HP Wednesday took the wraps off the first new server family it’s created since the BladeSystem C-class was invented and ran away with the market.

The line is call ExSO, short for Extreme Scale-Out, and it’s purpose-built for global low-margin/maximum transaction volume cloud, Web 2.0 and HPC sites looking for a minimum of 1,000 nodes. It says 10,000-20,000 nodes would be more the norm.

Your basic YouTube, Yahoo and Snapfish, or for that matter Tata and Audi. Operations that need to make every dollar, watts and square foot count, suggesting to HP that there should be a performance per watt/dollar/square foot measurement.

HP claims the ExSO can deliver a “new magnitude of cost and resource savings,” because of a new lightweight, super-efficient modular systems architecture that it touts as the “most significant design innovation since the blade.”

It’s run the numbers and calculates that the builder of a 100,000-square-foot data center – a piece of turf that can house 88,000 nodes – can pare $152.8 million off its capex spend – budget enough for another 140,000 nodes – and another $13.7 million off its energy bill using its widgetry – capacity enough for another 115,000 nodes.

It also claims it can “dramatically” accelerate time-to-market on a massive scale in part because of the rapid installation of its three swappable “compute trays.”

The basis of the ExSO portfolio is a newfangled x86 ProLiant SL server family whose “skinless” system architecture replaces the familiar chassis and rack form factors with a lightweight rail and tray design so that a data center on the second floor of a historic building in the middle of London won’t come crashing through the ceiling.

HP exec John Gromala claims the weight of classic systems is frustrating the scale-out designs of a lot of companies. They require stronger floor support and add to the overall construction bill.

HP calculates that ExSO will save that hypothetical 100,000-square-foot data center builder 838.5 tons of server hardware, the equivalent of 4.3 747 jets.

The 31% lighter weight boxes not only cut shipping costs they also take up less space and cut acquisition costs by, say, 10% and power draw by 28%, while doubling compute density, HP says.

The design’s power efficiency is partially due to the fact that these newfangled 2U trays aren’t solid metal; they’re pierced with diamond-shaped holes that contribute to the air flow, saving an estimated $4.1 million a year.

HP says that overall the system uses 54K less megawatts a year, conserving enough energy to power 4,600 US households for a year.

The new architecture can house 672 processor cores and 10TB of capacity per 42U rack. Storage and compute components can be mixed and matched.

HP says the Datacenter Environmental Edge widgetry that goes along with this stuff can visually map real-time environmental variables so customers can quickly identify inefficiencies, resulting in an additional energy cost savings of up to $2.4 million a year and an ROI in 12 months.

Environmental Edge, whose price starts at $8-$10 a square foot, puts wireless sensors all over the data center to monitor temperature, humidity, air pressure and power utilization. The user’s root cause analysis eliminates excess operating costs.

The SL line consists of an industry standard chassis designed to leverage shared infrastructure like fans, power and the physical enclosure for SL servers.

There are also three G6 servers: the SL2x170z G6 with two servers in each 1U tray for high-performance computing and web front-end applications; the SL160z G6 with 18 dual in-line DIMM slots for added memory and up to two PCI slots for large memory apps, and the SL170z G6 with up to six large form-factor SATA or SAS drives for web search and database applications.

These SL6000s will be available next month at prices dependent on configuration and volume.

Cloud Computing Expo: More Than 60 Companies Sponsored or Exhibited at Cloud Computing Expo New York April 2009
Cloud Computing Conference & Expo West and East (past two events) were sponsored by more than 60 leading global cloud computing technology providers, including: 3Tera, Active Endpoints, AppSense, AppZero, Aria Systems, CA, Inc., Certeon, Cloud.com, Composite Software, Cordys, Corporate Technologies, Cycle Computing, DataDirect Technologies, EMC,, ExactTarget, FreedomOSS, IBM, Intel, Intel SOA Products Group, iTKO, J9 Technologies, Krugle, LynuxWorks, MeettheBoss.com, Metron, Microsoft, mindSHIFT, Moderro Technologies, Mosso, Nastel, Netmagic Solutions, OpenSpan, ParaScale, Platform Computing, QuantumXML, Red Hat, RightScale, Sensedia, Sun Microsystems, Supermicro, Symantec, Tap In Systems, Tranxition, Tripwire, VIRTERA, VMware, Web Age Solutions, and Zeus Technology.

More Than 100 Sponsors and Exhibitors Expected in Silicon Valley
Upcoming Cloud Computing Conference & Expo 2009 West event, which will take place November 2-4, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley is estimated to have more than 100 sponsors and exhibitors.

For sponsorship and exhibit opportunities please contact Cloud Computing Expo sales department at 201 802-3021 (events at sys-con.com).

Cloud Computing Expo New York April 2009 Sold Out With Record Participation
2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, colocated with 5th International Virtualization Conference & Expo presented the most distinguished faculty of speakers on any technology conference taking place in 2009. Speakers, general session and keynote presenters included such names as: ,Ajay Anand (Yahoo!), Alan Williamson (AW 2.0 Ltd), Anthony Arrott (Trend Micro), Bill McColl (Cloudscale), Bob Quinn (3Leaf Systems), Brian H. Prince (Microsoft), Brian Zanghi (Kadient), Bryan Wade (ExactTarget), Clod Barrera (IBM), Daniel Beveridge (VIRTERA), David Bernstein (Cisco), David Bressler (Progress Software), David Douglas (Sun Microsytems), David Linthicum (Blue Mountain Labs), Doug Tidwell (IBM), Ed Sullivan (Aria Systems), Glenn Brunette (Sun Microsystems), Jeff Bauer (Forbes.com), Jeremy Geelan (SYS-CON Media), Jim Rymarczyk (IBM), Joe Gregorio (Google), Joel York (Xignite), John Barr (Yieldex), John du Pre Gauntt (Media Dojo), John Laferriere (Corporate Technologies), Jon Pyke (Cordys), JP Morgenthal (J.P. Morgenthal Blog), Kenneth Oestreich (Egenera), Kevin L. Jackson (Dataline), Kristof Kloeckner (IBM), Lucian Lipinsky de Orlov (VIRTERA), Martin Ingram (AppSense), Matt Holleran (Emergence Capital), Michael Hill (IBM), Omer Trajman (Vertica), Owen Garrett (Zeus Technology), Patrick Kerpan (CohesiveFT), Pau Garcia-Mila (eyeOS), Peter Coffee Salesforce.com), Peter Nickolov (3Tera), Phil Fritz (IBM), Prasad Rampalli (Intel), Raghavan Srinivas (Intuit), Ranjith Ramakrishnan (Cumulux), Reuven Cohen (Cloud Interoperability Forum), Rich Wolski (University of California), Ronnie Thomson (Quark), Russ Daniels (HP), Sajai Krishnan (ParaScale), Scott Wiener (Cloud9 Analytics), Simon Wardley (Canonical), Stephen Elliot (CA), Steve Milroy (OnTerra Systems), Stuart Charlton (Elastra), Thorsten von Eicken (RightScale), Tien Tzuo (Zuora), Tim Crawford (Stanford University), Vik Chaudhary (Keynote Systems), Warren Wilbee (Microsoft), Werner Vogels (Amazon.com), William Fellows (The 451 Group).