Is it cost-effective to replace a rack-type server blade server

For hardware dealers, the number of single-digit income growth in the server market has become a stereotype, IDC will be 2006 world-wide server market growth value of 5.2%. But the focus of the distributor's focus has shifted to the http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13737.html > Blade server.

According to Gartner, the 2006 Blade server market has grown more than 2005 years, revenue has increased by 36.5% and shipments have increased by 33%. "For HP and the entire server industry, Blade is the fastest-growing product in the entire server market," said Steve Gillaspy, manager of HP's Blade Systems Group. ”

Industry leaders HP and IBM, as well as Dell and Sun, are actively exploring the blade server market, and are strongly advocating the inherent management capabilities of its blades as well as its advantages in price and energy. Because of its larger memory, smaller base, and improved power and cooling efficiency, blade servers have become the best solution for space limits and power consumption in major data centers. In addition to improvements in memory and input and output, blade servers are also virtualized, enabling data center managers to further harden physical servers.

Although the technology and market for blades are growing, data center managers are still skeptical about the technology, and the main problem is the costs to be paid upfront and progress in the cooling process. According to the TECHTARGET 2007 Server Decisions Survey Survey, 30% of the 218 respondents said the refrigeration problem was a real problem, which forced them to abandon their investment in the blades. While 27% of respondents said they were more concerned about the price of the server base, 22% thought the blade was not suitable for an organized workload. The focus of attention is on issues related to the lack of flexibility (21%) in the purchase of a base (21%) and peripheral equipment.

Just as many data center managers are still looking at blades, there is a problem in front of everyone: Is it possible to replace a rack server with a blade server?

For data center managers, the answer to this question has to do with expenses, the technology required, and the requirements of the system and infrastructure. But the first thing to do is to evaluate the technical aspects of the current blade server.

When the blade first entered the commercial market in 2000, it was technically not comparable to the traditional rack-like server. But Blades always have an advantage in density, each server is vertically stored on a preset base, and each server's I/O,CPU and memory performance are limited when compared to a single rack server. But the blade server can be called the major data center is tempted by the main selling point, is its high density. However, the heat generated by tightly discharged components is a great challenge to the refrigeration performance requirements, and it is far more important than whether it can save space.

Dave Leonard, CTO of Infocrossing, said, "When the blade is still in its early stages of development, its reliability is low and the number of failed transitions is much greater than the rack-type server." When the internal component of the initial blade system fails, the only way to take it is to reset it with paper clips ... Now blades are becoming more sophisticated. ”

The rise of the blade server has been a long journey. From a technical point of view, a typical blade now includes a dual-core and four-core processor, while the memory is up to 64GB and has a plurality of peripheral components that are connected to each other; Basically, they include many of the performance of the same configured rack-server products. According to the article Blade Servers and virtualization:transforming Enterprise Computing while cutting Costs (Blade server and Virtualization technology: Change the enterprise computer system to reduce costs) the author, consultant Barb Goldworm's point of view, the first generation of blades are low-power devices, the ability to work with the network server equivalent. Today's blades are very reliable and can do a lot of important processing, so they offer them as an alternative to the datacenter, and they want to replace the rack server with a blade server. Goldworm said so.

However, the choice of blades ultimately depends on the customer's preference for use. For Infocroossing, Leonard said his company's current attitude towards blade servers and rack-type servers is relatively unbiased and will not be recognised in any way. However, the progress of the blade server is still the same, when the server fails, the system administrator will still use a paper clip to protect themselves.

But the data center's managers are hesitant. On the surface, blades may be more expensive than rack-mounted servers because of the cost of blades needed on the base. But if the data center has sufficient refrigeration and power capacity, the initial expenditure on the blades can be compensated by other savings.

On the other hand, the purchase of blades is mainly to save space, so if the device is not designed to meet the high density of blades, from the device's perspective may end heavy power and refrigeration problems. But data center managers must take into account workload issues; Blades may be more economical, and rack servers are a better choice for larger workloads.