Server blades: The CIO perspective

CIOs are opting for this technology to cost-effectively manage and control complex server environments. By Faiz Askari

The success or failure of any technology is dependant upon user feedback. Keeping that in mind we will discuss the ground reality of blade servers from the point of view of IT users at India Inc. While discussing the awareness level of a technology which is almost half a decade old in India, there are IT managers and even IT heads of SME organizations who ask for information regarding blade servers before they will consider deploying them. However, those CIOs who have the experience of deploying blade servers are in favor of this tool.

A key element regarding the user experience of blade server technology in India is the fact that companies facing the challenge of exponential growth can leverage many benefits from this technology. “In organizations where an IT environment is becoming more complex and advanced, blade servers can play a key role. They are best fitted for organizations that have multiple application servers and blades can help them consolidate application servers. Organizations having 70 to 100 servers will have a great experience with blades,” says Vipin Kumar, General Manager IT at Jindal Steel and Power Ltd.

Knowledge and expertise flourish

Blades are small form-factor servers housed in a chassis that provides power, I/O connectivity and management capabilities. Avnesh Jain, Senior Manager IT Systems at Hero Honda says, “Blade servers in data centers continues to proliferate, but the use of blade servers for back-end data center functions, such as large databases or business intelligence applications, is rare. Organizations must be careful to position blade solutions in the data center based on track record, vendor proof points and application support.” What is also important here is that organizations must make certain that blade servers fit within the power or cooling profile of their data centers.

On the other hand, IT Head of Jagsonpal Pharmaceutical, Prakash Pradhan believes that, for his organization, blade servers still have a long way to go. “We have our own challenges out of which first and foremost comes the understanding of technology. The second aspect is affordability. It becomes important for us to convince the management about any new technology and for this we need to have some clear answers from vendors promoting this technology.” However, for Pradhan it is important to understand the various facets of such technology before recommending it to the management. “We are more sensitive towards the screening of any technology as our top management has relatively less awareness about the subject. They rely completely on us. So in such a scenario we need to have good knowledge of any new product or technology,” explains Pradhan.

Emphasizing the importance of high awareness levels and greater understanding of blade technology amongst CIOs and IT managers, Kumar says, “It is important for both vendors to educate and IT managers to know about any new technology. As far as blade server technology is concerned, I feel that, it is relatively quite expensive for organizations that have a small IT set up.” Having said this, Kumar adds, “IT managers of small IT environments work for businesses that are growing at a much faster rate. So while they may not need to do it today, they would have to think of consolidating their server infrastructure after some time.”

In addition to this, an IT manager of a relatively small organization has a slightly different outlook vis-à-vis blade servers. Ajay Vikram Singh, IT head of National Institute of Construction Management & Research describes his understanding of blade servers by saying, “As far as cutting edge blade servers are concerned, it is a high-end solution for a complex IT environment. Another aspect of why a small IT set up like ours may not be interested in this is cost. Although we are growing rapidly and our IT requirements are also continuously being enhanced, it will take some time for us to think of having blade servers in our infrastructure.”

Singh adds, “Although small companies may not require or be able to afford such high end IT deployments, they deserve to be updated with the latest trends as they are growing rapidly and may think of having these servers in the future.”

Scalability and upgrades

Scalability is a key need in today’s growing business scenario. Upgrading IT infrastructure is the other critical element.

Kumar says, “Scalability is in demand. For Indian businesses be they small or medium, companies have to come out with some clear plan for their scalability. In servers, this is the most vital part of any new deployment. Blades take care of this part.”

Server topology is changing rapidly and will evolve to incorporate a greater proportion of high density servers in coming years. Avnesh Jain, Senior Manager IT Systems at Hero Honda says, “With RISC/Unix deployments slowing down, high density rack-optimized and blade servers are increasingly seen as a good and scalable server architecture for Windows and Linux deployments.”

Deployment and challenges

There are several aspects that drive any mid-sized organization’s IT needs, one such aspect according to Pradhan is business continuity. “Here by business continuity, I need to elaborate that time consumed in any major deployment can make lot of difference for a CIO. While giving the green signal to any technology, management wants a clear roadmap of its deployment. Especially in the case of blade servers it is all the more important to introduce them into the organization’s IT infrastructure while taking less time. Such implementations will be considered successful if they take less time in providing 100 percent availability to users.”

The pace of deployment, however, will be affected by two significant problems with the technology.

Firstly, these servers require a large amount of power, much more than traditional data centers were designed for. Most traditional data centers were engineered to accommodate 2 to 3kilowatts of power per rack and blades can consume as much as 20 to 30 kilowatts per rack.

The second problem is the heat generated by this new range of servers. The critical benefit of high-density blades is that users can pack many servers tightly into a rack. However, because each blade generates a large amount of heat, cooling the racks is difficult. Without adequate cooling, the servers will simply shut down.

Further emphasizing the above challenges, Jain says, “These two issues have an impact on the amount of floor space that is required to fulfill an IT department’s computing needs. With limited and costly floor space, an organization will benefit from adopting blade server technology.”

Demands of a CIO

Blade servers are usually introduced in an enterprise to boost operational efficiency and enhance speed. Taking this a step further, Jain adds, “According to me, the reason of why blade servers are getting huge acceptance at the enterprise level is because of the fact that blade servers provides increased operational efficiency, owing to fast provisioning and de-provisioning features, as well as to the speed and ease of replacement.”

Blade servers also help save space because of increased density and their power-saving ability, owing to shared-power, fans and other components in the chassis.

Today, one can see it is important for any CIO to look into the actual cost savings for his organization. Kumar says, “Cost-effectiveness is the biggest parameter of today’s enterprise as well as any small sized IT set up. CIOs need to understand the value proposition and blades have significance in this.”

Managing complex infrastructure in a simple way is a oft voiced need. Kumar says, “Environments with multiple server technologies become difficult to manage. With blade server technology a CIO can comfortably manage a complex environment.”

Virtualization: in demand

Virtualizing the server infrastructure becomes critical when it comes to the growth of enterprise wide applications. It would not be wrong to say that CIOs today look for a virtualized environment. In this blade technology has an edge. Jain says, “With the advent of storage area networks, rack-mounted servers, blade servers, virtualization and myriad new techniques that put more computing power into smaller spaces, effects for control and cost reduction have been dramatic.”

Further emphasizing the importance of server virtualization Kumar adds, “As more and more applications are coming in, the big question for CIOs is–how to manage them. Here, blades can be an option helping IT managers in a big way to manage existing server infrastructure and easily scale up.”

Moving Forward

Blade servers continue to evolve at a fast rate. However, there are few effective standards, and the software ecosystem for blade servers is still maturing.

The superior power consumption to performance ratio of recent x86 offerings is making blades a viable option in the enterprise.

Other features that are now available on the blade with x86 technology developments are numerous including cluster capability for vertical scale-ups and x86-ready UNIX and Linux. Virtualization on the blade chassis is also common. Processing power on demand can be provided using the new generation of blade virtualization tools. These features have the potential of increasing the blade server adoption in coming years.