Meet user demands for high performance graphics
The consumerization of IT and bring your own device (BYOD) expectations, along with the explosion of video and multimedia has accelerated the demand for performance driven remote graphics capabilities. Organizations that rely on high performance graphics acceleration applications, including financial trading, computer aided design (CAD), web design, digital content creation, education, public sector, oil and gas and healthcare, are asking themselves one question:
"How do we enable anywhere, anytime application and information delivery, while also ensuring the protection of corporate information and minimizing management?"
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade now delivers even more performance with new Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v2 processors and 1866 MHz DDR3 memory. It is the industry's first bladed technology to support up to eight GPUs per blade, lowering the cost per user while enabling remote users to easily complete large model visualizations.
NVIDIA GRID K1 and K2 boards
HP has expanded its comprehensive set of graphics offerings with NVIDIA GRID solutions that, for the first time, support hardware GPU virtualization and multiple GPUs on a single adapter card, providing an excellent end user experience.
NVIDIA GRID GPU adaptors have an optimized multi-GPU design that helps to maximize user density. GRID K1 boards, which include four Kepler-based GPUs and 16 GB of memory, are designed to host the maximum number of concurrent users. GRID K2 boards, which include two higher end Kepler GPUs and 8 GB of memory, deliver maximum density for users of workstation-class graphics applications. With GRID, users benefit from the best of both software virtualized and pass-through GPU technologies because the virtual machine (VM) shares the resource of a GPU but has direct access to the dedicated resources of the GPU.
New AMD FirePro s4000X graphics
A new edition to the mezzanine graphics line is the AMD FirePro S4000X MXM graphics with up to six displays support. The graphics adapter is a compact mezzanine form factor allowing up to two cards installation for support of more than six displays total in environment such as financial securities trading and command and control centers.
Pass-through GPU
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade delivers the industry's first support for bladed graphics with up to eight GPUs per blade plus enhanced memory footprint and speeds and full PCIe Gen3 x16 GPU support, all on the proven HP ProLiant Gen8 architecture.
This solution enables a lower cost per seat through multi tenancy in a virtualized environment while keeping a dedicated GPU per user for performance and taking full advantage of NVIDIA driver. This is beneficial to users who utilize high performance graphics applications in multiple industries. The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 graphics server blade provides a local workstation for a high performance PC experience to end users over the network using one of the industry standard remoting protocols such as Citrix, HDX 3D, VMware PCoIP and Microsoft RemoteFX. Initially, the server blade was introduced as a bare metal 1:1 solution, meaning that a client operating system was loaded on the blade for a single user. The HP WS460c G6 systems made a giant leap forward with its industry first ability to virtualize the server blade by connecting a GPU directly to a virtual machine (first supported by XenServer 6). This allowed multiple graphics accelerated VMs to support a range of needs from media-rich PCs to high performance 3D workstations. Now with the Gen8 version, the new graphics offering and GPU density has taken another giant leap forward.
High-performance graphics acceleration, from media rich PCs to 3D accelerated graphics users
True virtual GPU
Also known as "NVIDIA GRID vGPU" is the NVIDIA/Citrix implementation of the technology, True Virtual GPU offers the benefit of GPU scaling like the software virtualized GPU (API intercept) and provides the performance of a native NVIDIA graphics driver like the pass through models.
This technology is currently implemented by the NVIDIA GRID K1 and K2 products. The GRID GPU is shared between multiple VMs similar to API intercept. However, in this model each VM has direct access to the GPU via dedicated channels managed by the NVIDIA GRID vGPU manager. Unlike the software virtualized GPU (API intercept) model, the NVIDIA vGPU manager within the host hypervisor manages the VM to GPU channels, guaranteeing that each VM has a dedicated amount of vRAM per user and direct access to the GPU. Administrators will have ability to assign 1 to 8 users per physical GPU depending on their workload needs.
