Blade servers: Taking on network functions?

The blade server chassis, which houses a dense cluster of modular servers that can be managed and deployed virtually, is the next big battleground in the data center optimization war – especially on the network infrastructure front, industry watchers say

The blade server chassis, which houses a dense cluster of modular servers that can be managed and deployed virtually, is the next big battleground in the data center optimization war – especially on the network infrastructure front, industry watchers say.

“Potentially, blade servers are a phenomenally disruptive force in this industry,” says Frank Dzubeck, president of consulting firm Communications Network Architects. As servers are consolidated into these chassis, more network services will go into them, he says. “Who’s to say you can’t put a router or load-balancing blade in this [blade server chassis] and suddenly make it a [Layer 3/Layer 4] data center in a box?”

These developments could cause a clash between blade server vendors, such as Dell, HP, IBM and Sun, and traditional network vendors such as Cisco, he adds. “Cisco talks about putting things that used to run on servers into the network,” Dzubeck says. “Then you’ve got the blade server makers thinking about putting more functionality into their chassis.”

Some vendors already are anticipating the blade server movement. Nortel offers a Layer 2 to Layer 7 switch module aimed at increasing load-balancing and traffic management capabilities among nodes in IBM’s Blade Center and HP’s ProLiant Blade Server chassis. F5 Networks has server load-balancing blade modules compatible with leading blade server chassis. The expectation for enterprise users of such integration should be cost savings and the ability to leverage enhanced services, says Pat Patterson, a marketing director with Nortel.

Blades are on ShopNBC.com’s data center watch list, says Steven Craig, vice president of interactive technology at the Minneapolis company.

“We will look at blades as an option soon because some interesting games can be played there,” Craig says. “Situations where you can have an [operating system] that spans multiple blades are interesting.”

– Phil Hochmuth