* RLX’s ControlTower 6G
Based on its experience in the blade server market, RLX Technologies has developed integrated management tools to help users easily manage its servers. In fact, ControlTower 6G, the sixth generation of RLX’s modular management suite, can manage heterogeneous blade servers and rack-dense systems.
The high density of blade servers allows a lot of compute power to be housed in a small space, which is one of the reasons for their attraction. Another key feature is the ability to replace a blade when there is a failure.
Blade servers also typically include other integrated functions. RLX blade servers include Fibre Channel connectivity to connect to storage devices. One of RLX’s customers buys its blade servers without on-board disk; it found that removing the disks increases the mean time between failures because there are fewer moving parts on the server. Instead, the customer boots the blade servers directly from the storage-area network.
RLX blade servers also include network connectivity, and a separate network interface card is dedicated to out-of-band management. The out-of-band management allows administrators to connect to and manage the server, even when the operating system is not operable.
The integration of functions in the blade server is a unique characteristic of this server form factor. But this integration of network, server and storage connectivity in one chassis makes it necessary to have management capabilities tailored to the integrated capabilities of the blade server. RLX has some experience at managing these environments, having been in the blade server market since 2001, well ahead of some of the big names in servers.
RLX customers report positively about ControlTower’s ability to manage servers remotely. It has a single, Web-based management console, and it can provision and de-provision servers, with the ability to do bare-metal installs.
An interesting use of hardware/software integration is a power management feature that can monitor the activity on the servers. If activity on the servers is light, the workload can be concentrated on fewer servers, resulting in increased server utilization. The servers that are not needed at that point can be temporarily powered down to reduce the power usage and unnecessary heat generation. Then if the workload increases and requires added server resources, additional servers can be powered up and then provisioned to help handle the increased loads.
ControlTower is simple to use and provides good functionality, according to RLX customers. For quick deployment, ControlTower 6G is pre-installed on a 1U appliance. It uses policy-based management, where server management policies can be defined using a wizard and then applied to either notify administrators or automate repetitive tasks. In addition, it has capabilities to do task automation. It offers the following management modules: Task Manager, Provisioning Manager, Workload Inspector, Automated Sparing Manager, Storage Connection Manager, Automation Policy Manager, and HPC Cluster Manager.
RLX’s tight coupling of hardware design and management software makes for interesting capabilities that are not seen with other server-level management tools. RLX customers report lower total cost of ownership of RLX servers due to ControlTower’s management functionality and ease of use. In this case, management does make a difference.
