Get the Most Bang for Your Server Buck

The saying “jack of all trades and master of none” provides insight into the benefits of converged architecture over off-the-shelf servers. You can deploy any workload on an off-the-shelf server and the workload will likely perform in an adequate manner; workloads with unique performance characteristics, on the other hand, are unlikely to perform as well as they would on server hardware optimized for that workload.

To get the most out of your hardware dollar, organizations should choose hardware optimized for the specific workload they want to use it with. This kind of optimized server system can be used for other jobs, but organizations will see the best return on investment when the server hosts the workload it was designed to host.

The issue for many companies is that building a server system that is optimized for a specific workload, such as SharePoint or SQL, involves knowledge and expertise that the vast majority of server administrators do not have. Not only do they need to know the performance characteristics of the workload they want to run and where the bottlenecks are likely to crop up, but they also need to know which hardware configuration is best suited to address those bottlenecks.

The advantage of purchasing converged architecture systems from a reputable vendor is that the vendor investigates the performance characteristics of certain workloads, and spends time determining which hardware provides the best platform for dealing with those workloads. All of this is testing and research that your organization doesn’t have to do—and very likely isn’t equipped to do. This saves time, certainly, but it also makes money: IT teams will no longer have to speculatively purchase hardware, hoping that the information they read on the Internet about running specific workloads on specific hardware was actually accurate.

Are you using any hardware that is optimized for a certain workload? Have you seen a performance increase as a result? Please let us know in the space below. We welcome your comments, questions and concerns.

Underwritten by HPE

Part of HPE’s Power of One strategy, HPE Converged Architecture 700 delivers infrastructure as one integrated stack. HPE Converged Architecture 700 delivers proven, repeatable building blocks of infrastructure maintained by one management platform (HPE OneView), built and delivered exclusively by qualified HPE Channel Partners. This methodology saves considerable time and resources, compared to the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach.

Based on a complete HPE stack consisting of HPE BladeSystem with Intel® Xeon® E5 v3-based HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 blades, HPE 3PAR StoreServ all-flash storage, HPE Networking, and HPE OneView infrastructure management software, the HPE Converged Architecture 700 can be easily modified to fit within your existing IT environment.