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 & gas and healthcare, are asking themselves one question:
"How do we enable graphics, accelerated end user computing that allows workstation, class application performance and visual fidelity accessible from anywhere, at any time and on any device while also ensuring the protection of corporate information and minimizing management?"
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen 9 graphics server blade now delivers even more performance with new Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v3 processors and 2,133 MHz DDR4 memory. It is the industry's first bladed technology to support up to six MXM form factor GPUs per blade, loweing the cost per user while enabling remote users to easily complete large model visualizations.
NVIDIA GRID Technology
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. NVIDIA's newest Tesla M6 boards, with 8 GB of memory, provide the first MXM form factor card with GRID virtualization technology, allowing up to 16 users per card. With HP's Multi GPU carrier, up to four Tesla M6 cars can be installed in a half height, double wide blade, providing the industry best GPU user density at 512 user in a 10U enclosure
NVIDIA K1 boards, which include four NVIDIA Kepler based GPUs and 16 GB of memory, are designed to host the maximum number of concurrent users on a single stand up card. GRID K2 boards, which inlclude two higher end Kepler GPUs and 8 GB of memory, deliver maximum density for users of workstation class graphics applications on a stand up card.
With GRID, users benefit from the best of both software virtualized and pass through GPU technologies because the virtual machine (VM) shares the GPU but has direct access to the dedicated portion of the GPU resources.
Pass through GPU
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 graphics server blade delivers the industry's first support for MXM form factor graphics with up to sic GPUs per blade with PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3x 16 GPU support, all on the proven HP ProLiant Gen9 architecture.
This solution enables a lower cost per seat through multi latency in a virtualized environment while keeping a dedicated GPU per user for performance and taking full advantage of NVIDIA drivers. This is beneficial to users who utilize high performance graphics applications in multiple industries.
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 graphics server blade provides a local workstation for a high performance PC experience to end users over the network using industry standard remote protocols such as Citrix HDX 3D and VMware PCoIP. 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 Gen9 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/VMware implementation of the technology, True Virtual GPU offers the benefit of GPU scaling like the software virtualized GPU (application programming interface [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 M6, 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 video RAM per user and direct access to the GPU. Administrators will have the ability to assign one to 16 users per physical GPU depending on their particular card and workload needs.
Multi GPU configurations
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 Graphics Server Blade has two options for the base blade configuration: 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 installation of full size high end graphics cards.
The HP WS460c Gen9 HP Multi GPU carrier card allows for up to six GPUs (MXM style) to be installed in the blade, creating three times more GPU density in the same 10U enclosure than similar performance class graphics in single width blades.
High performance desk side graphics experience
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 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 multi display and full motion video capabilities.
- Drive up to six 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, both for bare metal and virtualized environments
- See substantial graphics performance fgain, 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 blade servers
Remote access for greater productivity and flexibility
HP ProLiant WS460c graphics server blade customers report that their users love the ability to access their workstation or media rich PC remotely from home or on the road, increasing their productivity. The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 Graphics server blade paves the way for new business models by removing distance barriers. It accomplishes this with reliable network enabled access andf HP integrated Lights Out (HP iLO) management.
- Access resources easily from thin clients, workstations, PCs and almost any mobile device through Citrix and VMware solutions.
- 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 and graphics) for time sensitive tasks but also significant hardware utilization levels by using the WS460c graphics server blade as a pooled resource in the data center
- Enable high performance levels and resource utilization through the ability of partner (Citrix, Microsoft and VMware) protocols to take advantage of the graphics processors delivering a robust user experience
Data center security and control
The HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 Graphics server blade lowers risk by ensuring all data remains in the data center, reducing exposure to your confidential business information.
- 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 SD cards or even client systems
- Maintain better control over the IT environment by eliminating unauthorised 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, fans, interconnects and 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 bringing in additional power
- Dramatically improve business continuity with multi blade and multi site capabilities
- Run multiple HP ProLiant WS460c Gen9 graphics server blade sessions from a single client and connect to any daya center to intelligently blance 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 for task workers, productivity users, knowledge workers, power or media rich PC users or high performance 3D workstation users.
Acceslerate IT service delivery with agile infrastructure management
By providing a comprehensive set of mabagement offerings , HP can meet your management needs at every stage of the server life cycle with three types of solutions:
- On premise management
- On system management
- On cloud management
On premise
HP OneView, our single, software defined management platform, accelerates IT service delivery through automated configuration, life cycle management and faster virtual machine provisioning and it helps accelerate the transition to infrastructure as a service (laaS)
and hybrid cloud.
On System
On system management provides embedded tools and scripting tools on all HP servers that increase server administrator productivity and simplify the server management experience. On system management portfolio ncludes unfied extensible firmware interface (UEFI), HP intelligent provisioning, HP iLO, HP smart update manager (HP SUM), service pack for ProLiant (SPP), scripting tools (Scripting toolkit for Linux and Microsoft Windows, HP scripting tool for windows power shell and the HP RESTful interface tool).
On cloud
HP insight online is a cloud based infrastructure management and support portal providing fast problem resolution and easy access to the information you need to support your IT environment. You can use the insight online dashboard to track device health, service events and support cases, view device configurations, create custom reports and proactively monitor HP contracts and warranties. You can also use the HP insight online dashboard in the HP support center mobile App to stay up to date while on the go.