Multi-GPU configurations
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade has two options for the base blade configuration (see figure 2): the single‑width base blade or double‑width blade with graphics expansion. The base blade supports up to two MXM style graphics cards installed on the blade mezzanine slots, while the expansion blade allows full size high-end graphics cards to be installed. The HP WS460c Gen8 HP Multi‑GPU Carrier card allows for up to 8 GPUs (MXM Style) to be installed in the blade, creating three to four times more GPU density than previous generations
High-Performance desk side graphics experience
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade delivers an outstanding performance experience across all media‑rich PC and workstation‑class users.
- Share advanced media‑rich workstation or PC graphics remotely, with 2D and 3D multidisplay, and full-motion video capabilities
- Drive up to four displays per client device and run multiple computing sessions from each, so professionals have access to the compute and graphics performance they need, on demand
- Meet a full range of graphics users’ demands for flexible high‑end graphics solutions on client and Server OS on both, bare metal and in virtualized environment
- Benefit from PCIe Gen3 technologies, which offer improved latency, and up to 400 percent more bandwidth per I/O expansion slot3
- See substantial graphics performance gain—from simple Microsoft Office documents to full‑blown solid modeling applications—on HP Thin Clients with new graphics pass‑through capabilities and new hardware-based graphics on HP servers
Remote access for greater productivity and flexibility
HP ProLiant WS460c Graphics Server Blade customers report that their users not only love the ability to access their workstation or media‑rich PC remotely from home or on the road; but also have increased the number of hours they are able to work. The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade paves the way for new business models by removing distance barriers. It accomplishes this with reliable network-enabled access and Integrated Lights-Out management.
- Access resources easily from thin clients, workstations, PCs, and notebooks and most any mobile device
- Provide segregated graphics and applications access for remote contractors
- Experience faster load and save times for large data sets or media files sitting in the data center and connected to your high bandwidth data stores
- Increase the ability to maintain a single working data set
- Deliver not only flexible, on‑demand high configuration resources (processor, memory, graphics) for time‑sensitive tasks, but also significant hardware utilization levels by using the server as a pooled resource in the data center
- Enable high‑performance levels through the ability of partner (Citrix, Microsoft, VMware) protocols to take advantage of the graphics processors delivering a robust user experience
Data center security and control
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade lowers risk by ensuring all data remains in the data center, reducing exposure to your business.
- Benefit from mission‑critical security and low‑latency data access across the workstation environment
- Reduce the risk of company data exposure from loss or theft of local hard drives, removable media drives, data interfaces such as USB and systems
- Maintain better control over the IT environment by eliminating unauthorized software loads or data removal
- Enable contractors to work on projects without providing access to sensitive data
Business continuity
- Configure redundant N+1 or N+N Power supplies, redundant fans, redundant interconnects, redundant On-Board Administrator management units
- Optimize the use of your existing data center power infrastructure with HP ProLiant Server Dynamic Power management; measure power utilization and set power caps that enable an overloaded data center to add additional servers without the cost of bring in additional power
- Dramatically improve business continuity with multiblade and multisite capabilities
- Run multiple HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade sessions from a single client and connect to any data center to intelligently balance and shift compute resources in the event of a problem
- Be prepared for incidents such as power loss and catastrophic disasters, with data center computing environments that can be accessed more securely from any location
Common client virtualization platform
Whether your client virtualization strategy is based on VMware, Citrix, or Microsoft, you can resource and manage all your desktop compute needs from a common graphics-enabled virtualization solution—no matter if they are task workers, productivity users, knowledge workers, power or media‑rich PC users or high‑performance 3D workstation users.
Easy management
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen8 Graphics Server Blade helps consolidate IT management in one location, improves efficiency, and reduces the time needed to troubleshoot and perform maintenance tasks
- Get access to improved management capabilities through the HP iLO 4 Management Engine, which enables a lifecycle approach to deploying and managing the server, and automatically regulates power consumption and server performance
- Navigate and manage systems through a single, browser-based interface, and deploy software easily using the HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack
- Remotely control and troubleshoot from a central location or outside the office, on the network using the HP ProLiant Onboard Administrator