Intel aims 30W Nehalem at 'microservers'

Intel will soon offer a two-core 'Clarksdale' processor rated at a mere 30W, aiming to slip this low-power chip into the super-svelte "microservers" it first trumpeted at its developer forum last month. Speaking with reporters at an event in San Francisco this morning, Intel high-density computing boss Jason Waxman said the …

[Brian 62]

Central storage?

Ahem, you do not NEED central storage for virtualization... sure it's nice, but not strictly needed. If you don't have it, you get the same reliability as a single server with local storage, which is exactly the same as one of these things...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Brian 62

One of the major plus points of virtualisation is the ability to move running VM's between hosts. To do this you NEED shared storage.

[The Dark Lord]

Sounds ideal for...

... branch office servers. Esp with 2008 RODC.

[Joe Greer]

Do you need shared storage for VMware???

No, you can have shared storage and just use it when you Svmotion from local SCSI/SAS to FC/iSCSI and then you can do your work on the physical host.

I think Intel is trying to steal some market from Dell. I thought it was Dell China or Dell India that is selling something like this already. Could it be that Dell is using AMD? Oh the horror!

[MarkOne]

Microservers for the home.

I have a SheevaPlug, and it's awesome. 2W power usage, 1.2Ghz ARM CPU, 512MB DRAM, 512MB OS Flash, Debian Squeeze. It's got a Western Digital MyBook MIrror shoved in it's USB port, and the ethernet is pluged into my broadband router. It handles my mail server, webserver, bittorrent, media server and loads of other handy tasks.

At £70 it's a steal.

[Anonymous Coward]

@MarkOne

Thanks for the tip - does indeed look awesome and moreover just what I'm after, Mmwwhahahahahahahahaha!

[David Halko]

I can't wait...

I can't wait to see the price/performance/form-factors of the 30W Nehalem processors on these little boards!!!

[David Halko]

Virtualilzation and Moving Virtual Machines From a Dead Server with Internal Storage

Brian 62 posts, "Ahem, you do not NEED central storage for virtualization.."

Anonymous posts, "One of the major plus points of virtualisation is the ability to move running VM's between hosts. To do this you NEED shared storage."

Joe Greer posts, "No, you can have shared storage and just use it when you Svmotion from local SCSI/SAS to FC/iSCSI and then you can do your work on the physical host."

Can Svmotion may move a VM between 2 hosts where the source host (and storage) had dropped dead?

Virtual Machine redundancy and migration can be done (for free) under Solaris with internal-only storage even if the source machine is completely inaccessible using ZFS and COMSTAR.

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2009/08/multi-node-cluster-shared-nothing.html

[John 62]

new form factor?

It's called the Mac Mini. Some companies have been known to offer rentals of Mac Minis instead of other types of dedicated boxen/blades.

[christian graffeuille]

Will it use ECC ram though?

surely server implies ECC?