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Blade servers: Bleeding-edge or business benefit?

There`s a lot of noise being created around the benefits of blade servers - which doesn`t seem to be the usual vendor hype.
By Brett Haggard, ITWeb contributor
Johannesburg, 10 Aug 2004

Demands on server performance have increased exponentially year on year, with server density becoming a priority. Reaching the ceiling of what was possible from a rack-mount angle, the next logical step was to develop form factors that allowed more than one server to be installed in a single chassis.

Blade servers were intended to address this issue, but vendors took a wrong turn by re-using mobile technology to lower power consumption, cram more processing into a smaller space and solve the heat problem. The resulting blade server performance and cost levels did not match up to rack-mount solutions.

So why is there so much noise around blade technology today?

Paul Collins, business unit manager at HP SA, agrees that vendors` use of mobile technology was an inhibitor. "The heat and power issues in the data centre were the real reason for vendors taking a mobile processor tack. Recently, however, blades have moved into a dual-Xeon (server-centric processor) configuration and have become more seriously considered by customers. In the past 18 months, the technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, proving there is a place for it in the enterprise space and that it can provide more server power."

Additionally, blade servers are offering far better price/performance if used in configurations of 15 servers or more, and new software tools which aid the roll-out and management of multiple blade servers are really delivering value.

Bevan Lock, xSeries manager at IBM South Africa, says reduced complexity and the tools available for blade servers to assist roll-outs are the major benefits being realised today. "We are seeing good acceptance for blade technology because it addresses some of the key issues users had with rack-mount solutions. The blade approach simplifies the environment substantially, making these servers really easy to deploy and set up.

"While the software solutions used for blade technology are not new, because the blades are in one place and the blade design lends itself to so much integration, installing a new server is as simple as sliding it into the chassis, without the need to install and fit brackets, power cabling and the like.

"Blades are also vastly different because all the storage and network switching is done from end-to-end inside the chassis. The chassis itself gives the blade access to all of those components and a high-level of power redundancy. With 1U 'pizza box` servers, each server needs to be cooled individually. With blades, all of the servers in one chassis are cooled from that chassis and not individually," Lock says.

With comments like this, there`s no doubt that the blade server market is growing at an amazing pace. Further solidifying this sentiment, a Gartner report entitled "Blade server shipments staging rapid growth" - released in May - quotes a 650% worldwide increase in blade server shipments between 2002 and 2003.

Looking at the local market, Karen Benson, VP of technology and services enterprise systems at Gartner, says: "SA shows the highest growth rate for blade servers in the first quarter of 2004 (378% year-on-year), but this doesn`t mean a great deal [of servers] as it is off a very small base. The blade market is also a relatively new market and just one deal could make a big difference to the quarterly results. To give you an idea, in Q1 blade shipments in SA represented just 1.5% of the EMEA total."

Solid growth predicted

Gartner sees numerous market accelerators for blade servers over the coming year. On the niche markets front, Gartner sees the need for system replacement in high-performance computing environments as a major driver. "Also, vertical markets, such as seismic exploration, electronic design automation and digital content creation are replacing ageing servers with clusters of blade servers that can provide greater performance in a smaller physical space than the older non-blade systems."

The major reason for blade server growth, however, is the ongoing push for reduced cost of server ownership. "There is a perception that the installation of blade servers reduces the cost and complexity of managing large numbers of servers [for example, the ability to quickly swap blade servers in and out and re-provision them for different uses]," says the report.

Reinforcing this prediction, the research house says its December 2003 Gartner Data Centre Conference revealed that 30% of the respondents to a survey asking "If you are installing blade servers now or plan to over the next year, what will be your main driver for doing so?" answered: "To try to drive my total cost of server installation and management down."

The heat and power issues in the data centre were the real reason for vendors taking a mobile processor tack.

Paul Collins, business unit manager, HP SA

Another good sign of the growth blades are experiencing is the fact that Dell Computer is planning another foray into the blade space, after pulling out two years ago. Dell doesn`t get involved in a market unless it can capitalise on its commodity status, drive pricing down and move significant stock.

