Vendors pack punch into small servers

By Deni Connor
Network World, 05/14/01

LAS VEGAS - Compaq and newcomer RLX Technologies last week at NetWorld+Interop 2001 became the latest vendors to announce low-power, compact hardware called server blades that are designed for firms looking to pack lots of server power into space-constrained data centers.

Such servers - also dubbed hyperdense - come in the form of single boards one-eighth the size of a typical 1U (1.75-inch-high) server and consume up to 12 times less power.

The servers, which typically start at $600 to $1,700, are aimed largely at service providers, but may also meet enterprise network needs, especially once the servers gain load balancing and other management capabilities.

Compaq's QuickBlade, which will ship later this year, will feature an Intel processor with Error Correcting Code memory, two Ethernet adapters and a disk drive. Later versions will use a new low-power Intel chipset called Tualatin. Pricing isn't available.

RLX's System 324, which is shipping and will be resold by IBM, features Transmeta's low-power Crusoe processor, IBM disk drives and three Ethernet adapters.

The system, which starts at $1,700 and can be plugged into an RLX chassis that starts at $2,600, comes preloaded with Windows- or Linux-based Web server software and includes redundant, hot-swappable power supplies. RLX claims its blades can process almost as many Web pages per second as rack-mount servers, based on tests with the high-performance Zeus Web server software. For instance, the RLX System 324, which uses one-fifth the power and is eight times denser than a Compaq 1U DL320 server, was shown to serve up 1,466 pages per second vs. 1,706 for Compaq's machine.

Compaq and RLX join others in the market such as OmniCluster, an IBM spin-out that last month shipped its SlotServer 1000, a 10-watt server blade that runs Windows NT and 2000, Red Hat Linux or BSD. Other companies, such as FibreCycle, eGenera and Amphus, are in the market or will be soon.

Server blades fit into existing PCI slots of other computers or in a rack-mounted chassis. The number of server blades deployed is constrained only by the number of slots in a CPU or chassis. RLX claims a standard 42U (73.5-inch) rack will hold up to 336 of its blades. Such a rack holds up to 84 typical 1U servers.

Server blades use from 10 to 15 watts of power, as much as 12 times less than 1U servers. For instance, the 1U Sun Cobalt RaQ 4i server consumes 60 watts; the Dell PowerEdge 350 consumes 120 watts.

Donald Becker, CTO for Scyld Computers, was impressed with the RLX servers during a beta test that involved running the Backbone Networks Internet Radio product on a cluster of RLX machines. "The cluster was able to rebroadcast audio streams to tens of thousands of clients," he says.

Server blade vendors are taking density "to the nth degree," says John Humphreys, an analyst at market research firm IDC.

He expects the market for such hardware to surge this year for service providers and later on for companies, which should proceed with caution until solid management tools are available.

"Management becomes a nightmare. How are you going to manage these servers when all of a sudden your data center goes from 2,000 servers to 20,000 servers?" he asks.