Archive for November, 2006
November 24, 2006 at 12:18 am · Filed under Consolidation, blades, rackmounts, vmware
Reseller News > Consolidation efforts slow server sales
“”We have started to see unit shipment in the x86 market tempered a little bit,” Scaramella said. Unit shipments of x86-based servers grew by 8.8 percent in the third quarter, down from 9.8 percent in the second quarter and 11 percent in the first.
Virtualisation is the process of enhancing server utilisation by running multiple applications on the same physical server. Without it, some servers only operate at 15 percent to 20 percent of capacity.
Companies are also buying new servers with dual-core or quad-core processors that offer more computing power than older models with single-core processors. Thus, customers can enhance their data centres’ capability with fewer servers, Scaramella says.”
A very interesting article just discussing the sales of servers, how with the dual core/quad core offerings where you might have needed to buy for example 2 blades for improved capacity in your grid one blade will, do or for example with vmware, we’ve found DL585’s to be very good at vmware, with this in mind, I can get away with fewer higher spec servers, say a 580g2 can handle 12 virtual sessions, the dual core/quad core equivalent might be able to handle 14/16 this means in effect 20% less physical esx servers.
November 24, 2006 at 12:14 am · Filed under Consolidation, blades
Demand for blades and x86 boxes drives server sales - Hardware - www.itnews.com.au
“Blade servers and x86 servers continue to produce the highest growth levels within the overall market,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research director at Gartner.”
Blade server sales and x86 sales will be higher thanks to the increasing interest in virtualization and consolidation, particularly as many organizations realise that they need to start being smarter with the way they use their datacenter. Interesting article, it will be interesting to see if this is going to be on going, I know blades/grid are the current technology of choice, and that significant investment is coming from this demand.
November 24, 2006 at 12:09 am · Filed under Consolidation, blades
Image and Data Manager
“November 24th, 2006: HP has picked up the number one position for server shipments yet again according to IDC, making it the top worldwide vendor in the market for the 18th consecutive quarter.
HP has 35 percent of the worldwide blade server market to call its own, and if that wasn’t enough, IDC has found that HP’s year-over-year factory revenue growth has also grown by 43.8 percent – faster than the market for units shipped.”
An article outlining how well HP are doing in market terms with server sales. The competition between dell/hp/ibm in the city has been intensifying, it will be interesting to see at what point does the cost of doing business get too high? As these rivals keep offering superb deals to their big customers at what point is one of them going to think, if company a can bid at that price, let them.
November 24, 2006 at 12:05 am · Filed under Consolidation, rackmounts
Reseller News > Consolidation efforts slow server sales
“The effects of virtualisation, the emergence of multicore processing and other consolidation efforts are evident in server sales and market share numbers in IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker report for the third quarter, released Wednesday.”
As datacenter space becomes more of an issue, companies are holding off on buying more servers as consolidation either through virtualization or more effective use of your physical devices, means sales of new servers are slowing. I suspect there are a number of reasons for this, firstly, dual/quad core, intel/amd have been announcing their plans, their processor roadmaps, and some customers have been holding off on buying the latest server until they get the certain processor model they want (woodcrest for example), and secondly, virtualization and consolidation, can allow you to virtualize a development server to vmware and re-use/re-purpose the physical hardware. As with most things though, I suspect server sales will improve in the near future, particularly with grid and virtualization, even if you adopt the one in, one out scenario, there will always be a need for more powerful servers, bigger storage capacity etc.
November 21, 2006 at 11:47 pm · Filed under vmware
VMware’s Greene: ‘The operating system shouldn’t matter’
“The next phase of IT infrastructure virtualisation will be business-wide, combining desktops, servers and storage – and it’s coming soon according to US software providers Entisys Solutions, Foedus, Solutions II, Govplace and The Pinnacle Group.”
Excellent article and quite true, as the server/computer becomes virtual operating system/platform is less important, what matters is it’s ability to host the application, and with virtual center the role back, the ability to move a session amongst different host servers means a much more fluid like infrastructure which is better able to move and grow with fluidity like your business needs.
November 21, 2006 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Consolidation, vmware
Infrastructure virtualisation is ready to go company-wide - Manufacturing Computer Solutions news article
“The next phase of IT infrastructure virtualisation will be business-wide, combining desktops, servers and storage – and it’s coming soon according to US software providers Entisys Solutions, Foedus, Solutions II, Govplace and The Pinnacle Group”
Very interesting article, it’s right, as IT becomes more of a commodity, it doesn’t matter what the operating system is, what type of box it is, even more so with grid, I don’t care what processes my risk exposure reports, as long as they’re there at 7am for me to read as I begin the business day.
November 20, 2006 at 10:29 pm · Filed under blades
A two minute short answer round with one of my ex-colleagues who’s just started deploying blades and grid at another bank:
Q. What’s been your experience with grid, positive?
On the whole yes, we’ve got several thousand blade servers running a risk application on windows. The main challenge was a different way of working due to the volume of systems.
