HP aims to cut datacentre running costs with new Gen8 servers

HP has launched a range of ProLiant servers that it said should help to lower datacentre costs by being easier to deploy and maintain than current models.

The Gen8 servers arrive as part of HP's $300m Project Voyager initiative, which is aimed at "redefining every aspect of the server life cycle".

The Gen8 systems use HP's ProActive Insight architecture to create "self-sufficient servers" that HP remove many of the costly support issues that datacentre managers current contend with.

Speaking at HP's Global Partner Conference 2012 in Las Vegas, senior vice president of industry standard servers and software at HP, Mark Potter, said: "Datacentre costs have been escalating out of control for enterprises and HP had to look at dealing with this problem."

The three main problems facing datacentre operators are  support costs, growing energy constraints and unplanned downtime costs. Unplanned downtime alone costs HP's customers about $10m an hour, Potter said.

HP said that the new servers will address these issues. For example, the systems come with a tool that identifies overused servers based on location, power supply and temperature data. This means administrators can spend less time monitoring power and cooling, while also being able to redirect workloads to increase efficiency.

Services to track power usage per rack are also included, as is support for HP's cloud-based support portal.

At the conference, Forrester vice-president Richard Fichera said that he believed HP's Gen8 servers address many of the problems that enterprises face.

"Enterprises are consumed with operation expenses. This means things like the ongoing manual management of these servers, the installation, and this consumes a lot of time, which is a big issue.

"This Gen8 announcement answers pains like this that I have been hearing from customers all of the time in regards to servers. It appears as if these answers are unique, which means other vendors will find them hard to duplicate," he said.

The Gen8 servers will ship in March.