blade server guide

eGuide2 Blade Servers: Big Power for Small Businesses Many small businesses with larger server needs are turning to blade servers to pack big power into a small space

4 Top 10 Benefits of Server Virtualization Virtualize your data center and gain these efficiencies and capabilities that aren’t possible within a physical-only world

7 Seven Reasons to Consider Virtualization Virtualization has made inroads into many data centers. If your company isn’t already using it, here’s why it should

9 Blade Server ResourcesAdditional tools, tips and documentation

IN THIS eGUIDE

BLADE SERVERSThe use of blade servers in enterprise data centers continues to climb. Market analysts peg the growth of x86 blade servers at twice that of the overall server category. Blades have become an essential component of data-center trends such as network convergence, server virtualization and cloud computing over the past few years. The high density, scalability, easy configuration, and lower energy costs offered by blades help to drive business innovation and eliminate server sprawl. What’s more, enterprises that deploy blades are enjoying significant savings—often more than 50 percent—when compared to traditional servers.

In this eGuide, Network World sister publications InfoWorld, and PC World examine some of the current uses of blade servers in today’s data center, as well as how trends such as server virtualization are reshaping enterprise computing.

Big Power for Small Businesses Seven Resons to Consider Virtualization Blade Server ResourcesTop 10 Benefits of Server Virtualization

Sponsored by HP and Intel® Xeon® processors

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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Many small businesses with larger server needs are turn-

ing to blade servers to pack big power into a small space.

But what exactly is a blade server, and how do you know if

it’s right for your small business?

Blade servers are similar to rack servers, but much

smaller. There are three parts to a blade system:

➢

• The blade chassis, which acts like a rack, housing

the blade servers. The chassis also provides power

and cooling to the blades.

• The individual blade servers, which are more com-

pact than rack-mounted or tower servers, are often

dedicated to a single application or task.

• Communications devices and connections (also

housed in the chassis)—switches to connect with

Ethernet and storage-area network (SAN) devices.

The blade system’s modular design is highly compact,

minimizing physical space and reducing energy use. Blade

servers appeal to small businesses because they are easy

to install and replace, and because they can lower man-

agement costs.

Blade servers may not be a fit for every small business,

but it is also a misconception that blades only make sense

for large organizations that need hundreds of servers.

Blades begin to make financial sense once your business

needs four or more physical servers. Yes, just four servers.

At first glance, blades and blade centers appear expen-

sive—costing up to three times more than individual servers.

Yet when you consider the potential savings, you will see a

return on investment very quickly—usually in just one year.

Regarding pricing, not all blades are created equal, and

prices will vary. Some of this is based on the blade itself,

but some if it is based on the required chassis and supple-

mental drives, memory or processors your business may

need for the systems you plan to run on it.

Be sure to itemize all of these elements before com-

paring solutions. Because some manufacturers require

a new chassis for each new blade model they produce,

understand the flexibility of the blade system as a whole

before you make a decision. If you will need to continually

upgrade the chassis as you scale up your data center with

blade servers, the cost may not be worth it.

BLADE SERVERS: BIG POWER FOR SMALL BUSINESSESBy Kevin Komac • Network World

Virtualize your data center and gain these efficiencies and capabilities that aren’t possible within a physical-only world


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Don’t forget to consider all the extras when you shop. The

blade itself is fairly simple to price out, but your business

may also need to add drives for operating systems, as well

as added memory and processors. Beyond that, you may

need to add a card or two, depending upon the vendor you

are buying from. If your business needs more than just two

drives, you will need to purchase added storage as well.

The power of the bladeTwo questions we hear all the time go something like this:

➢ • What if we decide to put in blades to upgrade our

computing power, but we can’t get enough power?

• What if we realize that the cooling has become too

expensive—how do we avoid ending up with a bank

of blades that we can’t support?

What many businesses may not realize is that blades can

use up to 50% less power than rack servers. Some vendors

even have power-sizing tools that allow you to find out how

much power a configuration will draw before you buy it.

The point is, if you are installing blades as part of a server

consolidation plan, your power and cooling requirements

will be less—certainly not greater—than they were with rack

servers. However, it is important to note that significantly

scaling up the data center with blades in the same space

can increase the total density of computing, power and cool-

ing requirements to the room. This may eventually require

attention to avoid heat stress on the equipment.

