Blade servers: Less space, more work

Blades save space and add functionality to the new class of data centres and server farms. Rahul Neel Mani and Gaurav Patra report on the state of this segment in India

When companies like RLX Technologies and Egenera took the first step in making blades, no one knew that it would turn into a war between the giants of information technology. But soon biggies like HP, IBM, Sun and Dell started unveiling their blade wares one after another and now RLX and Egenera are relegated to the background while HP and IBM have come to the forefront.

According to jyothi sathyanathan, blades will help usher customers into the next stage of e-business, which is e-business on demand

But, before blades rule the server world, there are many problems that need to be addressed urgently and crises that need to be resolved to show the real application and worth of blades. After the dot-com bust, the actual projections for blade shipments have come down by almost half and all the blade vendors promoting the business are treading cautious. In 2001, IDC expected blade server sales to hit $4.5 billion by the year 2005 but IDC now says that the total market will be somewhere close to $2.5 billion.

Two key pointers

The problems are realistic. Suppose users dumped their old servers and bought blades, it would still hurt blade vendors because they also hawk and support older servers.

Besides, blade vendors have yet not collectively come out with approved industry standards. Many of the components are built on industry standards but there are many points on which the design of blades can differ. For example, the blade chassis in which the blades slide into are still based on proprietary standards. The dimensions of different blade and rack mounted servers can also vary widely. Thus, there is a need for almost total standardisation to increase the volumes in the market.

Big players like HP and IBM do not seem highly motivated when it comes to making their blade servers interchangeable in true sense because they perceive a threat from smaller vendors, who upon getting the opportunity will proliferate much faster because of low pricing.

Why blades?

Users and vendors agree that one big advantage that blades offer over traditional rack mounted servers is the ease of management. In a blade system, multiple blades plug into a chassis with its own backplane and bus architecture. Power supply, network and storage nodes are shared with other blades. Users can actually perform automated software upgrades, patch management and server set-ups on multiple servers within the chassis. Blades also provide the capability to control the whole rack of servers from just one blade and keep some spare blades for an emergency. All this means ease of management.

Blades also help IT departments manage the use of space efficiently in already cluttered data centres and server farms. The cable clutter can also be reduced because of the backplane.

New blades

Work to make blades popular is underway and it will reach a level where end users will feel a compelling need to buy blades. HP, for example, has upgraded its line of blades with faster Intel processors and has rolled out a new 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch to help incorporate blade servers in the fully networked environment. These are low-power consuming blades with Intel Pentium M processors. Looking ahead into the future, HP is said to have planned to enhance connectivity among blades and will start supporting Layer 3 to Layer 7 switching and well as Gigabit Ethernet.

HP also feels that a blade is a more efficient way to run database, ERP, and CRM applications than a four-way standalone server. HP says that its blade servers will help user companies in their server consolidation. Using unique technology and architecture the company is looking at creating a niche for itself in this space.

IBM, which competes in the blade server market with players like HP, Dell, and, most recently, Sun Microsystems, has established a roadmap for its BladeCenter in India. The IBM eServer BladeCenter system delivers high performance computing in an ultra-dense server. IBM is also one of the first companies to ship blades with an integration of networking and fibre switches, which reduces cost and improves the total manageability of the environment.

IBM expects that BladeCenter will also be a good platform to consolidate collaboration users with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, for Web users with IBM WebSphere, and for terminal servers using Citrix. Additionally, it will be a natural consolidation point for the many customers who are looking at migrating from their current low-end UNIX environments to Linux. The basis of the management offering is IBM Director. The IBM eServer BladeCentre can offer Powerblades (Unix-based), 4-way capable Xeon blades (Intel-based), IA-64 blades (the Itanium-based processor) all in the same BladeCentre. The company has already made a good headstart within three months of launching the product with a good number of installed bases already established across the country. IBM’s ultimate goal is to remove even local hard drives from its server blades and have all blade-server storage placed on a SAN. Fewer moving parts on the server, lowers the cost and reduces the likelihood of component failure.

Sun is another player focusing on this space. The new Fire Blade Platform lets users mix, match and manage SPARC and x86 architectures, Solaris and Linux operating systems, and specialty blades, all managed through N1 for maximum flexibility and choice.

