When blade servers started making news roughly a decade ago many thought it
is geek stuff. But when computing majors like HP and IBM started providing blade
servers, the industry sat up and took notice. The data centers and HPC
environments that used to tower servers saw a change in computing infrastructure
as small form factor blades changed the power performance equation. The
escalation of blade server in recent times has been pretty impressive. According
to industry experts, blade servers are changing the very personality of data
centers. Because it assumes significance in the data center environment, blade
servers brings the server footprint down. By virtue of this, it ushers in a high
degree of simplified server management. Despite the small form, one of the
biggest areas blade servers score over is full functionality; moreover, it
offers more density required for unscheduled scaling demands in dynamic
computing environments. If we look at typical data centers, one primary
challenge is the processing power required for managing compute-intensive
applications, so the infrastructure has to be such that it can take unscheduled
load patterns. Typically, in a blade server environment this is easier to manage
by simply adding more blades.
Market Dynamics
Right now, blade servers are predominantly bought by the data centers, where
the requirements for compute- intensive computing hardware is a dire need. With
concepts like cloud computing on the fore, there is an increasing reliance on
robust and agile IT infrastructures and hosted environments like data centers.
In creating an agile computing infrastructure, blade servers assume a
significant role. The key driver that will contribute toward blade server
adoption is the concept of scale up and scale out. Scaling up is nothing but
adding additional computing power through processors, memory and I/O, thereby
increasing a systems computing power and making it highly available and
reliable for that particular task. Meanwhile, scale out is nothing but stepping
down the computing power, as that particular task does not require set
configurations. Clearly, scaling up and scaling down is a key deliverable of
blade servers, as it makes physical consolidation of the server environment
easier.
Industry experts say that blade servers are capable of providing as much
computing power as other servers, and at costs comparable to traditional
servers. Blade servers have seen reasonable success in the Indian market
primarily as a result of their space and cost saving features, however, the
deployment of blades has been mostly confined to large enterprises and data
center environments. The SMB opportunity is emerging. Research firm Gartner has
predicted that the growth for the blade server market will be limited through
2012, due to delays with interoperability standards.
Quips AL Jagannath, general manager, marketing, Sun India: Today blade
servers are being deployed in India across verticals such as BFSI,
manufacturing, telecom and biotech, in addition to those such as petroleum and
energy. This clearly depicts the increasing demand for blade servers. Experts
aver this adoption due to the blade servers meeting the vertical- specific
demands and moreover they have been designed to reduce server size and share
common components like power supply across a bunch of compute elements.
Customers who see the benefits of specific applications on blade servers at
lower footprint sizes are adopting them.
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We certainly believe blades are growing fast, and this year they will get even more widespread adoption among all markets. There is increasing recognition that blades are more energy efficient. Together with virtualization, they offer tremendous savings to customer data center environments Pallab Talukdar, |
Today blade servers are being deployed in India across verticals such as BFSI, manufacturing, telecom and biotech, in addition to those such as petroleum and energy. This clearly depicts the increasing demand for blades AL Jagannath, general |
Green computing becoming a major trend augurs well for blade servers.
Businesses already face a wide range of challenges as 2009 makes way. While
cost-cutting moves may dominate the headlines, many companies will be focusing
on making wise investments that both reduce costs and enable them to better
leverage technology. Moreover, the IT and communications sector is in the
spotlight with the need to reduce carbon emissions. For long, the IT sector has
been contributing a fair share to the climate change and for other deteriorating
effects on the environment. Gartner estimates carbon dioxide emissions related
to the operation of servers and PCs account for 0.75% of the annual global
total, and that is before factoring in emissions generated by cooling the boxes.
An environmentally responsible outlook is the need of the hour and this year
enterprises will have to adopt focused, more efficient systems to save money and
time. Here blades server will definitely have an edge.
Says Jagannath, The Sun Blade modular systems can help enterprises respond
quickly to changing business needs and deliver high service levelsall while
reducing management costs, conserving data center floor space, and reducing
their power and cooling costs by up to 50%. We can help organizations build a
much more cost-effective IT infrastructure based on Sun Blade systems to meet
the demanding business requirements tomorrow.
According to Pallab Talukdar, director enterprise business, Dell India, We
certainly believe blades is growing fast this year and will get even more
widespread adoption among all markets. There is an increasing recognition of the
fact that blades are more energy efficient among all servers. Together with
virtualization, it offers tremendous savings to a customer data centeran
important factor especially in the current business environment. Dell has
launched 10 GB blades in January 2008 and the company says that it has got
tremendous success during last four quarters of 2008. Dell says this has been an
important part of the success it has seen in the servers and storage market in
India during the last twelve months.
Vendors like HP aggressively target the blade space, and HP is the market
leader. As per 2008 DQ Top 20 findings HP attacked the x86 blades with great
aggression. A 300% growth, from 2,800 units the previous year to 7,500 units in
FY 08 signifies a massive ramp-up by HP in the blade space. This aggression was
due to its market-development focused product design for the segment. Over the
year HP drew both value and volume in the server market. It sold 4P and blades
in the value market and developed markets. HP sources say that it will adopt the
same strategy for the ongoing year. HPs aggressive growth is attributed to the
breadth of products it has and to product affordability. Other vendors like IBM
too are taking on the blade market.
Meanwhile, IBM provides Blade Center in different configurations. Vendors
like IBM are scratching the SMB opportunity as well. While it is an emerging
opportunity, it has started happening. IBM, for instance, positioned its blades
only for large enterprises but off late it is focusing on SMBs as well. The SMB
value proposition for blades comes by virtue of the blades ability to fit in
one chassis with multiple blades instead one tower mounted server making it
lucrative for SMBs.
Advantages Galore |
Blade servers, by design, have a positive impact on physical, technical and operational aspects in a data center environment: Physical Advantages
Operational Advantages
Technical Advantages
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Going Forward
Today all leading vendors have what is called the blade PCs. This will be a
key element for virtualization using blades. In a PC environment blades can be
added as per application demands of the virtualized environment. However, it has
just started. Clearly, blades are going to play a key role in various computing
scenarios. If we look at the server form and functionality, in the initial days
blades core USP was its server density. But that changed over the years with
blades getting the reliability, availability, and serviceability features.
Today, blades has evolved further by offering modular computing features like
increased scaling, in and out compute, power cooling, I/O, interconnects have
all been de-coupled to service, upgrade, and the user can swap them independent
of each other.
There is a momentum for blade servers in India. The market for servers is
showing robust growth. Several customers are on the verge of refreshing their
servers and tackling the server sprawl. Moreover, given the paucity of power in
the country, customers will see the benefits of adopting blades as they see
better performance and features than rack servers. Standardization of I/O and
certain other components in blade servers can significantly drive costs down.
This will provide an additional reason for customers to pursue blade server
adoption.
If we look at the market dynamics, the vendor landscape is getting extremely
competitive. Four years back the market used to be bi-polar with HP and IBM
battling it out. But after the initial hiccups Sun is once again targeting the
blade servers market; add to that Dell with its own blade server offerings. This
makes for a very heterogeneous market landscape and numerous options for the
customers. The data center opportunity will also expand considerably in 2009 as
these facilities by virtue of increasing demand for hosted applications will
refresh their server infrastructure leading to a major intake of blades. What
emerges at the end is that despite a small proportion of the server market,
blade servers are making their steady ascent and adding their might to the power
and performance of computing infrastructures.
Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in.