It’s also worth mentioning that blade server manage-

ment is easier and less expensive than comparable rack

servers. Your business won’t need to spend money on a

KVM switch to control multiple servers because blades

allow you to plug a simple network cable into the onboard

administrator. As long as you have network access, you

can manage the blades from anywhere inside or outside

of the data center—even outside your building.

It is quick and simple to log in to the chassis (or several

at once), and point and click on what you need. You can

load operating systems remotely, and even enter a basic

input/output system. Certain software suites allow users

to simultaneously work with blades, rack servers and vir-

tual servers—all from one console.

Blade servers are a great option for small businesses. They

can help your organization keep up with changing business

demands, and they can simplify your entire IT infrastructure.

If you shop wisely and pay close attention to power and cool-

ing demands, blades can give your small business a great

deal of computing power, compacted into a tiny space. •

Kevin Komac is a CDW ESSN business development

specialist.

What many businesses may not realize is that blades can use up to 50% less power than rack servers. WHEN LESS IS MORE


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TOP 10 BENEFITS OF SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualize your data center and gain these efficiencies and capabilities that aren’t possible within a physical-only world

Server virtualization on the x86 platform has been around now

for more than a decade, yet many in the industry still consider

it a “new” technology. But those of us who have already adopt-

ed the technology in our own environments have grown to be-

lieve we can’t live without it. Many of us also have the opinion

that there is simply no going back to a “physical-only world.”

As hard as it might be for fellow enthusiasts to wrap

their arms around it, many people have yet to drink the

virtual Kool-Aid. Fellow Kool-Aid drinkers may be asking

themselves, “Why is that?” And that’s a great question.

10Save energy, go greenMaybe you aren’t a “save the whales” or “tree

hugging” type of person. That’s cool. I don’t

wear the T-shirts either. But seriously, who isn’t interested in

saving energy these days? Migrating physical servers over

to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer

physical servers means lowering monthly power and cooling

costs in the data center. This was an early victory chant for

server virtualization vendors back in the early part of 2000,

and it still holds true today.

9Reduce the data center footprintThis one goes hand in hand with the previous

benefit. In addition to saving more of your com-

pany’s green with a smaller energy footprint, server con-

solidation with virtualization will also reduce the overall

footprint of your entire data center. That means far fewer

servers, less networking gear, a smaller number of racks

needed -- all of which translates into less data center floor

space required. That can further save you money if you

don’t happen to own your own data center and instead

make use of a co-location facility.

8QA/lab environmentsAfter completing a server consolidation exercise

in the data center, why not donate that hardware

to a QA group or build out a lab environment? Virtualiza-

tion allows you to easily build out a self-contained lab or

test environment, operating on its own isolated network. If

you don’t think this is useful or powerful, just look to VM-

ware’s own trade show, VMWorld. This event creates one

of the largest public virtual labs I’ve ever experienced, and

it truly shows off what you can do with a virtual lab envi-

ronment. While this is probably way more lab than you’d

ever actually need in your own environment, you can see

By David Marshall • InfoWorld


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how building something like this would be cost prohibitive

with purely physical servers, and in many cases, techno-

logically improbable.

7Faster server provisioningAs a data center administrator, imagine being

able to provide your business units with near in-

stant-on capacity when a request comes down the chain.

Server virtualization enables elastic capacity to provide

system provisioning and deployment at a moment’s no-

tice. You can quickly clone a gold image, master template,

or existing virtual machine to get a server up and running

within minutes. Remember that the next time you have

to fill out purchase orders, wait for shipping and receiv-

ing, and then rack, stack, and cable a physical machine

only to spend additional hours waiting for the operating

system and applications to complete their installations.

I’ve almost completely forgotten what it’s like to click

Next > Next > Next.

6Reduce hardware vendor lock-inWhile not always a bad thing, sometimes being

tied down to one particular server vendor or even

one particular server model can prove quite frustrating.

But because server virtualization abstracts away the un-

derlying hardware and replaces it with virtual hardware,

data center managers and owners gain a lot more flex-

ibility when it comes to the server equipment they can

choose from. This can also be a handy negotiating tool

with the hardware vendors when the time comes to renew

or purchase more equipment.

