blade server

Powering up your blade servers: Some interesting numbers

LAS VEGAS — Today I attended a session at the HP Technology Forum on powering blade servers, and heard some interesting data points on how much system configuration matters to power consumption.

Tony Harvey, HP product manager for blade server power and cooling, gave one particularly interesting example. In it, he compared two configurations:

• Configuration 1: 16 blade servers using Intel quad-core 2GHz E5335 processors, 8 GB RAM (8 x 1GB), an additional dual-port Ethernet, a Cisco Ethernet switch and a Brocade FibreChannel switch.
• Configuration 2: 16 blade servers using Intel quad-core 2GHz L5335 processors, 8 GB RAM (2 x 4GB), an additional dual-port Ethernet, an HP Ethernet switch and an HP Fibre switch.

On the surface, these look like practically identical configurations. And yet the first configuration uses 30% more power at 100% utilization, and about 15% more power when idle. Why? Because of the subtle differences:

• Both use a quad-core Intel processor running at 2GHz, but the L5335 uses less power than the E5335.
• Using two 4GB DIMMs instead of eight 1GB DIMMs is more efficient
• Harvey said using the HP switches is more efficient than the Cisco and Brocade versions.

It doesn’t end there. Harvey continued on, saying the application you run also affects your blade servers’ power consumption. HP tested a configuration of 16 blades running various applications, and found that power consumption varied from about 4 kilowatts for a rendering application, to more than 7 kilowatts for Linpack, one of the most power-hungry application there is.

Earlier in the presentation, Harvey mentioned that a full rack of blade servers — that’s four chasses — could consume as much as 35 kilowatts. I asked him afterward what that configuration would include:

• 32 BL 2×220 server nodes per chassis/enclosure
• 32 GB RAM per server
• Infiniband in every blade
• 2 Infiniband switches
• Run Linpack and smoke that baby! (Note: Harvey never said “smoke that baby!” That was me.)

Is that a realistic production configuration? Harvey said no. The only time he’s ever seen that kind of configuration is when a company like HP is trying to score well on the Linpack benchmark, or when they’re doing a burn-in to stress-test the systems.

Cisco’s Unified Computing System strategy; smart move?

I tuned in to Cisco’s web-based news conference yesterday to hear about their first server platform within the Unified Computing System, and my eyes are still rolling today.

Instead of showing off the new system - which they refer to as “the new movement” - with some demonstrations, we watched 90 minutes of Cisco’s CEO John Chambers and partners Intel, BMC, Microsoft, EMC and VMware congratulating each other on being masters of the universe. Good thing I had that barf bag nearby.

After Cisco and its partners were done talking about how revolutionary this new system is and how much they love each other, one reporter basically asked, where’s the beef? “We have been hearing about the California server for weeks now, but you haven’t mentioned anything about a server. Is this announcement related to that?,” he asked.

Before Chambers let his trusty engineer answer the question, he thanked all of his partners again. The Cisco engineer then reiterated  their strategy with this system while carefully avoiding the term “blade server” because the system is more than just that. And round, and round we went.

Bottom line, the system is a chassis full of Cisco UCS B-Series blades bundled with networking, storage and virtualization features. Take the pieces apart, and you have Cisco’s first blade servers. Some people may also have found it interesting that the Intel Nehalem-based servers come in both full and half depth options, so you can pack a ton of the half-depth boxes into a chassis (assuming they don’t throw off crazy amounts of heat).

So the fact that Cisco’s talking-head-style news conference was absolute torture doesn’t make the system itself any less interesting from a server market perspective. We already know their networking stuff works, so they really just have to prove themselves with some solid server engineering to compete with the existing x86 providers. (Cisco, I know you say you aren’t competing with those guys, but you are).

And in many ways, Cisco has come full-circle by introducing a server, said Anne Skamarock, a research director with the analyst / consulting firm Focus.

“When I worked at Sun Microsystems back in the mid-1980’s they debated becoming a Cisco putting intelligent switches (read: specialized servers) in the network. So in a very real sense, Cisco has been building servers for years – servers designed specifically for the work of switching,” Skamarock said. “If you think about it, the first “blade servers” were produced in the networking space years ago adding a form factor for multiple switches from the horizontal to the vertical.”

Cisco also talked about how much this system will save companies because it “radically reduces the number of devices and the required setup, management, power/cooling, and cabling,” but they didn’t talk about the acquisition cost. A Cisco spokesperson said they can not release any pricing details until April, but I am betting it is not a small number.

Even so, if Cisco has engineered a solid server and the system as a whole proves to be of good value, the Unified Computing System concept will catch on, but we aren’t sure when these systems will actually hit the commercial market.

And I’m sure server vendors like HP, Dell and IBM will follow suit with their own “me-too” unified systems similar to Cisco’s. Actually, those companies may even end up using their top networking partner for the plumbing. After all, in terms of virtualization, Cisco has come up with important technologies like VLANs and VSANs, which are now industry standards.

The way I see it, by creating this “new” market of Unified Computing Systems, Cisco is setting itself up for success in both the networking market and the server market.

