Balanced on Blades

Dell adds efficient blade and brick servers

Enterprises are increasingly consolidating servers and upgrading data centers to accommodate growing demand for high-volume, Web-based transaction processing in strategic business applications. Dell is the latest vendor to offer server blade technology to address enterprise needs for more compact and powerful Web servers to run these applications.

In the past, server consolidation often meant major overhauls to enterprise data centers to replace smaller servers with more powerful (and more expensive) servers. However, organizations now grappling with rapidly shifting business strategies and markets and a renewed emphasis on conserving funds require consolidation technologies that deliver cost savings as well as efficiency, scalability, and adaptability.

Dell Computer Corp. recently announced servers (PowerEdge 1655MC, PowerEdge 6600, and PowerEdge 6650), server management hardware and software (OpenManage), and a partnership with Microsoft to bring InfiniBand technology to next-generation servers. Dell's new initiative emphasizes a modular, standards-based approach based on high-performance server "blades" that many organizations could use to achieve consolidation benefits by reducing the number of servers and data centers they have to maintain while still updating and augmenting their technology infrastructure. However, Dell faces server blade competition from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Compaq Computer Corp., and Sun Microsystems.

The first in Dell's new modular server line, the PowerEdge 1655MC offers increased density and simplified server management, which the company believes makes it ideal for server consolidation. For applications requiring greater computing power, Dell's PowerEdge 6600 and 6650 servers with Intel's Xeon multiprocessors offer features for availability, system expansion, and storage of the large amounts of internal data needed for strategic enterprise applications. Dell also revealed plans for next-generation "brick" servers combining blades with traditional enterprise servers.

In a recent analysis about Dell's new servers, Gartner Inc. NT strategies analyst John Enck observed, "... the market has significant interest in modular server design that provides alternatives to the 'rip and replace' strategy now required to upgrade Intel servers." In "Building Business On Blades," Gartner analyst Jeffrey Hewitt said that server blades could help businesses with significant investments in front-end Web servers by providing more powerful installations that are also more energy- and space-efficient.

Both Dell's blade and brick servers will rely on InfiniBand, a channel-based, interconnect technology that can provide higher data throughput performance for high-density racks of servers, storage, and other network devices. Such performance is needed for businesses requiring real-time, high-volume data updates, including financial services firms. Dell and Microsoft have agreed to work on the hardware and software components for a standards-based InfiniBand solution for enterprise customers. Dell's OpenManage software focuses on helping customers maximize the use of network servers through remote deployment and management.

Mark Melenovsky, research manager for IDC, said, "While some vendors have focused on niche applications and nonstandard products, we believe that Dell's modular computing strategy is very focused on key customer requirements, with the features that integrate easily into existing environments." IDC concluded that widespread global adoption of standard server and storage architectures will happen by 2004.

Adding more flexibility and scalability to enterprise data centers will be a big help to organizations faced with achieving mission-critical goals while restraining costs.

— Michelle M. Young

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