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Server Blades
Trimming the power envelope with blades
Blade servers offer greater compute density. Using these
devices, a data center manager can save space and energy says Faiz Askari.
 Blade
servers address the issue of excessive power consumption by IT equipment at
the processor level itself. Because of increased rack density, fewer racks are
required to house the servers, which results in lower rental charges from reduced
floor space requirements. Ajay Mittal, Country Manager-System x, IBM India/South
Asia said, “Data centers are facing space constraints and this can be addressed
effectively by blade servers. Additionally, blade server processors consume
low amounts of power and can help save electricity.”
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 "Our
experience says that data centers can save up to 30 to 35 percent on power
by deploying server blades"
- James Mouton
Senior Vice-President & General Manager, Industry Standard Servers,
HP
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James Mouton, Senior Vice-President and General Manager, Industry
Standard Servers, HP said, “Our experience says that data centers can save
up 30 to 35 per cent on power by adopting blades.”
In a scenario wherein data centers are running out of room
or having to resort to co-location blades are solving the problem of having
more compute power in less space by providing greater compute density. Of course,
rising compute density has its own set of problems. Calvin Nicholson, Director-Product
Marketing, Server Technology said, “Since you can take a chassis and fit
a number of blade servers in it (in many cases up to 13 blade servers can fit
into a single chassis) it creates power and cooling issues.”
Mouton said, “One of the biggest advantages of having blades in a data
center is that it can lower the cost and resources applied for providing power
and cooling.”
Mittal added, “With a wide choice of compatible chassis,
blade servers, storage and networking offerings, and solution providers, IBM
delivers an innovative approach to blade design. You get an open solution, which
is easier to manage, uses less power, produces significantly less heat and is
easier to set up and scale compared to traditional rack systems.”
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 "Blade
servers pack more processing power into a smaller space, while being managed
as a single entity"
- Arnab Roy
General Manager-Marketing,
Sun Microsystems India
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Highlighting some of the aspects of the evolving Indian data
center market, Arnab Roy, General Manager-Marketing, Sun Microsystems India
said, “Space, power and manageability are key issues and blade servers
provide a great alternative to traditional servers—they can pack more processing
power into a smaller space, while being managed as a single entity. When combined
with virtualization or grid technology, blade servers become more useful for
the data center.”
Hitender Kumar, Head-Data Center, Tulip IT Services Ltd said, “This capability
[blades] has made them an attractive alternative for consolidating servers and
balancing or optimizing data centre workloads. Blade server brings down TCO
by at least 15 percent.”
Blades can put a cap on overall power consumption.
IBM’s approach is slightly different. Mittal explained, “Blade servers
are all-in-one servers housed within a chassis along with switches, power supplies,
management hardware, storage, and like. The BladeCenter chassis acts as a foundation
and can be tailored to the different types of applications, environments and
performance requirements in today’s businesses.”
The latest Intel Xeon processor offers a technology called Demand Based Switching
(DBS) that reduces average system power consumption and cooling costs by as
much as 25 percent. It can help trim utility bills for large companies with
multiple data centers. The principle is relatively simple, and is based on Enhanced
Intel SpeedStep Technology, which Intel has used with great success to improve
battery life on laptops and handheld devices. Traditionally, a microprocessor
operates only at a single frequency and voltage, regardless of its workload.
It is therefore always ‘on’ and always consuming full power. Processors
with Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology are designed to run at multiple frequency/voltage
settings. In conjunction with an OS and BIOS that support DBS, the processor
will automatically operate at the lowest setting that is consistent with optimal
application performance. The OS monitors processor utilization multiple times
per second and downshifts to a lower frequency and voltage as appropriate. Power
usage is therefore automatically tailored to match server workloads, which substantially
reduces waste with minimal impact on peak performance capabilities.
The Sun Blade Modular System is designed with strict front-to-back cooling,
straight airflow, intelligent fan speed control, and better algorithms for maintaining
sufficient airflow in compromised situations such as operating with failed fans.
More efficient cooling means fewer watts spent on the cooling subsystem, a benefit
that is amplified by lower CPU power consumption resulting from lower operating
temperatures. Blade systems are available with AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon, and
UltraSPARC T1 processors. “One of the key benefits that IT organizations
expect from blade systems is their ability to reduce the power and cooling footprint
when compared to the corresponding number of rack-unit servers,” added
Roy.
End-to-end
Blades, as part of a complete, end-to-end technology architecture can reduce
the total cost of ownership (TCO) by dramatically improving resource utilization
and reduce management costs in existing data centre environments.
Mittal said, “Data centers have always been under pressure to keep up with
growing business needs while keeping costs down. Today, however, there are new
pressures such as environmental issues of power and cooling and application
needs such as scale-up or scale-out.”
IBM’s entry into the blade server market brought a level of IBM tech innovation,
enterprise-based design principles, and mainstream Intel dual-processor integration
that it claims had not been delivered by any of its competitors. Mittal said,
“While other competitors’ offerings focused on edge servers, IBM set
its sights firmly on providing the vision and execution for true enterprise
computing. The success of the BladeCenter system is based on its strategic vision
for data center integration, an open system environment, and infrastructure
and industry solutions, in addition to technology advantages.”