5 Increase uptimeMost server virtualization platforms now offer a

number of advanced features that just aren’t found

on physical servers, which helps with business continuity and

increased uptime. Though the vendor feature names may be

different, they usually offer capabilities such as live migra-

tion, storage migration, fault tolerance, high availability, and

distributed resource scheduling. These technologies keep

virtual machines chugging along or give them the ability to

quickly recover from unplanned outages. The ability to quickly

and easily move a virtual machine from one server to another

is perhaps one of the greatest single benefits of virtualiza-

tion with far-reaching uses. As the technology continues to

mature to the point where it can do long-distance migrations,

such as being able to move a virtual machine from one data

center to another no matter the network latency involved, the

virtual world will become that much more in demand.

4 Improve disaster recoveryVirtualization offers an organization three im-

portant components when it comes to building

out a disaster recovery solution. The first is its hardware

abstraction capability. By removing the dependency on

a particular hardware vendor or server model, a disaster

recovery site no longer needs to keep identical hardware

on hand to match the production environment, and IT can

save money by buying cheaper hardware in the DR site

since it rarely gets used. Second, by consolidating servers

down to fewer physical machines in production, an orga-

nization can more easily create an affordable replication

site. And third, most enterprise server virtualization plat-

forms have software that can help automate the failover

when a disaster does strike. The same software usually

provides a way to test a disaster recovery failover as well.

Imagine being able to actually test and see your failover

plan work in reality, rather than hoping and praying that it

will work if and when the time comes.


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3 Isolate applicationsIn the physical world, data centers typically moved

to a “one app/one server” model in order to iso-

late applications. But this caused physical server sprawl, in-

creased costs, and underutilized servers. Server virtualization

provides application isolation and removes application com-

patibility issues by consolidating many of these virtual ma-

chines across far fewer physical servers. This also cuts down

on server waste by more fully utilizing the physical server re-

sources and by provisioning virtual machines with the exact

amount of CPU, memory, and storage resources that it needs.

2 Extend the life of older applicationsLet’s be honest—you probably have old legacy ap-

plications still running in your environment. These

applications probably fit into one or more of these categories:

It doesn’t run on a modern operating system, it may not run

on newer hardware, your IT team is afraid to touch it, and

chances are good that the person or company who created it

is no longer around to update it. By virtualizing and encapsu-

lating the application and its environment, you can extend its

life, maintain uptime, and finally get rid of that old Pentium

machine hidden in the corner of the data center. You know

the one, it’s all covered in dust with fingerprints from admin-

istrators long gone and names forgotten.

1 Help move things to the cloudAh yes, the cloud! You knew it was coming at

some point in this list, didn’t you? As much as

you think you’ve been talked to death about virtualizing

your environment, that probably doesn’t even compare to

the amount of times in the last year alone that you’ve

had someone talk to you about joining “the cloud.” The

good news here is that by virtualizing your servers and ab-

stracting away the underlying hardware, you are preparing

yourself for a move into the cloud. The first step may be

to move from a simple virtualized data center to a private

cloud. But as the public cloud matures, and the technolo-

gy around it advances and you become more comfortable

with the thought of moving data out of your data center

and into a cloud hosting facility, you will have had a head

start in getting there. The journey along the way will have

better prepared you and the organization.

What benefits have you gained beyond this list? •

As much as you think you’ve been talked to death about virtualizing your environment, that probably doesn’t even compare to the amount of times in the last year alone that you’ve had someone talk to you about joining “the cloud.”

YOU AIN’T HEARD NOTHIN’ YET


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SEVEN REASONS TO CONSIDER VIRTUALIZATIONBy Logan G. Harbaugh • PC World

Virtualization has made inroads into many data centers. If your company isn’t already using it, here’s why it should

Both server virtualization and desktop virtualization use a

software core called a hypervisor to run multiple operat-

ing systems on the same physical server hardware. Each

OS is kept separate, with resources dedicated as needed.

Since you can buy modern servers with multiple CPUs,

large amount of memory, lots of storage, and high-band-

width network connections, each OS can have as much

computing power as an individual server might provide.

