Server blades set to invade enterprise nets

Small, specialized servers called blades can save companies hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just ask Credit Suisse First Boston.

The financial services house expects to save $500,000 to $1 million per rack of server blades it installs over traditional full-sized server racks. Credit Suisse First Boston has been beta-testing Egenera's BladeFrame, one of the many server blades soon to hit the market. Evan Bauer, CTO of the company's investment banking division, says BladeFrame is an excellent candidate for a new financial application being developed there.

"Some applications require us to deploy hundreds of servers in a coordinated manner, and that's expensive," Bauer says. "Blades are one of the ways to control costs in a way that doesn't compromise reliability and availability. What BladeFrame is resembles a 'cluster in a can' that incorporates both networking and storage, so instead of having to build the systems, they are already there."

Unencumbered by the physical bulk and myriad components of traditional servers, blades slide into slots on a specially designed rack. In most cases, the server blade consists of essential processing and sometimes storage components, while the rack unit provides for network and external storage connections, significantly reducing cabling and space requirements.

"Blades promise high-density computing at a lower cost, because each blade just slides in and hooks up, so users can reduce cabling and easily replace one that goes down by simply pulling and replacing it," says Bob Sutherland, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

In addition to reducing management and support headaches, blades can reduce costs. RLX Technologies claims that with average Internet data center space costing $300 per square foot - based on figures from a Legg Mason Industry Research Update - using less of it saves money.

Proponents say server blades are suited to corporate data centers for Web hosting, database and financial applications, where transaction volume varies. In those environments, blades make it easy to add servers to help carry the load. Blades can also help customers provide a measure of reliability because they don't take up much space and can be added and replaced fairly easily.

A growing segment

In the next few months many different types of server blades aimed at specific applications will be rolled out from a variety of companies. So far, blade sales are just a blip on the map, with projections of about 50,000 unit shipments accounting for just a bit of the total server revenue. But market research firm IDC predicts that by 2005, 2 million server blades will be shipped, with a total revenue of $4.5 billion. The total server market in 2005 is expected to be $102 billion.

Vendors in the blade market that have announced or intend to announce products include RLX, IBM, Dell, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Amphus, Centauri NetSystems, RealScale Technologies, Racemi, OmniCluster and Egenera.

Many server blade vendors will aim at specific functions. For example, RLX will target the Web hosting market with its ServerBlade System 324. The System 324 ships with Microsoft's Server Appliance Kit 2.0, designed to make setting up and maintaining Web servers simpler. The System 324 also features redundant power supplies and RLX's Control Tower management software, which lets customers control and configure the system from one location.

The RLX blade can run Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server, and Red Hat Linux 6.2. For about $5,000, users can get a ServerBlade chassis with dual power supplies, three server blades that have a 633-MHz processor, 256M bytes of memory and 10G bytes of storage.

For now, IBM is reselling RLX technology and has a spinoff called OmniCluster. OmniCluster's blades are actually servers on a board that can plug into an existing PCI server slot. OmniCluster's SlotServer 1000, which debuted in March, comes with or without a hard drive, and features expandable memory options. Pricing starts at about $600.

Others, such as Egenera, are aiming their systems at database and financial applications, adding in management and network features designed to optimize them for mission-critical applications.

Egenera's BladeFrame System combines hardware, software and network features integrated into a single blade-based system.A BladeFrame rack can be configured with three types of processing blades, called pBlades by Egenera, including dual 1- or 1.26-GHz Intel processors, or a four-way system with the same speeds. The processor boards feature 1G or 2G bytes of error checking and correcting memory or up to 12G bytes of ECC memory in the case of the four-way pBlade.

The rack consists of a 24- by 30- by 84-inch chassis that can accommodate up to 24 two-way and/or four-way processing blades. Egenera also offers integrated switches, controllers, cluster connect buses and its own processor-area network (PAN) Manager software. PAN Manager lets customers configure, control and monitor the blades in the system from a single location. Egenera's blade-based system could be called a server, network and storage system in a rack. The company hopes to attract users by offering multiple features and components that they would otherwise have to purchase, install and integrate separately. BladeFrame ships with Red Hat Linux, and pricing starts at about $250,000.

Racemi is designing blades aimed at helping network executives put applications online faster. Racemi's Race5 blades can be managed using the company's dynamic server allocation software, which lets software run in a distributed fashion across Race5 server blades. The idea is to let network professionals more easily assign computing power for specific tasks. Specifically, Racemi's Race5 server blades run server-grade, 1-GHz Pentium III chips. It supports five individual, hot-swappable, Race5 server blades, which fit into a single, 1-U (1.75-inch) chassis.

What's inside?

The technology inside the server blade is also a distinguishing feature. RLX was one of the first companies to market a blade using the Transmeta Crusoe chip. The Transmeta processor offers users the low-power-consumption, low-heat features that make blades attractive to users by lowering power bills. The Transmeta processor also produces less heat than a traditional server processor, which means it can be packed into tighter spaces and requires less cooling.

Intel's answer to Crusoe is Tualatin. Tualatin is based on a processor architecture that, like Crusoe, is designed to offer users the basis for dense server blades that will consume less power and produce less heat. Tualatin's main differentiator is that it's based on Intel's architecture, which may make it attractive to users who feel comfortable with the number of applications certified to run on it.

In June, Compaq said it would base a line of server blades, called QuickBlade, on Tualatin. Compaq's QuickBlade, scheduled to ship by year-end, will have standard server features, like ECC, room for memory expansion and support from third-party software vendors. Those vendors have not yet been named, but should include some providing Web, database and other back-end software applications businesses consider critical. HP is also getting into the blade business. HP's offering, also due out later this year, will be called Powerbar.

Contact Senior Editor April Jacobs

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