While having a slightly different perspective towards the
blade trend among data centers, Kumar said, “Rack-mounts continue to be
widely used while blades are finding a place in medium and large enterprises.”
Demand drivers
Growth and demand can be attributed to various factors in India. One pivotal
factor could be the growth in the SMB sector and also the need for companies
to lower TCO as blades are easy to manage, virtualize and scale up. Mittal said,
“They [blade servers] are excellent in reducing power consumption and have
internal storage as well. IBM intends to make its blades servers more attractive
to SMB customers and help its business partners target those users.” Till
recently, IBM predominantly aimed its BladeCenter at large enterprises but now
the focus has been the SMB segment as well. “SMBs tend to have a lot of
computers and often they buy a machine to do a specific job within their operation.
Being able to use blades within a chassis instead of a number of individual
machines can make life easier for small businesses,” said Mittal.
Kumar added, “The drivers of this technology in India are the increased
capabilities of x86-64 platforms along with ongoing blade/chassis improvements
like increased power consumption to performance ratio and clustering capability
for vertical scale-ups.”
Roy predicted, “There is a momentum for blade servers in India. The market
is showing robust growth. Several customers are on the verge of refreshing their
servers and tackling server sprawl.”
| Considering the potential and demand
for server blades, technology vendors have a slew of offerings. IBM’s
Mittal said, “We introduced an updated version of our PowerExecutive
management tool for monitoring data center energy use. It provides an overall
view of energy usage in the data center. The new version allows an operator
to establish caps on energy usage and regulate the operation of servers
to stay under that cap. IBM blades are 30 percent more energy efficient
when idle and 18 percent more power efficient when running at full capacity.”
Additionally IBM offers Cool Blue software to manage power utilization on
System x and BladeCenter servers, the ability to track thermal issues in
a data center on a map and a way to engineer the paths of cool air depending
upon where the hot spots are in the data center.
Sun’s Roy informed, “The Sun Blade Modular
Systems are specifically designed to give customers increased server performance
and flexibility while relieving their data center power, cooling, and
cost constraints. Sun Blade systems are based on an open, modular computing
architecture.”
HP has Thermal Logic to help customers who want to cut
down the power and cooling expenditure in a data center. HP’s Mouton
said, “This is an innovative technology built into the next-generation
BladeSystem that allows users to control the balance between power and
cooling to boost data center energy efficiency.”
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Scaling up efficiently
Companies around the world are looking to enhance their business and bring down
TCO. “There will always be a demand for better technology that will help
scale up efficiently without having to start from scratch. High-density servers
and communication switches, increased emphasis on business continuity, and new
support system technologies are all driving change in the traditional data center
and this is what is driving businesses to switch over to blades,” said
Mittal.
Limitations and challenges to be tackled Roy said that traditionally
I/O has been a bottleneck as blades are designed from the perspective of density
and deployed at the Web and application tier. Vertical scaling is also limited
to two or four sockets as the case may be. Furthermore, while advocating the
use of blades in data center environments, Mittal added, “Blade technology
has been performing exceptionally well. However, there have been concerns. According
to an analyst group blade servers do not perform well in large scale transaction
processing situations, vendor lock-in is an issue with the chassis systems,
and for applications that require less than five to ten servers, blades are
not economical.”
| First off, although much has been written about blade
servers the benefits that these devices bring to the table have not been
fully understood. If you compare a blade server to a traditional low-profile
2-way 1U (one rack unit) rack-mount server, an Intel blade server chassis
houses up to 14 2- or seven 4-way Xeon Servers in 7U of data center rack
space. That’s double the compute density (28 CPUs vs. 14 in the case
of the rack-mounts).
As individual blade servers are housed in a shared
blade chassis, the cost per server reduces with each blade added. This
is because resources of the chassis (power, cooling, cabling, etc.) are
shared, and only the cost of a blade is incremental each time a new one
is added. Compare this to the old method of adding a whole 1U or 2U rack-mount
server for each new application, and savings are obvious. In fact, on
an average the break-even cost point for a new server is 6.5 blades compared
to 1U 2-way Xeon rack-mounts and 1.8 blades when weighted against 2U 4-way
Xeon servers.
The main components of a traditional 2-way 1U server
are the Ethernet controller, hard-disk controller, main logic board with
chipset, memory, two processors, support hardware (including power supplies),
cooling fans and other components that take up space and generate heat.
Even with all these components, the traditional rack-mount server does
not contribute to storage or connectivity.
The basics of a blade server include no support hardware,
power supplies, or cooling fans. Those components are all included in
a shared chassis that provides built-in network connectivity, including
switches that reduce cabling and a centralized management system for the
blade server. With these components in the shared chassis, the server—the
processors, memory, logic board, storage and connectivity—becomes
much smaller in size and perfect to place in a centralized data center.
A blade server slides into a bay in the chassis and plugs
into a midplane or backplane, sharing power, fans, floppy drives, switches,
and ports with other blade servers. The benefits of using blades include
eliminating hundreds of cables that are used to string together conventional
rack-mounts. With switches and power units shared, space is freed up,
so blade servers also enable higher density with greater ease.