NFL’s biggest game supported by IBM’s smallest system

If you watched the Steelers win their sixth Super Bowl last night, everything you heard from the press and all the stats from NFL.com came from IBM’s BladeCenter S system.

Yup, all the operations for the largest sporting event in America ran on IBM’s smallest systems, the BladeCenter S, which is similar in size to a briefcase.

In addition to the big game, next month, IBM will officially announce that every one of the NFL’s 32 teams will be standardizing on BladeCenter S, according to Alex Yost, VP of IBM BladeCenters.

The BladeCenter S is actually designed for small to medium sized businesses that don’t have their own data center and need a compact, all-in-one piece of equipment, according to IBM. It is esentially a data center in a box that contains up to six IBM BladeCenter servers, 9 terabytes of local shared storage and networking components. Everything in the BladeCenter chassis is redundant – power, switching, cooling, and storage, so there is no worry about failures, either, Yost said.

As it turns out, this little data center box on wheels has made life for the NFL’s IT team a lot easier; in the past, for every Super Bowl, the NFL’s IT staff have had to lugg all the necessary servers, storage and networking to the event site and set up an entire data center within just a couple of weeks, said Jonathan Kelley director of infrastructure computing for the NFL.

As a long time IBM BladeCenter H customer that trusts IBM equipment, the NFL contacted IBM last year for some help setting up for the 2008 SuperBowl in Arizona - which this New England fan dares not discuss - and heard about the BladeCenter S.

“When the NFL came to IBM to help them set up multiple data centers for last years Super Bowl, our IBM BladeCenter S was still about three weeks away from deployment, but the NFL was confident enough in IBM to use a brand new type of server, and it went off without a hitch,” Yost said.

To support the operations of Super Bowl 44 last night, the NFL used four BladeCenter S chassis with eight, quad-core processor powered blade servers in them and about eight virtual machines running on each server to support security and credentialing for 60,000 temporary employees and around 11,000 media personell.

They also deployed about 300 PCs, wireless networks, and other necessary computing functions using IBM’s BladeCenter blades, said Joe Manto VP of Information Technology for the NFL.

“The operations at the NFL are all supported IBM blades. We chose them because their technology has proven itself,” Manto said. “These servers are almost over-engineered for what we do with them, and they are reliable.”

(The NFL wouldn’t disclose which CPU vendor they use, or name a specific virtualization vendor; they said they use a mix of virtualization vendors, but IBM reported the NFL uses VMware Inc.)

The BladeCenter S enclosure also has extra space for UPSs or other components that might need to be added, and plugs into a regular wall outlet and Ethernet connection.

“It is great for events because it is portable and can be configured at a partner site then shipped to the right location,” Yost said. “Also, their own storage can be connected to the Bladecenter S. It is super quiet and could be placed in office environments without worrying about the noise, and both the front and the back doors of the chassis lock.”

A tyical deployment is in the $15,000 range, the chassis itself is a few thousands dollars. Cost depends on the number of servers in it and other configurations, Yost said.

Server sales suffer on economy, virtualization; vendors branching out

With the U.S. economy in a recession, world economies suffering and virtualization adoption on the rise, it comes as no surprise that factory revenue in the x86 worldwide server market declined 5.2% year over year to $12.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008 (3Q08), according to the IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker released December 3.

In fact, this is the largest quarterly revenue decline for servers since the fourth quarter of 2002, and the sluggish server unit shipment growth of 2.8% year over year in 3Q08 represented the slowest increase in server shipments since 4Q06, the IDC reported.

“The x86 server segment was definitely impacted by the economic downturn; there was significant deceleration in the quarter with a particular weakness in September,” said Jed Scaramella, IDC Senior Research Analyst, Servers. “Due to the uncertainty in the market, customers cut back on all nonessential spending.”

Volume systems revenue declined 7.2% year over year in the third quarter, the first decline for this market segment in more than 14 quarters, and revenue for mid-range enterprise servers declined 9.5% year over year. Shipment growth also slowed significantly for x86 servers to 4.0% (1.97 million units) because of a low demand, and revenue declined 6.6% year over year in 3Q08, representing the largest year-over-year decline for the segment in more than 24 quarters, IDC reported.

The IDC didn’t mention this in their release today, but it is obvious that virtualization is partly to blame the slowing demand for commodity x86 servers because it increases server utilization.  According to Tom Bittman, VP and distinguished analyst with Gartner, virtualization has penetrated 12% of the market, and the number of VMs deployed doubles every year. “By 2012, we expect more than half x86 workloads will be run on VMs,” Bittman said in an interview about his presentation on the virtualization market for Gartner’s 27th annual Data Center Conference this week.

“Virtualization and cloud computing have screwed up the market; vendors used to compete in compute islands, they were all direct competitors, but now they fight for control of an entire virtual layer. IBM and HP are competing in broad server technologies, instead of HP and IBM competing only in the area of server hardware,” Bittman said. “All vendors worry about becoming commodities and they all want to be considered the brains of the industry”

Perhaps that concern, along with slow server sales, is why vendors including HP, Dell and Sun have branched out into the area of data center services this year that could add a revenue stream beyond selling hardware. HP acquired EYP Mission Critical Facilities about a year ago and began offering data center services in March. Just this week, Dell announced it would offer services to help people extend the life of their data centers. Before that, Sun announced data center services that include data wiping.

