Hewlett Packard Enterprise Scales Large Linux Workloads with Integrity

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is doubling down on its Linux server efforts today with the announcement of the new HPE Integrity MC990 X server.

The MC990 X is a rack-mounted 8-socket platform that can scale up to 144 cores of compute. The compute isHPE Integrity powered by Intel Xeon E7-8800 v3 processors, with options including the E7-8890 v3, which is an 18-core 2.5 GHz chip. Memory on the MC990 X scales up to 6 TB, which can be spread across 192 DDR4 DIMM slots.

The overall system form factor is an 11RU chassis, which includes the HPE Rack Management Controller.

In terms of operating system, HPE's spec sheet for the MC990 X only lists Linux. The supported Linux distributions include SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and 12, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7, and Oracle Linux 7.

"This new server is designed for large business processing and decision support Linux workloads," Randy Meyer, VP & GM, Mission Critical Solutions, HPE Servers, wrote in a statement. "It complements the existing Integrity product line of mission-critical solutions and reinforces our commitment to deliver the right compute for the right workload at the right economics, every time."

The MC990 X is not currently being targeted at any other operating system beyond Linux either.

"The MC990 X is focused on demanding Linux workloads in the 2TB – 6TB memory space," Jeff Kyle, Director of Product Management, Enterprise Servers at HPE, told ServerWatch. "HPE’s Superdome series of servers (Superdome X and Superdome 2) supports multiple architectures and OS’s such as Windows, multiple versions of Linux, VMWare, and HP-UX (Unix)."

HPE Partnering with SGI to Bring New Tech to Market
Rather than build the new system entirely from scratch, HPE is basing the MC990 X on SGI's UV platform as the foundation.  Kyle commented that HPE will OEM SGI UV 300 technology as the foundation for the new 8-socket HPE Integrity MC990 X Server.

HPE has an OEM partnership with SGI to help bring the technology to market. SGI UV is built on the power of advanced symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) technology and makes use of SGI's NUMAlink interconnect technology to enable rapid scale-out.


"This offering is based on a technology partnership between SGI and HPE, where we will OEM the SGI UV technology as the foundation for this solution," Meyer stated. "With this agreement, we can meet the time-to-market demands, while delivering the highest value to customers to meet all of their performance, scalability and availability requirements."

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