Blade seven years of itching must be careful four major misunderstandings

In 2000, when the blade server came out, this multi-card server unit was inserted into the standard height rack cabinet to attract the attention of countless people; its "super high computing density" will be people Subvert many concepts of the server! Many people exclaimed - the future, will be the world of the blade!

The former high-quality stocks

The blade server has been recognized by the industry as the "high-quality stock" in the server since its birth. The reason is simple: not only has all the advantages of a rack server, but also has greater ease of use and manageability, and lower total cost of ownership - in short, it is "IT infrastructure simplification" The best example of a highly respected concept!

Although familiar to most people, we still have to praise the children who have made us proud many times:

High computing density: the most obvious advantage of blade servers It is able to increase the computing density of the server, which is 100% to 800% higher than the 1U rack optimization system at that time.

Simplify deployment and facilitate management: The high integration of the blade eliminates the cumbersome wiring problem; Moreover, with the matching management tools, automatic configuration and remote management monitoring are also very convenient, dozens to hundreds of blades Management can be done through a simple interface – which is quite tempting for companies with a shortage of human resources.

Resource sharing, cost-effective: Each blade server does not require a separate rack and infrastructure, and the cost of the server can be greatly reduced by sharing power, cooling, management hardware, and cabling systems across multiple systems; The high-density computing of the server effectively saves space, which undoubtedly saves a lot of space costs for enterprises with tight room space or server hosting, and thus has a very high cost performance.

On-demand configuration, energy efficiency: The high integration of the blade server allows users to flexibly configure resources on demand for specific tasks. Similarly, this high integration also allows blade servers to save energy. Good results. According to statistics, if the cost of energy saved by 10 blade servers in one year is equivalent to re-purchasing two 1U rack servers.

With so many advantages, it is no surprise that the blade server has become the "darling" of everyone! Soon, international leaders such as IBM, HP, Sun and domestic top vendors, Inspur, Lenovo, Shuguang and other companies have launched their own blade servers. In 2003, IDC issued a forecast: By 2007, blade shipments will account for 25% of the entire server market.

Growing troubles

However, the real growth experience of the blade server has made many prophets stunned!

The era of blade server was born in the era of .com growth. Due to the substantial growth of Web hosting business, the demand for servers that are easy to install and smaller is driven. In terms of the earliest release of the RLX Server Blade, a blade base is 3U high and can be plugged into 24 blade servers, each of which is a standalone server. At this stage, blade servers are focused on high density. At this stage, the blade server started from scratch and grew rapidly, becoming the focus of attention.

In 2003, IBM introduced the BladeCenter blade server as a watershed. The development of blade servers no longer overemphasized the computational intensiveness, but by balancing the computational intensiveness with the performance of a single blade. Among them, a suitable balance point was chosen. As many big companies are optimistic and join the market battle group, blade servers are beginning to move toward diversified applications. It can be said that this stage is the real beginning of the blade really entering the cruel server market.

However, after four or five years of development, the blade server is still a small child. In 2004, blade servers sold a total of 306,000 units, with a turnover of 1.2 billion US dollars, accounting for 2.3% of the entire server market. According to statistics from the Asia-Pacific server market at the end of 2005, although the growth rate of the blade server itself exceeded 60%, the shipments accounted for only 2% of the total server market; and according to the growth trend at that time, the shipment of blade servers by 2007 The amount will not exceed 10% of the entire server market.

The huge gap between expectations and the blade server is paralyzed.

What causes the blade server to grow up? The reason is actually very simple: competition. When the blade server and the traditional rack server face face-to-face cruel comparison, many conceptual content will no longer be important. The reason that directly affects the enterprise procurement is: who can give the company a stronger comprehensive advantage!

So comparing the rack server, is the blade really advantageous?

There are a lot of articles about the contrast between the two, and will not be described in detail here. We can only summarize the common misunderstandings of several users:

One of the misunderstandings: Blades are more space-efficient than rack-mounted servers.

This view is correct, but it is not right. From a deployment perspective, blade servers are indeed more space efficient than rack servers, but this savings is far from the ratio of the size of the two. This is because, due to problems in the wiring of the equipment room and power supply, it is impossible to deploy a single rack to a high density of blade servers. Otherwise, the cost of power consumption and cooling will be unaffordable.

Two Mistakes: Blades are easier to deploy and more flexible.

No. Ideally, blade server deployment is a distinct advantage over rack-mounted servers because there are very few cables. However, the objective reality is that enterprises often purchase blades to find that the power supply and other systems used by the blades do not match the original cabinets, resulting in more cost and complexity in deployment. In addition, most blade servers are less flexible than rack servers. For example, in high-performance database applications, blades cannot be equipped with disk arrays through external RAID cards. In addition, if the user needs a large-capacity database server, but does not want to build through the cluster, the blade will not be able to do so.

The third misunderstanding: the integrated cost of the blade is lower.

The consideration of cost is a comprehensive problem. Simply looking at the blade server itself is not appropriate. The blade server itself, peripheral facilities and management costs must be considered. Many enterprises are blocked by the power supply transformation brought by the blade server, and the cost of refrigeration renovation is blocked.

The Misunderstanding 4: Blade servers are more reliable and easier to maintain.

In theory, the rack server and blade server solutions reduce the original network and power sockets, and increase the reliability of the system. However, in practical applications, it is found that the stability of a single blade still has problems. The probability of such a problem is similar to that of a rack server, and some are even higher. The reason for this situation cannot be determined at this time, perhaps only because the product itself is not mature enough.

In short, in the process of full competition with the rack server, the advantages of high integration of the blade server have not been fully utilized, and the problems of standard and heat dissipation have not been completely solved, so there is no Take the absolute advantage.

Therefore, until the blade server was born within five years, the blade has always been a specific product of a specific industry, such as telecommunications, finance, etc.; for small and medium-sized enterprises, on the one hand, blade server vendors are considering profits. They don't pay much attention to it, on the other hand, the price of the blade and the environmental requirements and other thresholds also shut them out! So, the blade server wants to spread, it seems really not easy...

Is the maturity still far away?

2006 may be the turning point for blade servers. This year, IBM launched the BladeCentre H, HP launched the C-class, Sun introduced the Blade 8000 Modular System system... not only the products, but also the manufacturers are more rational. Since mid-2006, vendors have gradually shifted beyond the computational density of blade servers, but have turned to comprehensive considerations for improving performance, such as power, cooling, and backplane bandwidth.

In particular, in 2007, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell and other manufacturers began to focus on SMEs as a strategic focus. Telecommunications, finance, education, enterprise data centers and other industries began to appear gradually. Figure.

At the same time, virtualization technology, the hotspot of China's server field in 2007, also made the blade profitable. By optimizing the allocation of IT resources through virtualization technology and quickly responding to changes in business needs, blade servers are also able to take advantage of their strengths!

In 2006, Gartner said shipments of blade servers in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa) soared 61.4% year-on-year in the second quarter. According to IDC's forecast, by 2009, blade servers will have a market share of more than 25% in the entire server market, with shipments of 2.8 million units and revenues of more than $9 billion.
The blade server, after shouting for seven years, "Wolf is coming," is approaching us step by step. Maybe tomorrow, maybe there is still some time; but, after all, it is getting closer!

You, are you ready?