HP ProLiant DL585 G5/G6 server technology

Networking technologies
The DL585 includes two BC5706i multifunction gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network adapters.
Technologies supported by the BC5706i include TCP Offload Engine, Receive Side Scaling (RSS),
and accelerated iSCSI.
TCP Offload Engine
Network bandwidth has improved steadily since the early days of TCP/IP networking. Along with this
improvement in speed has come increased demand for CPU cycles to manage the network protocol
stack. A busy, full-duplex gigabit Ethernet connection can consume the available computing power of
a 1-GHz Pentium 4 processor. Unfortunately, this means that even a modern, high-powered processor
will show degraded performance in processing application instructions while data is being transferred
onto or off of the network. Computers most susceptible to this problem are application, web, and file
servers that have a high number of concurrent connections.
To reduce this burden on the processor, the embedded network controller in the DL585 is designed
with TCP Offload Engine (TOE) capabilities. TOE NICs (network interface cards) are designed with
on-board logic to process common and repetitive tasks of TCP network traffic. Because the processor
does not have to devote cycles to processing these tasks, it can be used more efficiently to
significantly increase application performance on servers attached to gigabit Ethernet networks.
Accelerated iSCSI
iSCSI (internet SCSI) is a standard that implements the SCSI protocol for interacting with storage
devices over a TCP/IP network. While iSCSI can be implemented over any TCP/IP network, the most
common implementation is over gigabit Ethernet. iSCSI serves the same purpose as Fibre Channel in
building Storage Area Networks (SANs), but without the cost, complexity, and compatibility issues
associated with Fibre Channel SANs. A more efficient approach is to offload the management of the
protocol to the network adapter. Adapters that implement the iSCSI protocol are known as iSCSI Host
Bus Adapters (HBAs). The embedded NIC of the DL585 is an iSCSI HBA and appears to the
operating system as a SCSI HBA.
Server management technologies
HP Insight Control – Essential server management for ProLiant
The ProLiant DL585 server infrastructure costs less to operate because Insight Control lets server
administrators deploy the ProLiant DL585 quickly and increase uptime by proactively managing
health. Additionally, the DL585 server reduces overall power requirements and extends data center
capacity by optimizing power consumption. The DL585 server reduces travel costs and increases the
number of ProLiant servers managed per administrator by providing complete remote control for
ProLiant servers from any location.
With Insight Control, administrators can manage ProLiant servers running Windows, Linux, VMware
ESX, and Citrix XenServer environments, or even integrate Insight Control with leading third party
enterprise management consoles, including HP Operations Center and Microsoft System Center.
HP Insight Control taps into the ProLiant Onboard Administrator – a set of embedded management
capabilities designed into every ProLiant server. These embedded management capabilities exposed
through Insight Control help make ProLiant the best managed server in the industry.
HP Insight Control is a full suite of essential ProLiant management software that integrates into the HP
System Insight Manager console, which helps system administrators in several ways:
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