The company is also introducing a 64-bit blade server. To tap the opportunities in the Indian market, the company is working very closely with its partners to offer these solutions to organisations that want to build flexible infrastructure that can be integrated into current IT environments and quickly respond to changing business requirements.

Experts say, Sun blades’ attractive price point lowers the barrier to entry for companies evaluating Unix workstations and also with graphics, two 1394 ports, a Smart Card reader and NIC all integrated, this Sun blade saves room for future expansion.

Dell, another hardware giant has also launched its PowerEdge 1655MC blade server, which holds up to six dual Pentium III processor blades in a 5.25-inch-high chassis. This product is available with 1655MC chassis, two processors, two drives, and 512 Mbytes of memory.

Advantages

However, in India they are still not being used much, but as per the industry experts the mind share is increasing. Companies like Reliance Infocomm have gone in for these blade servers for their data centre. Apart from Reliance, there are few more data centres that are also using these blade servers. “The interest for blade server has been significantly growing. Especially, the large enterprises, are more serious about blade servers,” says Vaibhav Phadnis, country manager, Industry Standard Servers, HP India. The main advantage of blade servers is space saving and manageability—in such a way that the user saves some cost. “I believe, the main advantage of blade servers is higher density processing, basically more computing power per square-foot. Apart from this, the other advantages are simplified cabling, easier manageability and lower power consumption,” says P K Gupta, director Strategic Development, Intercontinental Operations, Legato Systems.

As grid computing picks up, blade servers will become more popular. It is also user-serviceable, easy to plug in/plug out. Standards are just evolving such as compact PCI (CPCI), which will further help in the growth of this space. Most of the vendors in this space also have proprietary hardware. The purported benefits blade servers bring in contrast to more-standard rack mountable servers have been highlighted as lower acquisition cost, improved ease of management, increased server density and enhanced power management.

As blade server technology goes from cutting edge to core, big vendors also look to sharpen their offerings. “We believe that the real value of blades is in the management of this integrated enterprise infrastructure, which is more than just servers,” says Jyothi Satyanathan, Business Manager, xSeries & IntelliStation, IBM India.

However, increased server density remains the solitary driver for blade server adoption. But when matched against the loss of flexibility one has to accept when using a blade server device and a corresponding lack of reduced cost, this becomes less attractive. Until blade servers overcome these limitations, it is exceedingly difficult to see how they will be able to expand their role from that of a niche sale.

What’s in store?

However, in the days to come Blade servers will have a more powerful role to play. “Blades, as part of a complete, end-to-end technology architecture, can reduce total cost of ownership by dramatically improving resource utilisation and reduce management cost in existing data centre environments. This will play a key role in an organisation’s IT deployment strategy going forward,” says K P Unnikrishnan, country head, Marketing, Sun Microsystems.

Blade servers are extremely dense, modular server solutions and are redefining how customers think about their technology infrastructures. According to IBM’s own estimates gathered from industry analysts, the company estimates that worldwide the market for blade servers will grow from $133 million today to more than $3.7 billion by 2006 and that about 26 percent of companies plan to purchase a blade server in the next 18 months. “It is clear where we are heading. Blade servers are poised to become a basic infrastructure component and a major computing platform. Blades will help us usher our customers into the next step of e-business, which is the world of e-business on demand,” says Satyanathan.

One of the key values of an on demand world is creating a flexible infrastructure and one that can react to any changes, all in real time. Customers expect computing power in a much more flexible way. Various customers have distinct requirements, and the vendors can not force them all into the same mould. Therefore, most of the vendors’ strategy should be to leverage their knowledge and expertise in servers, software and storage, as well as work with industry-leading alliance partners, to provide customers complete blade solutions that can be managed easily and help reduce total cost of ownership.

The flip side

The overall blade server acquisition cost is higher than that of a complete set of rack mounted servers, because of the additional cost of a blade server chassis. Although blades save money on the management side, initial costs are not any better than those of traditional servers. In a blade server, the I/O paths are shared, leading to limitations in the number of peripheral I/O’s that can take place, such as disk I/O or server-to-server network communication. Blade servers cannot be retired and replaced in the same way regular rack mount servers can, and there is a loss of flexibility in the way servers can be interconnected. Blades still have to prove that they can scale up to meet the requirements of high-end database applications.