NICE: HP took advantage of the DataCentres Europe 2013 conference to wheel out its recently launched Moonshot server platform, as it tries to entice web-hosting firms with low-power kit.

Unveiled earlier this year, Moonshot is designed to meet the low-power needs of applications that require little processing power to manage, to help the growing number of firms operating in the cloud cut hardware and energy costs, and save space.

As part of this push the firm had some of the first-generation technology on display at the conference. V3 was able to have a peer at it, and take a few photos, to see just how small the firm has managed to make a fully functioning server.

As you can see from the above, a fully mounted rack is able to hold 45 server cartridges within a single unit, allowing a typical data centre rack to hold 450 servers. This is made by possible by the fact each server is only around the size of small pizza box (see below).

New versions of the technology are due to be rolled out towards the end of this year that will feature four nodes in a single cartridge, enabling 180 servers to be placed within a single chassis.

This will form the next stage of the Moonshot push, as the firm develops ‘application-specific servers’ that enable firms with all manner of storage, access and compute requirements to benefit from its low-power offerings.

The firm added that it already has some customers using these products in beta, and reconfirmed that products running on other silicon will be launched in the fourth quarter as it looks to ‘increase the flavours’ of Moonshot servers available.

While the current Moonshot cartridges are based on Intel’s Atom S1200 Series processors, AMD revealed today that its newly launched Opteron X-Series chips are to be used in Moonshot. HP has also made no secret of its intent to deliver ARM-based server modules, possibly before the end of this year.

29 May 2013