While Sun Microsystems sharpens its top shelf telco blade server offering in an alliance with Lucent Technologies, IBM and Dell deliver server blade products aimed at a lower total cost of ownership.

by Michael Singer and Clint Boulton of internetnews.com [December 2, 2002]

Who says the telecom industry is completely built out? Certainly not Sun Microsystems, which last week inked a deal with Lucent Technologies to target service providers and business customers in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, in addition to those in North America.

The two companies said they are pursuing joint sales of their products for IP Centrex central office phone systems, customer relationship management, network management, mobile high-speed data systems, unified communication messaging systems, and business continuity systems.

The partnership is being augmented with Sun's introduction of its latest NEBS-certified blade servers for wireless and other telecom applications.

"Lucent is a key customer and they will replaceme one of their in-house systems with one of ours. For a while, the network equipment providers have been building chipsets and boards and now are switching to off the shelf systems," said Sun Senior Product Manager Pocheng Shyu.

Sun's latest offering includes its Netra CT 410 and 810 cPCI telecom blade servers, Netra CP2140 and CP2160 cPCI blades, and currently available Netra HA Suite Foundation Services (FS) 2.1 software.

Unlike Dell Computer's long delayed PowerEdge 1655MC, which is designed more for data centers, Sun's Netra series are designed for carrier-grade systems. The boxes are full upgrades of the Netra CT server product line that can expand to 16 processor blades per shelf and 48 processor blades per rack.

But while the popular sentiment is that Sun does not have a blade server, Shyu says the company has been in the blade business since 1999.

"It really depends on your definition," said Shyu. "Some people define blades as high density computing with either single or dual processors. If that is the case, then the Netra T1s and even the new LX50 fit that definition. And with our solutions, we provide an I/O to support it."

With its Netra system management and HA software, Sun claims the system can create up to 7 node clusters in a single cPCI bus segment. Upgraded system management features FRU ID for active components and additional midplane features, including PICMG 2.9 IPMI system management and HA Hot Swap.

The Netra CP2140 and CP2160 run the Solaris Operating Environment, including the Netra HA Suite software and the new version, FS 2.1 on the UltraSPARC IIi 650 MHz processor with expanded maximum memory configurations. Both blades have Hot Swap control and IPMI system management.

The CP2140 functions as a system slot controller blade that includes dual 10/100 Ethernet and SCSI, one PMC slot and up to 4 GB of RAM. The Netra CP2160 cPCI blade works with the Netra CP2140 and functions as a satellite processor blade. The CP2160 features two PMC slots, front and rear I/O and 10/100 Ethernet, 8MB of User Flash and 3 GB of memory with 1 GB on-board memory with expansion up to 2 GB.

The DC version of the Netra CT 410 and 810 servers start at $19,195 for the Netra CT 410, and $22,995 for the Netra CT 810. The AC version of these servers is expected to be available this month. The Netra CP2140 blade is currently available and starts at $3,995, while the Netra CP2160 blade won't be available until early next year with an expected price tag of $4,395.

Sun said it is actually "experiencing some product growth with this product line," and that the deal with Lucent is just the beginning of partnerships that it is working on with the other major telecom carriers.

Dell delivers
Dell finally made good on its promise of delivering blade servers to the market last week when it shipped its PowerEdge 1655MC, which is targeted for data centers, server consolidation projects, thin-client computing and high-performance clusters.

Dell said the blade server fits the slim, 3U form factor, yet harnesses the performance of as many as 12 Intel Pentium III processors with server deployment and management software. Announced last April, PowerEdge 1655MC consists of a box with six dual-processor server blades, SCSI hard disk drives with integrated hardware RAID, hot-plug redundant power supplies and cooling fans, an integrated management card, and redundant Ethernet switches.

Aligning its blade purpose with the likes of competitors RLX Technologies, Egenera, and IBM in the industry—that is, consolidating space and cutting down on messy cables—Dell argues the single box lowers hardware costs associated with current dual-processor, 1U rack servers by a third because components are shared across the six blade servers.

Indeed, Randy Groves, vice president of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group, said the 1655MC will reduce cables by up to 80 percent and rack space by nearly 50 percent.

It's not enough to just have the hardware. Blades need competent software to run the boxes and Dell believes it has it in its Open Manage Remote Install software, which allows customers to remotely tune hundreds of blade servers at the same time. Each enclosure comes with an integrated Embedded Remote Access Module that monitors chassis and server blade status. Software can be installed locally through a USB connection or remotely with Dell's OpenManage Remote Install.

Geared for the low-end market, PowerEdge 1655MC has a starting price point of $3,298 for an enclosure and one blade server. It supports Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Red Hat Linux.

Dell isn't the only firm shipping the modular servers. Announced in September, IBM's next round of blade servers is due to start hitting the shelves now. The eServer BladeCenter line is targeted for the enterprise to help businesses pare back the total cost of ownership. IBM counts AOL Time Warner as one of its most high-profile customers in this segment.

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