Tiny Maubane, enterprise product manager at Dell South Africa, says the key to Dell`s move back into blades is the fact that the new products will be cost justifiable when compared to 1U rack-mount servers.

"Dell has been trying to push standards in a big way, from the perspective of urging other players to design their architectures so that all required peripherals are able to plug into a blade chassis seamlessly. While blades are largely based on standards, we see the technology as proprietary in terms of the differing chassis designs in the market," Maubane concludes.

Current inhibitors

However, the blade servers market should not expect completely clear skies. The Gartner report cites numerous market inhibitors as considerations that may well sway customers away from the blade option.

For starters, it sees the wide variety of blade servers on offer in the market as a possible inhibitor. "At year-end 2003, nine variations of U height and blade capacity were available. Differences in blade management offerings, I/O bandwidth and other features further broaden the variety of available blade features. This variation keeps some buyers from considering blade servers because it makes evaluation and comparison more difficult. Some buyers are inhibited because they are afraid they might make a choice that does not become dominant, and even gets discontinued in the near future, costing them time and money to migrate to another blade configuration," the report says.

Another major inhibitor is price, which is especially pertinent in the South African market because of the huge role it plays in purchasing decisions at local corporates. "In 2003, blade servers cost an average of $3 224, while the average cost of a 1U server was only $2 899. Because Web servers and servers used in parallel computing environments are typically installed in large numbers, this pricing difference becomes multiplied. The use of more-standard components in blade servers (estimated to accelerate in 2006) will help to reduce that premium pricing," states the Gartner report.

From an overall perspective, however, Gartner says the lack of a unified and clear marketing message is cause for concern. "In essence, this is the articulation of the real customer benefit of using blade servers. While some clients expect reduced ownership costs, vendors have not been specific about the savings and have not provided proof that these cost reductions will be realised. In addition, vendors need to send a clear message about which tasks are most suited for blade servers. Today, they appear to be front-end Web serving and high-performance computing. The blade server market will be limited until blade server advantages can be communicated beyond these two tasks," the report says.

Mark Forbes, Intel server product manager at Axiz, says key to the success of the blade server is its adoption across the board, and not only in the enterprise industry.

Management software is the magic sauce that puts a blade environment miles ahead of its traditional peers.

Dumisani Mthoba, senior systems engineer, Sun Microsystems

"Technology is evolving to such an extent that we can now support resource-intensive solutions in a very small area. But one of the major obstacles affecting blade server adoption is that many vendors have not recognised the role blade servers can play within small to medium enterprises (SMEs)," Forbes says.

"By definition, a blade server is simply a group of servers clustered together, utilising a single keyboard, mouse and monitor, through a series of network switches, integrated together to connect to the network. Traditionally, vendors have targeted enterprises, which require specialised teams with even more specialised skills instead of considering the SME sector, which is often a far simpler solution. What vendors fail to realise is that if you are running more than five servers in a platform that does not require storage as a primary requirement, you are a perfect candidate for a blade server. This definitely makes it an option for SMEs," Forbes concludes.

Blade server benefits

Dumisani Mthoba, senior systems engineer at Sun Microsystems, says the major benefits of using blades relate to lowering total cost of ownership (TCO), and laying the groundwork for the realisation of utility computing. "The lower TCO is achieved through lower complexity, much higher density, agility, low power consumption, redundant components and simplified management.

"In terms of lower complexity, a blade server environment generally features a chassis that houses several elements. These typically include redundant power supplies, system controllers and network switches and several types of blade servers. Mass storage is often external to the blade system. This environment requires very little cabling to function. What customers get is a self-contained, mini data centre that is ready to provision," Mthoba explains.

In terms of higher density, Mthoba says blades allow organisations to deploy a high number of processors and memory in a small footprint, while using low-end server technology. "A 5:1 ratio, relative to 1U servers, is achievable. The end result is computational density that was previously achieved in high-end SMP servers. This significantly decreases real estate costs.

"In terms of lower power consumption, high electrical costs in a data centre have traditionally been accepted as a given and taken for granted. However, in these days of rampant cost cutting, customers are looking to reduce costs wherever possible. Data centre power costs, as a function of TCO (over three or five years), can be very high indeed. Blade technology offers an opportunity to reduce this. With blades, it is possible to cram 12 processors and Gigabit Ethernet switches in a 3U form factor, at much lower consumption than would be possible with other servers.

