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Blades, pegged by many analysts as the fastest-growing server category, are attracting extra attention lately because they can pack more computing power into a smaller space, are easier to manage and, in many cases, are more flexible than other servers. What makes blades so attractive is they have a small form factor, often packed into their own chassis and sharing resources such as fans and power supplies. This makes them easier to cable, service and manage, solution providers say. Solution providers also say there are different markets for blades. Data center customers, for example, use blades to power Internet traffic or to cluster together devices for various high-performance computing requirements. Another market is comprised of traditional SMBs, which are increasingly focusing on server consolidation and virtualization to make the most of their IT dollars. In the first quarter, worldwide revenue for blade servers grew 43.3 percent and shipments increased 29.5 percent year over year, according to IDC. IDC researcher Jeffrey Hewitt said the worldwide blade market has been growing about 7 percent to 8 percent per quarter for the past few quarters, but he expects volumes to increase as prices close in on the lower-cost rack-mount servers. Worldwide blade server revenue was $2 billion in 2005 and is expected to reach $10 billion by 2009, Hewitt said. In the branded market, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are pushing their own proprietary blades aggressively as companies, large and small, look to squeeze more computing power into existing data centers and closets. System builders, meanwhile, say they have a more competitive offering because they can provide a level of customization not possible with the branded options. For example, Open Source Storage (OSS), Santa Clara, Calif., will preinstall virtually any operating system on its blade offering, including a variety of Linux distributions and Solaris for x86, said OSS President and CEO Eren Niazi.  That's one of the reasons Glenn Gasner, president and CEO of eChemistry.com, ultimately chose OSS to supply 10 blades and a chassis for his Tampa, Fla., online dating startup. OSS preinstalled the CentOS distribution of Linux on the servers, each packed with 64 Gbytes of memory. Gasner said OSS was there immediately to help when there was a problem. As it turned out, the latest version of CentOS did not work with Gasner's clustering software. So the OSS team logged into the servers remotely and reinstalled an older version of the operating system. Niazi said OSS designed its blade chassis around an open architecture. Each 8U blade can accept a variety of motherboards for more flexibility. OSS currently supports low-power Opteron CPUs but will also support Intel's new 5100 Xeon chip. Niazi said OSS blade sales are growing about 50 percent annually while traditional rack-mount servers currently are "taking off" at a 200 percent growth rate. He has had particular success with Web servers. OSS' ability to customize and deliver a large quantity of servers on a five-day turnaround appeals to companies with fast-growing Internet needs, he said. |
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