Hewlett Packard details its case for server blades while dissing the competition. Auspex represents its case for NAS and SAN technologies and Compaq claims to have the lead in the world storage market.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [December 7, 2001]

This week, Hewlett Packard unveiled not just a new server, but a new product strategy. Mark Hudson and Brian Cox, both from the company's Business Systems and Technology Organization (BSTO) made the pitch for server blades that are capable of flexible deployments.

HP has spoke in favor of implementing server blade technology before, but we'll review it briefly here again today. Blades are modular, self-contained computer systems on a single motherboard located inside one box. Putting several blade servers into a data center could allow Webhosting firms, for example, to cram more servers into a single space. The result is reduced data center rental fees because less space is used.

Operating expenses are also reduced because blades are placed in a single "chassis" that is cooled by one fan system and run off from one power supply, rather than several servers with backup power and multiple cooling systems.

HP Blade Server BH 7800 Chassis

If, for example, 38 blades fit in a single 13U chassis, as is the case for the HP Blade Server BH 7800 Chassis (shown left), then blades let you to fit more computers into a data center than one per 1U form factor. HP's Hudson said that blades are the next step in data center density. "1999 was the year of the 3U rack mount, 2000 was the year of the 1U rack mount, and now we are going to blades to achieve further density."

HP acknowledges that there are less expensive server blades available on the market, particularly for service providers that are only using blades for Webhosting. According to HP, blade server systems offer multiple uses beyond hosting Web sites or applications.

HP blades come in various configurations with different types of processors, operating systems, and other features, and HP OpenView to enable more efficient management of the entire network. HP OpenView's network-wide perspective is supplemented by the more granular view provided by HP's TopTools software, which shows network administrators the contents of a single chassis—several blades making up one cluster—as opposed to viewing one node at a time.

HP uses the phrase "flexible architecture" to describe blades that can be used for a variety of purposes, from basic hosting services to running secure SSL transactions for e-commerce sites, and other more intensive purposes.

At present, HP delivers regular blades for Webhosting (Intel processor, standard OS, hard drive) but has special blades for streaming media and SSL transactions. These special blades use 64-bit CPUs (either HP's pa-risc or Intel's Itanium processors) and use secure OSes such as Linux, HP-UX, and Windows.

HP also expects to deliver blades built by technology partners soon. Specialty blades built for Sonicwall's firewall software and F5 Network's load balancing software will be developed near-term. Software vendors are also providing additional application specific technologies. PolyServe's high-availablity failover software for multiple computers will be available for managing HP blades, and TurboLinux plans to provide software that allows service providers to create one disk image, such as a standard configuration for hosting multiple sites on one Linux blade, and upload that image to multiple computers.

Provisioning tools, like SystemImager for example, will allow service providers to preconfigure single-chassis clusters and deploy multiple clusters at one click from a single desktop computer in the Network Operations Center (NOC).

Still not persuaded of the value behind blade servers? HP points out that 40 servers in 5 chassis would require 15 cables in a data center, whereas 50 servers in 1U rackmount boxes would require 200 cables. And blades should be easier to replace. HP's Brian Cox imagines an administrator being able to FedEx a reconfigured blade to a data center with the instruction, "replace the blade in slot 7 of x chassis in x cabinet with this blade" instead of an operation that requires someone in the data center who understands the network configuration.

But wait, there's more. If you're on the business side of the argument and counting your pennies, HP prepared this chart for you:

Finally, HP has this to say of rival blade makers:

• IBM: "Will resell a startup firm's product as a stop gap."
• Compaq: "No product shipping until first half 2002."
• Dell: "No product shipping until mid-2002."
• Sun: "No product shipping until 2002 or 2003."

Other companies dismissed as mere startups include some potentially viable competitors including Amphus, Digital Archway, NEWISYS, RealScale Technologies, Centauri NetSystems, OmniCluster, RLX Technologies, XYTERRA, Racemi, Rauch Medien, Coventive, Rebel.com, and egenera.

HP is currently pitching its Blade Server BH 7800 Chassis that is a 38 slot, 13U unit supporting 1 to 16 server blades, 1 or 2 network blades, 1 or 2 Fiber Channel SAN blades, 1 to 16 storage blades of multiple types, and an intelligent management blade. Each unit requires 1200 watts of power, has hot-swapable power supplies and fans, and even redundant power line input.