"These benefits are rounded out by redundant controllers, switches, network interfaces and power supplies that ensure the possibility of losing a service is significantly lowered. Discreet servers would each require their own redundant components - leading to the sort of unnecessary duplication that blade systems avoid," Mthoba says.

However, the real value lies in simplified management. "Management software is the magic sauce that puts a blade environment miles ahead of its traditional peers. It significantly reduces the administrator-machine ratio and, in so doing, addresses one of the highest components of a TCO study. With this software, provisioning and re-provisioning of the servers is simplified and can be completely automated.

"It creates complex networks and connections between the blades by managing the controllers, blades and switches. It allows automated monitoring of service levels provided by the environment, and flexes them according to pre-defined criteria. For example, if a Web server farm is not keeping up with demand, additional blades could be provisioned and brought online with no user intervention. These could then be removed from the environment when demand is lower.

Looking forward

<B>Blades cut Department of Labour`s costs by 30%</B>

Siemens Business Services is consolidating 140 different server locations across the Department of Labour`s countrywide footprint, into one big data centre and 31 satellite locations, each with between 10 and 30 blade servers.
Giovanni de Felice, chief technical architect for the Department of Labour at Siemens Business Services, says the department has been planning to go the blade server route since October last year. "We`ve also been conceptualising this project for the past two years, although when we started we weren`t planning to use blade technology."
De Felice says he changed his mind after looking at new server-strength blades last year. "Before this point, blades were not suited to this kind of environment since we didn`t believe they had the processing power, at that point using largely mobile technology for server tasks."
In terms of what this blade infrastructure will be running, De Felice says 70% of the department`s 5 500 users will be running Citrix thin clients, with all of the users operational on Exchange 2003 and being managed using ActiveDirectory.
"Because of the department`s nationwide reach, we needed a technology that would allow for remote management, and the ability for us to deploy at least one server farm per province, with numerous satellite servers in between," De Felice says.
"Blade technology was the answer to this dilemma because the cost becomes attractive if you are going to utilise many servers in a single place. We settled on a Fujitsu Siemens offering because the standard software tools it comes with allow us to perform remote installs and management of all of the blades in the network.
"After three months of pilot testing the solution, we`re in the process of rolling out the first server farm. We have a target of rolling all of the locations out before 15 September this year," De Felice says.
"Right now the estimated cost saving is in the region of 30% on the previous distributed environment."

"Billing mechanisms can be introduced into this scheme thus offering a true utility model to users. Failed blades can be rapidly replaced by new ones with the entire application stack provisioned on the replacement system. Again, this would function like RAID in a disk array," Mthoba concludes.

Steve Nossel, country manager for Intel South and Sub-Saharan Africa, concurs. "While blade computing is still in its infancy, it is rapidly gaining acceptance by large corporate users who recognise the benefits and cost savings that are available. The ability to add computing capacity as and when it is needed will enable companies to become more agile in an environment where the ability to change rapidly is often the competitive-edge needed to survive. At the same time, lower operating and management costs, and a faster return on investment will ensure greater profitability in both the short- and long-term.

"In the next two years, we see further reduction in pricing, as well as - in line with Moore`s Law - an increase in processing power and the blade`s capabilities. We see a very sweet spot in the two-processor space, and as such we don`t believe there will be a huge uptake in the application server space for blade servers. That is something we see happening in the longer term," says Collins.

"We also don`t see too many radical changes in design - the standardisation has taken place. More money will be spent in research and development around the tools used to rapidly deploy blades, and on driving down costs and further increasing performance.

"Ultimately, we see market acceptance increasing as the market becomes more accustomed to this technology," Collins concludes.

As advice for potential blade server buyers, the Gartner report concludes: "End-users should carefully evaluate the potential for blades to determine whether the technology will provide the needed return. If greater server density in front-end Web serving configurations, or the replacement of ageing systems in parallel computing environments [that is, high-performance computing] are the main drivers, then blade servers are definitely worth evaluating now."

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