Roundup: HP and OpenFlow, Cray, UPSL update from February 2012

Here’s our review of today’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

HP announces OpenFlow-enabled switches.  HP (HPQ) announced a portfolio of OpenFlow-enabled switches, providing customers with the broadest choice in the industry for simplifying network management while meeting a wide range of bandwidth, performance and budget needs. The sixteen model portfolio includes the HP 3500, 5400 and 8200 series switches.  Later this year HP will have support for OpenFlow across all switches in the HP FlexNetwork architecture. “To help enterprises uniformly manage network traffic flow across the data center, HP became an early innovator of the OpenFlow standard, supporting more than 60 universities and research centers in trials, development efforts and practical real-world applications,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking, HP. “With more than 10 million OpenFlow-capable switch ports deployed and the broadest portfolio currently available on the market, HP is leading the move to the OpenFlow standard and further simplifying networks for our enterprise clients.” HP is a founding member of the Open Networking Foundation which continues to advance the OpenFlow standard.

$200,000 Cray Supercomputers.  Cray announced that it is revitalizing its efforts to provide affordably priced, world-class Cray supercomputers to customers in the midrange supercomputing market. With prices starting at $200,000, new entry-level midrange configurations combine the lower cost with a range of software application support previously reserved for the much larger petascale technologies. The new offering features enhancements to Cray's Cluster Compatibility Mode (CCM), which gives customers the ability to run applications from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) without modification. "The Cray CX line was a success for us as it allowed us to reach a new segment of users in a broader set of industries," said Peg Williams, Cray's senior vice president of high performance computing systems. "For some time, customers have been looking for us to combine the strengths of both of our product offerings into a single architecture and we've now accomplished that goal. By adding the final pieces to the puzzle -- low starting prices, broad ISV applications support, scalability and a tightly integrated architecture - we now have an ideal supercomputing product to successfully meet the needs of the midrange market."

UPSL expands PowerWAVE 6000 UPS.  UPS Limited, a Kohler company announced that the PowerWAVE 6000 UPS is now available in both 400 and 500 kVA power ratings, parallelable up to 5 MVA. The new UPS was specifically designed to meet the growing power protection demands of mission critical applications within the data centre, IT, telecommunications and financial services sectors. "We have seen demand for the existing PowerWAVE 6000 continue to grow, especially within the small to medium sized data centre arena, where space and efficiency are key considerations," said David Renton, UPSL's Managing Director.  "However, feedback from both existing and potential customers, regularly asked if there was a UPS which maintains the same advanced characteristics, but with a larger kVA rating. In response, we extended the range to produce a UPS that met the required power capacity but without impacting the unit’s performance or efficiency credentials. This class-leading UPS system is now available in ten power ratings, ranging from 60 to 500 kVA, and boasts an output power factor rated up to one – ensuring compliance with all modern IT equipment like blade servers.”