But, there were exceptions to the grim server market numbers; revenue for high-end enterprise servers grew 4.0% year over year, the third consecutive quarter of growth for the segment. Other exceptions to the slowdown were blade servers (11% of the market) and IBM System z (9.4% of the market), which both increased this quarter, IDC reported.

Scaramella said IBM System Z sales didn’t suffer because they tend to be cyclical and are built into companies long-term budgets, which is not always the case for the smaller x86 systems. “Customer are more likely to push out [x86] purchases and see what they can do without,” he said.

And blades were the only platform to experience positive growth in the quarter, with all major vendors exhibiting double-digit growth in blade volumes, IDC reported.

I’m no analyst, but I am guessing the demand for blades didn’t slow down along with other x86 servers because today’s blades are pitched as ideal virtualization platforms. The HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade, for instance, is one of many new blades designed with more memory, data storage and network connections to meet the needs of memory and I/O-hungry VMs.

In addition to their appeal as a virtualization platform, blade servers are desirable because they take up very little space in cramped data centers and many blade surpass rack servers in power and efficiency.

So, it will be interesting to see whether server sales recover when the world economies improve, or if they remain depressed due to the increasing use of virtualization.

The IDC is predicting this slowdown to continue throughout most of 2009, but server sales will rebound with the economy, Scaramella said. “We are not anticipating a quick rebound [but] I do not think we will see the same extreme fall-off the market experienced after the dot.com bust,” he said. “At that time there was a tremendous amount of excess capacity built out in the infrastructure. Over the past few years, many companies have been in a consolidation mode - reducing the numbers of servers they have in operations as well as reducing the number of data centers they have in operations. Back in 2001-2002, companies were able to put off purchase due to the excess capacity, this is not the case today.”

Gartner lists 10 most disruptive technologies of 2009

Gartner, Inc. analysts highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2009 during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, being held in Orlando through October 16.

Some of the technologies listed were the obvious, like virtualization and cloud computing, and Gartner predicts that servers will evolve beyond the blade server stage that exists today.

Gartner’s definition of a strategic technology is one that could have a significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. The analysts looked at factors like high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major financial investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives. They may be strategic because they have matured to broad market use or because they enable strategic advantage from early adoption.

Gartner’s the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 include:

Virtualization. In addition to server virtualization, virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly as a way to eliminate duplicate copies of data on the real storage devices while maintaining the illusion to the accessing systems that the files are as originally stored (data deduplication). This can significantly decrease the cost of storage devices and media to hold information.

Hosted virtual images deliver a near-identical result to blade-based PCs. But, instead of the motherboard function being located in the data center as hardware, it is located there as a virtual machine bubble. However, despite ambitious deployment plans from many organizations, deployments of hosted virtual desktop capabilities will be adopted by fewer than 40 percent of target users by 2010.

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing providers deliver computing capabilities “as a service” to external companies and the services are delivered in a highly scalable and elastic fashion using Internet technologies and techniques.

Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.

Servers — Beyond Blades. Servers are evolving beyond the blade server stage that exists today. This evolution will simplify the provisioning of capacity to meet growing needs.

The organization tracks the various resource types, for example, memory, separately and replenishes only the type that is needed, so companies don’t have to pay for all resource types to upgrade capacity. It also simplifies the inventory of systems, eliminating the need to track and purchase various sizes and configurations. The result will be higher utilization because of lessened “waste” of resources that are in the wrong configuration or that come along with the needed processors and memory in a fixed bundle.

Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles.

The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

Enterprise Mashups.Enterprises are now investigating taking mashups from cool Web hobby to enterprise-class systems to augment their models for delivering and managing applications.

Through 2010, the enterprise mashup product environment will experience significant flux and consolidation, and application architects and IT leaders should investigate this growing space for the significant and transformational potential it may offer their enterprises.

Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs software to accomplish its function.

Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking (Facebook), social collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.

Unified Communications. During the next five years, the number of different communications vendors with which a typical organization works with will be reduced by at least 50 percent due to increases in the capability of application servers and the general shift of communications applications to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems. As this occurs, formerly distinct markets, each with distinct vendors, converge, resulting in massive consolidation in the communications industry.

Organizations must build careful, detailed plans for when each category of communications function is replaced or converged, coupling this step with the prior completion of appropriate administrative team convergence.

Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance. BI is directed toward business managers and workers who are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.

Green IT. Shifting to more efficient products and approaches can allow for more equipment to fit within an energy footprint. Regulations are multiplying and have the potential to seriously constrain companies in building data centers, as the effect of power grids, carbon emissions from increased use and other environmental impacts are under scrutiny. Organizations should consider regulations and have alternative plans for data center and capacity growth.

A few of these technologies were also on Gartner’s list for 2008, including Green IT, Unified Communications, WOA, Mashup and Social Software. Other technologies Gartner expected to be significant for businesses in 2008 were Business Process Modeling, Metadata Management, Virtualization 2.0, Computing Fabric, and Real World Web.