Click to expand. Source: Microsoft Corp.
Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for the phrase, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” This is generally attributed to Aristotle – admittedly, a tough act to follow – but I will borrow from it as a way of highlighting my thoughts in this blog post.
With the highly anticipated release of Microsoft Windows Server 2012, the industry is anxious to see what new features will have the greatest impact on users. While this is important, I would suggest that it is more important to look at the overall impact the combined technological advancements will have on the industry.
Read Broadcom’s press release here.
Earlier this year, we saw several important industry announcements from major server vendors promoting Xeon E5 “Romley” – based platforms. As part of these announcements, Broadcom released new 1GbE and 10GbE NetXtreme Converged Network Adapters supporting L2 networking and iSCSI/FCoE storage offload protocols. This was critical because it is important to maintain “balanced” performance in a system. There is limited benefit in improving the processing capability of the server if the overall performance is bottle-necked by older I/O technology. By increasing both the processing power and the server I/O, the overall performance of the server is improved.
We are now facing another transition in the industry where three major components of the server are being advanced: The combination of Microsoft’s powerful new Windows Server 2012 operating system, the new Romley-based servers from tier-1 vendors such as Dell and HP, and Broadcom’s new NetXtreme CNA adapters. These components are simultaneously advancing the: operating system, CPU and overall server architecture, and Network and Storage I/O.
While the individual technology improvements are impressive, it’s the combined advanced features and tight integration that makes the “value greater than the sum of the parts.” The work behind the announcements this week began years ago and would never have been possible without the collaboration between these industry leaders.
And let’s not forget the larger benefit of the key components that have been designed to work together. At the risk of getting too philosophical, I will stop here. I am sure Aristotle would be proud …
To learn more about the combination of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 operating system, Romley-based servers and Broadcom’s NetXtreme adapters, download the Enterprise Strategy Group’s white paper: “Broadcom’s Integrated Solutions for Cloud Scale Computing.”
Related:
- Why Being Fast, Fat and Flat Can Be a Good Thing!
- The Road Less Traveled: Server Virtualization and the Data Center
- VMworld Preview: How the Cloud is Reshaping Data Centers
- Going NetXtreme: Dell and HP tap Broadcom for enhanced server technology