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Blade.org – Study On Storage Consolidation

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Blade.org, a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of open blade server platforms, announced a new member-driven study on Storage Consolidation, the third of its kind in a series focusing on data center efficiency.

This Blade.org White Paper is available for download for free here. Blade.org member companies NetApp, BLADE Network Technologies and Double-Take Software each made contributions that showcase the advancement of technologies allowing IT professionals to reduce the amount of equipment needed to run an efficient data center.

Key Highlights:

  • Benefits of Storage Consolidation: Efficiency across storage area networks (SAN) has been increased greatly by sharing data across multiple servers on private networks. Operational benefits from storage consolidation include: reduced power and cooling costs, increased capacity sharing, storage provisioning, network boot, software updates, performance, data protection, scalability, simplified backup and recovery, and improved lifecycle management.
  • Server and Storage Virtualization – Complimentary Technologies: Storage virtualization compliments server virtualization by increasing storage efficiency and by enabling rapid deployment of storage resources. The result is increased overall operational efficiency, improved asset utilization, and accelerated business processes.
  • Storage Virtualization: Storage virtualization is delivering dramatic increases in storage utilization. Deduplication, thin provisioning, and rapid cloning, as examples, are greatly reducing the physical storage required to store the exploding data collection and retention in today’s business environment.
  • Storage Consolidation – Before You Start: By utilizing a combination of virtualization and SAN-based or host-based replication technologies, IT personnel can minimize data and application down time during storage migration while allowing users to still access applications with little or no downtime.

Verari Systems Joins Forces With Xsigo To Deliver Integrated Compute and I/O Density Solution

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Verari Systems, a developer of blade-based computing and storage solutions and Xsigo today announced a high-density blade solution that offers virtualized network and storage connectivity. Available immediately and sold through Verari Systems, the new solution integrates Verari’s BladeRack 2 X-Series computing platform with Xsigo’s VP780 I/O Director.

Verari Systems

The companies claims the integrated solutions increases up to ten times the I/O connections per blade as compared to other solutions available in the market today.

“Blade systems are an ideal complement for server virtualization,” said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “When you add dynamic virtual I/O to this mix, it takes the value of the entire back-end to a whole new level, compounding all the benefits each derives independently. This kind of packaged functionality is exactly what is required to make the ‘virtual data center’ a reality. When you boil it down, these are root capabilities to make everything from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to ‘utility’ computing to ‘greening up’ the data center legitimate and not just marketing hype.”

According to the press release, the Verari and Xsigo solution supports green IT by increasing compute density, enabling complete lights-out management, and allowing users to run more virtual machines per blade. Server I/O infrastructure may be reduced by 70 percent, while overall data center efficiency is increased by 100 percent.

“The increasing demand for Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise is driving unstructured data at more than 100 percent growth,” said Dan Gatti, senior vice president of Marketing, Verari Systems. “These applications require more storage and I/O connections, and as IT managers virtualize more servers, system performance is stressed. By working together, Verari and Xsigo are providing the best solution available on the market to address the requirement of high density computing and I/O and redefine the standard in enterprise computing.”

Nortel Spinoff Blade Network Technologies Aims To Virtualize Datacenter Racks

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BLADE Network Technologies, the data-center server-switch company spun off from Nortel two years ago, announces the availability of its new RackSwitch network virtualization switches—the only switches designed specifically for IBM’s iDataPlex, an inexpensive, custom-configured rack system featuring design innovations in cooling and efficiency to address Web 2.0-style computing (see iDataPlex coverage on GigaOM and Ars Technica).

BLADE Network Technologies

From the press release:

RackSwitch provides the high-bandwidth communications for IBM iDataPlex in today’s massive scale-out data centers that run I/O-intensive Web 2.0 applications and seek to make the most efficient use of the cloud computing model. Leveraging IBM and BLADE’s common blade server heritage, RackSwitch enables iDataPlex to increase the density networking within a single rack, use significantly less power for networking while maximizing bandwidth available to a single system, employ server-friendly cooling of the networking subsystem and provide 100-percent interoperability with existing network infrastructures. BLADE’s RackSwitch delivers standardized networking with the lowest latency and highest throughput, line-rate/non-blocking switching performance at 1 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit, with stacking and unified management.

Blade claims leadership in this particular market, having installed more than four million ports connecting more than 800,000 HP, IBM and NEC server blades, with products deployed across 26 market segments.

BLADE’s RackSwitch G8100, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 24 lossless, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) ports, is designed to equip iDataPlex in high-performance clusters that require 10 Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth with latency of 300 nanoseconds or less. BLADE’s RackSwitch G8000, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplinks and/or stacking, is designed for the use of iDataPlex for emerging high-volume cloud computing environments.

BLADE’s new RackSwitch products are available for iDataPlex in the US and Canada in June and globally by the end of the year at a starting price of US$5,500. The company will demonstrate the new switches at next week’s Interop conference in Las Vegas.

[Source: New York Times / NetworkWorld]

Virtualization all the way to Kyoto?

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Blade servers

Although blade servers are not directly related to virtualization, they are often considered since the Blade-concept also involves  around several kinds of consolidation (physical, logical, partitioning, etc…). Any one who ever stood behind an open rack filled with running blades can certainly testify about the generated heating. If you happen to pay the electricity bill, you certainly now about the extravagant energy cost! Also bear in mind that all this heat needs to be cooled down again requiring even more energy for your datacenter.  I wonder how long it will take before chipmakers will manage to include energy consumption in their equation of “moore’s law”. Now the technology sector is only starting to become a little more environmentally concerned, thus making the Kyoto goals more reachable. Intel recently announced Conroe, a desktop processor that is 40% faster than the current generation while using 40% less power and unveiled a server processor, Woodcrest, which boasts 80% more power and 35% less power consumption.

Energy consumption

Joan Goodchild at SearchWinIT.com & SearchDataCenter.com reports on the high energy consumption of blades.

“Blade servers, which are deemed the next big thing in hardware, are also a big energy drain in an enterprise, according to a recent study that looks at the latest advances in server technology. The results of the study by TheInfoPro (TIP) Inc., a New York research firm, reveal that these new server technologies have not provided heating and cooling advantages. TIP recently released the second half of a server study it conducted in 2005. The research examined the concerns of 133 server professionals.
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Despite their intense heat production, the slim servers are indeed a priority for IT managers. According to TIP’s survey, 62% of the respondents said they will spend more money on blade servers in the next year.
Bob Gill (TIP’s chief research officer) said blade vendors are realizing that excess power is a problem in terms of energy efficiency, and there is an initiative among them to create blades that are more energy-efficient. A number of groups have suggested that vendors should develop a standard for measuring energy efficiency and then develop technology accordingly. He also noted that virtualization technology would alleviate some problems with power efficiency and consolidation.Overall, the research found that power and energy pose the biggest challenges for server administrators. Thirty-eight percent of users said power requirements are the greatest challenge to the data center. Thirty-one percent cited cooling requirements, and just over 20% cited heat output.”It’s a vicious cycle,” said Gill. “While systems become denser, their energy efficiency has decreased. Devices are getting smaller and smaller, but they are getting hotter.”

Read the whole SearchDataCenter.com article at source.