HP sharpens its blade servers
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Hewlett-Packard is the latest company to announce a line of blade servers that consume less power while offering extra storage, memory and processing brawn.
By year-end, HP plans to deliver several products based on its blade architecture. The servers, code-named Powerbar, will run on 32-bit processors from Intel and HP's own PA Reduced Instruction Set Computing processors.
Blade servers are smaller than traditional rack-mounted servers and can be stacked vertically, letting companies fit more servers in a rack. While a typical rack can currently accommodate up to 42 servers, hardware companies expect to eventually fit about 280 blades in the same space. A blade-based configuration also reduces the number of power cords coming out of a rack, as the blades can share a common chassis and backplane.
HP will not say how many blades it will have in its first units. However, the company says some customers will receive a limited release of the boxes by the third quarter, at which time the product design will be more clear.
"We have been pretty tight-lipped about our products specs," says John Miller, director of server marketing at HP. "We are investigating ways to optimize the product density."
Other companies, such as Dell, have outlined more specific details on where they see their blade systems going. Dell announced plans at the end of last month to make blade products available by next year. The first blade-based systems from Dell will run on Intel's IA-32 chip architecture and will support commonly used network technologies such as Fibre Channel. Later in 2002, Dell plans to launch systems based on Intel's 64-bit McKinley processor. The vendor will then integrate high-speed Ethernet and InfiniBand networking technology into the boxes.
In the past few weeks, a number of vendors have introduced blades as the next-generation architecture for their servers.
Compaq and IBM have announced their first moves in the field. Compaq said it is teaming with Intel to develop ultradense servers, while IBM signed a reseller agreement with Texas blade maker RLX Technologies.
HP plans to build its products in-house but might also consider working with a partner such as RLX.
HP is looking to its suite of server software to add enough value to its blade offering to tempt customers away from low-cost, direct sellers such as Dell, Miller says.
The products due out from HP at year-end will run on the company's own HP-UX Unix operating system along with a version of the Linux OS and Windows.
Vance is a correspondent with IDG News Services' San Francisco bureau.
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