64 Bit Proliants

[SAKET_5]

Hi All,

Just after some experienced inputs/documents on 64 Bit Proliant servers, their models, etc. - how different are they to 32 bit - do they still come with ILOs, management agents, what sort of SCSI Controller Cards, etc?

Responses would be appreciated and rewarded.

Thanks

[Martin Forster_1]

HI

i have a bl25p ( opteron ) here,

i send you the information until i have installed it.

[Doug de Werd]

The new ProLiants that support 64-bit are not "true" 64-bit. The true 64-bit HP serevrs are branded "Integrity" and use the Intel Itanium processor, and only run a "true" 64-bit OS. You can run 32-bit apps on Itanium, but they run slower than on a real 32-bit machine because they have to run in emulation mode. If you go with Itanium, you really need to have true 64-bit versions of your apps to get the performance.

The latest round of ProLiants use what is called 64-bit extensions - basically AMD Opteron and the latest intel Xeon ("Nocona") support 64-bit addressing but run sort of a hybrid 32/64-bit OS. Microsoft is releasing their x64 version of Windows next month, labeled Service Pack (SP)1 x64. It is in beta right now.

So the ProLiants that support x64 are the DL/ML G4's, and any of the Opteron servers (xx5, eg. 145, 385, BL35, etc.). Since these are an outgrowth of the ProLiant family, they support all of the traditional ProLiant stuff (iLO, agents, controller cards, etc.), just like you would expect. You should download the beta version of SmartStart 7.2 to support the Windows beta x64 version.

Here are some links you may find useful:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/80326-0-0-0-21.aspx

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/21281.html

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00235042/c00235042.pdf

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/software/microsoft/Integrity-index.html

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/x64/default.mspx

Thanks,
Doug