Sarvega this week will push its XML acceleration technology deeper into the realm of blade architectures, providing users with an innovative option for deploying Web services infrastructure.
Sarvega has validated its XML Speedway Accelerator for use on the Egenera BladeFrame System, which has become popular with financial service firms and government agencies. Sarvega says it hopes the blade will catch on with companies that have shown affinity for the rack-mounted commodity hardware form factor.
The Speedway blade also is notable in that Sarvega’s competitors – Actional, DataPower, Forum Systems and Reactivity – do not offer XML performance wares in a blade format. In December, Sarvega introduced the XRE 200, the first XML acceleration blade. The XRE 200 is compatible with IBM and HP blade architectures.
Speedway delivers XML processing at up to 1G bit/sec, and performs XML transformation and schema validation services. Speedway features Sarvega’s XML EventStream Operating System (XESOS) operating system, which has been modified to run atop Red Hat Linux on the Egenera blade. With the XRE 200, XESOS runs as the primary operating system.
“This blade is compelling. DataPower can’t do it because they have their own chipset, and other companies can’t do it because they don’t have the [operating system] approach of Sarvega,” says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. “It’s unique on the market. It will cause a lot of people to think about the blade approach for XML processing.” Schmelzer says the benefit with blades is that users can have a rack of them and designate any number for XML processing as demand dictates. “What is valuable is the notion of dynamic provisioning,” he says.
Sarvega has integrated Speedway with Egenera’s Processing Area Manager management console, which supports the dynamic provisioning of resources among the blades in the Egenera BladeFrame chassis. The chassis can hold up to 24 two-way or four-way blades. It also features redundant central controllers, redundant integrated switches, redundant high-speed interconnects and a 2.4G bit/sec backplane.
“One of the problems that come with an ASIC solution is that as standards change and needs change you are looking at a full forklift upgrade,” says Girish Juneja, co-founder and senior vice president of product management at Sarvega. “There are places where appliances work just fine, but we are seeing in the data center that they are moving away from that model.”
Experts say Sarvega is combining the benefits of dedicated, Intel-based hardware with the benefits of software deployments.
The XML Speedway Accelerator on the Egenera blade starts at $20,000.
