As part of the data center team at Intel, I was proud to see Intel Xeon® 5500 processors in the server platform The Planet chose for their new Server Cloud offering. What was even more exciting was seeing a major hosting services provider move strongly and strategically into the cloud services business, an area of IT that is rapidly progressing. So on behalf of everyone at Intel, I hope this new offering and business model will be a huge success for The Planet and its customers.

Success in any venture is a function of multiple variables, and the alignment of hardware technology and platform architecture is of utmost importance. The focus on an open-source stack, the simplicity of the offering, and the server platform all work together to make Server Cloud a value-rich offering. Because I’m very familiar with the family of processors powering each Server Cloud instance, I’d like to discuss a few attributes of the hardware technology that customers will benefit from.

In my previous blog, I talked about the performance benefits of our newest processors. CPU performance is important because it directly impacts how you can use the server and to what extent. Because cloud offerings are expected to scale with utilization and performance needs, the underlying platform architecture needs to support those capabilities. Intel Xeon processors have unique “intelligence” that our marketing team has chosen to call Intel Turbo Boost This increases the CPU performance when needed and scales back when it’s not needed. Server Cloud users get immediate access to performance of their vCPU(s) when they need it, and The Planet saves money when the CPU utilization (subsequently power utilization) is scaled back during off-peak application usage. Why do you care if The Planet saves money? Check out their pricing. For you to get the latest technology at that cost, you better believe the guys behind the curtain are doing their best to run the most efficient data center possible.

The high-performance i/o and memory architecture of the Xeon 5500 platform also allows you to rapidly access your data, whether it’s on the platform’s local hard drive, SAN or in the remote Cloud Storage offering. The Xeon 5500 platform can support up to 144 GB of memory via the super-fast Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) and memory controller integrated into the CPU. Best of all, like the CPU the memory modules and QPI links will also go into to a low power consumption state when not being used … also translating into lower operating costs and The Planet’s terrific prices.

As we continue building more powerful and more efficient processors, we’re excited to see The Planet incorporating them in innovative ways. The Planet has masterfully tied the Xeon 5500 series into their cloud hosting platform, and because they are committed to adopting the latest technologies when new processors are released, I am looking forward to seeing how the Server Cloud offering grows and evolves to maintain its performance dominance.

Thanks to The Planet for delivering a great product to the IT community – best of luck to all!

Cheers,

-Adarsh Sogal
Intel Corporation

About the Author: Adarsh Sogal is the Marketing manager for Cloud Service Providers in Intel’s Data Center Group. He has been with Intel for 10 years, focused on serving the needs of the service providers in Telco, IT Outsourcing, and Hosting market segments from all over the world.