The operating systems and applications seldom use all

available resources, especially at the same times--so

more operating systems and applications can coexist on

a single piece of hardware, resulting in better utilization

of hardware.

If you’re not using virtualization now, you should be

thinking about it. Here’s why.

1. It enables you to get the most out of your server hardware.Many servers typically run for most of the day at very low

levels of utilization. Adding multiple OSes and applica-

tions helps you get the most out of those expensive server

resources. Since many virtual machines can run on one

server, you substantially reduce the total expenditure for

hardware.

2. It will allow you to set up redundant servers for better fault tolerance.Hypervisors allow OSes and their applications to be mi-

grated from one system to another. If one hardware server

or the operating systems and applications running on it

fail, those OSes and applications can be moved to an-

other hypervisor running on a different physical server. Big

servers are typically set up for better fault tolerance than

small servers. Two big servers, for instance, can allow for

migration of applications and provide better fault toler-

ance than a dozen small servers, while using less energy

and being easier to manage.

3. Management is simplified.Since all the operating systems on a hypervisor can be

administered through a single interface, and systems can

be given more computing resources as needed, it can be

much easier to manage a dozen virtual servers than a

dozen separate physical systems. Each operating system

must still be managed separately, but add-on tools are

available to simplify that process as well.

4. You can partition applications on separate OSes for greater reliability.Normally, a physical server will run one operating sys-


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tem, and that OS will have multiple server applications

installed on it--a Web server, email server, database

server, and so forth. However, running multiple server

applications on a single OS increases the possibility that

one application may interfere with another, causing bot-

tlenecks or even crashes. By partitioning applications

in different virtual machines, each application has its

own OS and resources, and is less likely to interfere with

other applications.

5. Provisioning new servers for prototyping, testing and migration is simplified.With virtualization, creating an additional server for

testing takes a few minutes, and doesn’t require any

additional hardware. In contrast, buying a new physical

server (or keeping extras on hand for testing) is expen-

sive, and installing the operating system and applica-

tions can be quite time-consuming. Since existing VMs

can be cloned with all operating system configurations

and applications, it’s a very simple process duplicate a

production system to test new patches or a new version

of an application.

6. You can save energy.While strides have been made in energy efficiency for

servers, it’s still cheaper to run one or two big servers

than a dozen or more separate ones. With the latest

servers, core parking and other features allow resourc-

es to be shut down when not in use, further reducing

energy usage. A large server hosting dozens of VMs

may not use any more energy than one small server at

low levels of utilization, and it can replace dozens of

small servers.

7. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure can save you a fortune on PCs.In addition to virtualizing server OSs and applications, you

may want to consider virtualizing desktops. VDI allows you

to run a thin client on existing desktop hardware or new

thin client hardware, and access a virtual Windows 7 or

other desktop operating system. This means that you can

provide Windows 7 desktops to users whose existing sys-

tems will not support Windows 7 running locally. Manage-

ment can also be simplified, since patches to Windows

and applications can be applied once and take effect for

every system on the VDI server.

There’s a reason virtualization is being used so extensively

through most corporate data centers. It offers compelling

savings in hardware, energy usage, management costs,

and it supports great fault tolerance. •


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BLADE SERVER RESOURCES

ANALYST REPORTGartner Magic Quadrant for Blade ServersThe market for blade servers is becoming ever more complex and diverse due to the conver-gence of related modular form factors, a fast-growing interest in fabric-based infrastructure and the influence of cloud computing on buying behavior. Download the Gartner Magic Quad-rant to see how the vendors in blade servers stack up.Download >>

ANALYST AWARDSNemertes Research PilotHouse Awards: Server for VirtualizationThe Nemertes Research PilotHouse Awards provide insight on the performance of technology vendors, ac-cording to feedback from IT decision makers who use their products or services. See which vendors were recognized for their servers built for virtualization.Download >>

ANALYST REPORTHow Blade Centers Impact Data Center Management and AgilityThis paper examines enterprise adoption of blade servers in the US, UK and China; the benefits of blade server use; and the connection between enter-prise data center management and agility goals and blade server use. It reveals that blade servers are highly associated with core infrastructure consolida-tion and optimization efforts and offer high value to users as a virtualization platform and means of reducing OpEx.Download >>


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