Q. You say volume in what way?
Numerous, the datacenter factor was one, but simply, just a different way of thinking. The old way, building a server, loading the application, setting up your monitoring tool like MOM or TNG, just could not be continued. To deliver 200 servers within a short period of time, everything has to be scripted/deployable and as automated as possible, that coupled with licensing costs. Deploying a server with monitoring software costing £20 a month is a marginal cost to your business, 200X£20 gets noticed more.
Q. What problems did you have with the hardware?
Mainly DOA dead on arrival blades, that in itself is a cost of doing business, but frustrating nonetheless, regardless of how much you liase with your supplier it’s going to happen, it’s just again noticed more due to the volume, say you get a 5% failure rate, that’s 10 for every 200 you buy.
Q. What didn’t you expect?
Grid is the in thing right now, so people are talking about it, one thing we have had was having to say no to some applications for grid. The sales pitches can be very convincing but not everything can be packaged in such a way that you can ‘grid it’, not everyone likes being told that.
Q. Any words of wisdom about grid/blades?
Think of what you’re wanting to achieve, how you plan to implement them, and how you plan to manage the blades (grid) on a day to day business, one of the things we noticed was that it required the infrastructure teams to become a bit more involved with the applications, something not everyone is comfortable with. The concept of, I’ll build you a blade with windows went out the window, if you’re going to build me a blade, get it application ready, I want a package not a white box, I can build a white box, the concept of an application specific build.
November 20, 2006 at 10:13 pm · Filed under Consolidation, rackmounts, vmware
Computerworld - Analysts predict hot, cramped time for data centers
“Increasing use of cheaper x86 chip-based servers has presented problems for data centers, most of which haven’t been redesigned since the last tech boom went bust six years ago, said Rakesh Kumar, a Gartner research vice president. He spoke Monday during a presentation at Gartner’s Data Center Technology Summit in London.”
For a number of reasons many investment banks have been increasing the number of servers, a good example of this is the projects the banks have had to migrate from windows nt to windows 2000, this required massive investment in new servers, which had to be ran in parallel until the new systems were tested and proven ready for use. This coupled with the notice that a current 1u or 2u server may be only 350 watts, but the newer all singing all dancing models jumped to 450, coupled with blade servers being introduced meant your datacenter real estate became that bit more important. Where vmware made inroads was in migrating physical old servers on to virtual sessions, allowing for reallocation of space and power. That said the new processors are more energy efficient, but in the meantime those plans for datacenter consolidation, virtualization and invesment may have to be brought forward, vmware for production in some cases may be the way forward.
November 20, 2006 at 10:05 pm · Filed under Consolidation, rackmounts
Hardware Today: Energy Efficiency Hits the Data Center
“DC-based systems can increase server efficiency and reliability while reducing power consumption by as much as 30 percent,” says Colette LaForce, vice president of marketing for Rackable Systems. “Systems that consume less power naturally put out less heat — which means less air conditioning for the data center, and therefore an additional expense reduction.”
There has been more of a business driver to manage your data center more effectively in the past few years, power and cooling being the main issues raised. The difference is that power is limited, issues of space, support costs and cooling can be hidden from view, I can move things around, the power aspect is a bit more binary.
So when I’m in a meeting discussing that your DEC uses 1100 watt, (or 2 web servers dependent on configuration) it has a more binary finality angle to it than, well the DEC Alpha takes up one cabinet. (My datacenter can hold 100 cabinets right? “One cabinet, ok” I here my business colleagues say).
People understand power, don’t get me wrong they understand costs, but that only matters if the cost is significant enough, the outage significant, or most importantly, if the cost is truly reflected in the actual hosting cost. But when I say, you’ve got enough power for three servers full stop, no discussion please, it makes people ask, where is our power being used.
Power is always going to be an issue coupled with cooling the data center for the forseable future, regardless of the physical and financial efforts taken to keep your legacy kit in business, the issue of cooling and powering the servers allows me to explain the issues in a more real format.
November 20, 2006 at 6:37 am · Filed under Consolidation, blades
news - IBM BladeCenter Systems Up to 30 Percent More Energy Efficient Than Comparable HP Blades
“IBM BladeCenter Systems Up to 30 Percent More Energy Efficient Than Comparable HP Blades”
Very interesting, but more importantly, as I understood it from a techy geek kind of angle, I thought the C class blade from HP was an alternative to the DL380/DL385 type scenario, as in, I’ll buy a c class rack, fill it with c class blades and get rid of my older dl380’s. Should the test not be ls20 for a bl35p? They’re similar type devices? Or maybe i’m missing something. Regardless it all comes down to money, the energy is significant, but several companies our outsourcing their hosting and it therefore becomes someone elses issue not mine, my issue is cost (all be influenced by power).
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