Interestingly Intel conducted an extensive study in 2004
into the potential benefits of blade servers—which had been around
in the marketplace for only three years at the time—and determined
that blade servers shrink the CAPEX on acquisition as well as the OPEX
involved in operating, troubleshooting and repairing equipment. Intel's
TCO analysis indicated potential reductions of 10 to 20 percent in acquisition,
3.8 to 10.6 percent for deployment and troubleshooting costs and 8.5 to
25.3 percent towards spending on facilities.
Drilling down further let’s look at the fine print.
Acquisition: Compare a blade server with
a traditional rack-mount. The latter requires cables, network switches,
management software, operating system software, storage area network (SAN)
infrastructure components, a keyboard, mouse and a monitor. Blade servers
share these components as part of an integrated system. When comparing
the server solutions, blade servers offer the best value. When one adds
up the cost of the individual components needed to build a traditional
rack system and then compare that to the price of an integrated blade
system with the same features and functionality, the savings become apparent.
When you compare server solutions on this basis, blade servers provide
the maximum bang for a business’ buck.
Deployment: It is easier to deploy blades
than rack-mounts. Blades typically use 87 percent less cabling than rack-mounts.
Studies show that adding servers to a blade environment is easier and
takes less time than expanding a typical rack environment. Adding a blade
server can take as little as 30 minutes, while adding a comparable rack
server can take as long as 12 hours. The old adage is true: time is money.
A traditional rack server requires a certain amount of assembly, including
unpacking the server, installing rails, mounting the server into the rack
which may require more than one person due to the size and weight of the
device and then connecting all the cables. With a blade server, the blade
simply slides into the chassis. If a large number of servers are to be
installed, this can add up to many hours of time and saving on resources.
Troubleshooting/repair: If a component failure
occurs in a blade server, advanced diagnostics can lead the technician
directly to the failing part, thus restoring full redundancy sooner rather
than later. Some components will even alert a systems management processor
of impending failure, hours or days before the failure occurs.
Facilities: Because of the increased density
of the blade server, only half the floor space is taken that would be
needed for a traditional rack server. This reduces tenancy costs as a
company needs a smaller building or area and it can increase the space
allocated to other business needs and improve productivity.
In a large data center that utilizes a traditional rack-mounted server,
a couple of failures ensue every day. By reducing the number of components
in a rack—by using a blade server—the chance for potential failure
is reduced as well.
In summary, blade servers offer the benefits of horizontal scalability
in a small space; they give you the flexibility to mix and match various
kinds of blades (servers, storage et al) within a single chassis, and
there’s a performance spectrum ranging from low-cost to high-performance
and high availability gear.
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It reduces TCO
In the IT industry, the business case for any new and exiting business will
be based on sound return on investment (RoI) and TCO. The attraction of blade
servers is that there are several ways in which they can help companies save
money vis-a-vis tower and traditional rack servers. Mittal said, “Blades
abolish the need to purchase excess processors upfront to provide room for expansion.
Enterprises can buy what they need today, and plug in another blade when their
processing needs increase, thus spreading the cost of capital equipment over
time. This is ideal for a business which is growing rapidly.”
Because of increased rack density, fewer racks are required to house servers,
which often results in lower rental charges from reduced floor space requirements.
Mittal added, “Here, businesses with space problems can best utilize real
estate. The use of low-power processors in some blades can save money on electricity
and cooling.”
Research shows that, operating and managing a data center is one of the most
expensive components of an IT budget. Roy said that from small to enterprise-sized
data centers, companies can benefit from reduced TCO by using blade systems
in place of traditional solutions. Since blades share the power supply, networking,
cooling and management resources within the chassis, eliminates the need to
duplicate these resources and hence reduces the cost of acquisition as well
as that of deployment.
Many data centers struggle to cope with the constant change in data and applications.
Not only does this put a strain on business operations, it also prevents companies
from growing and innovating and curbs competitive advantage.
Reducing utility costs
As the industry hails blade technology, it is basically because of the demand
for this technology from IT managers. Describing the reason why blades are in
demand, Vipin Kumar, General Manager IT, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd stated,
“In most organizations, the complexity of the IT set up is increasing.
To manage such growth, blade technology can play a key role for such organizations.
It can be best fitted for organizations with multiple application servers and
blades can help them consolidate their application servers, in turn, reducing
the power envelope.” He added organizations having 70 to 100 servers can
have a great user experience by using blade technology.
Highlighting some attributes of blades that attract CIOs, Kumar added, “In
today’s business scenario, scalability is in high demand. In servers, blades
are the most vital part of any new deployment. Blades can easily take care of
scalability.”
Rising utility rates, aging facilities, and high-density server solutions are
introducing new power and thermal challenges for IT and facilities managers.
The first step in addressing these challenges is to equip data centers with
blade servers. In many cases, this will enable substantially better rack utilization,
while improving overall power and thermal efficiency.
faiz.askari@expressindia.com
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