HP Blade Server BC1100

The HP Blade Server BC1100 (shown right) uses an Intel Pentium III processor at 700 MHz with 512 MB of memory, a 30 GB disk drive, and dual 10/100 Base-T Ethernet ports. It operates on Linux platforms from SuSE, Red Hat, or Debian. HP's Management Blade (supplied with the chassis) monitors devices and is designed to eliminate the need to directly interact with any blade in the chassis, except to replace one blade with another.

HP's Management LAN Blade is also being sold now. It is designed so that "service providers can meet service level expectations while providing customers with a secure environment for their data as well as traffic isolation." HP's Network Switch Blade is being sold enabling a second—possibly backup Ethernet connection—to each server blade.

HP Storage Blade

HP's IDE Storage Blades are also available now (shown left), with two 30 GB hard drives and no CPU. The product is available for ordering and is set to ship in volume early in 2002. The estimated street price of chassis with one management blade and one server blade is $9,450, and the estimated price of one server blade is $1,925.

Substantiating NAS and SAN technologies
Just as HP was making its case for blades, Auspex restated its argument for adopting new storage architectures. The company published two Storage Architecture Guides—SAG, for short. Never mind that this acronym also stands for the the Screen Actors' Guild.

The first guide is a 38-page detailed analysis of the storage market with strength delineation of NAS and SAN architectures. The old storage paradigm, which the company calls Direct Attached Storage (DAS), is still useful, but only on limited applications. The SAG highlights the Auspex 4Front NetServer 2000 product.

The second guide also focuses on NAS and SAN technologies and is almost twice as long. It and examines storage on a theoretical as well as practical level. This SAG features the Auspex NetServer 3000 product.

Auspex produced one of the first NAS products in 1987. It specializes in "bi-lingual" file servers that are Linux and Windows compatible, enabling what the company called "Universal Data Sharing (UDS).

Auspex's top product, the NS3000 series, uses multiple processors and scales from a minimum of 0.5 TB to 68 TB in a single unit, with speeds of 19,700 I/Os and 55 MB per second for a single node for UNIX and Windows environments, respectively. The midrange Auspex product, the NS2000 series, also features multiple processors, but is smaller, ranging from 504 GB to 9 TB. At the bottom end of the size scale, the "brat" server offers the same speed in a small package on wheels, with just 0.5 TB to 4 TB of storage space. The "brat" is only available through Auspex resellers and no price was available at press time.

Easynet France, the French subsidiary of a pan-European backbone provider, purchased two NS2000 servers and noticed immediate results. Benjamin Ryzman, Easynet research and development manager, said "we have doubled the number of customers we serve and more than tripled our revenues in the 12 months since we installed the storage servers. Despite the fact that we have doubled the number of servers to handle this traffic volume, our maintenance requirements have actually gone down because we reduced the number of data storage nodes from 50 to two."

Internet World
Next week's Internet World show features Streaming Media East, so many data streaming providers will be rushing product announcements to market in time for the show. But storage vendors are also present and pressing new products into the event.

Storage Computer Corporation, the company that owns the URL storage.com, will be showcasing its OC-48 capable CyberNAS. The company also expects to end a patent-infringement lawsuit it filed against Xiotech and Seagate, but details of the settlement were not final at press time.

Compaq has just announced what it claims is the first 2 GB Fiber Channel storage system, the MSA 1000, with a bevy of security, backup, and data protection features. Also, a Compaq-funded study by IDC found Compaq to be the global leader in storage sales by almost any measure, including disk storage TB shipped and revenue, open systems revenue and TB shipped, and external disk system TB shipped, coming in second only in external disk revenue (and that's not bad—they've got to be cheaper-per-TB than whatever company sold fewer TB but earned more revenue).

Funding feast continues
Even in a recession Venture Capitalists (VCs) are still investing in storage startups. Exanet of Santa Clara, Calif., which develops clustering technology, announced that it had received $17 million in second round funding.

Boulder, CO-based Turquoise Technology raised $1 million in "an additional round of funding" to develop storage and digital rights management technology.

Durham, NC-based Storage Service Provider (SSP) Arsenal Digital Solutions (formerly usendit.com), which, at over a year old, is a relative veteran in the SSP industry, raised $23 million in third round funding.

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