less places, than standard servers, and stand for 77% below.

However, as it often happens in IT market, around innovation marketing wars right there ran high. In particular, the director of Dell of solutions for data centers Drew Schulke said that the server line of HP which just entered the market lagged behind Dell for 5 years.

The matter is that the most revolutionary idea of HP still did not find market implementation yet. It is about use in servers of ARM chips which are usually built in smartphones and tablets. ARM chips are suitable only for the PC and mobile software, but not for servers as are 32-bit, but not 64-bit. And when only began with HP experiments with Moonshot, servers based on Intel Atom code-named Gemini were constructed as servers on ARM under the code name Redstone, and.

Servers based on 64-bit Atom chips so far are only announced by HP and AppliedMicro, Calxeda, Intel and Texas Instruments should enter the market later in 2013 with processors from AMD. By words Shulka, Dell "created and delivered more than 1 million servers based on architecture of Intel and ARM".

Shulk in general is about Moonshot very skeptic. "HP made a number of loud statements in connection with these servers, but did not provide any proofs of operation of applications or scenarios in a 32-bit ARM environment", - he said.

Nevertheless, work on 64-bit ARM servers is continued. The producer of the Cavium servers within the Project Thunder project is just engaged in creation of such chips for the Moonshot servers. Analysts expect symmetric answers and from other large players of the server market, including Oracle and other companies.