Blade Servers for Small Enterprises

Transcription

1 About this research note: Product Comparison notes provide a detailed, head-to-head, analytical comparison of products in a given market in order to simplify the selection process. Blade Servers for Small Enterprises Publish Date: February 28, 2007 Blade servers are finding their way into enterprises of all sizes, with the smallest and the largest businesses leading the migration. Products from these four evaluated blade server vendors offer capabilities to support most small businesses. While any would be a good choice, their pricing sets them apart. Unless there are some unique features or functions not offered by a vendor, the deciding factor for most enterprises will be price, which usually places Dell in the driver s seat.

2 Executive Summary Enterprises are actively consolidating their data center computing resources. Blade servers offer high density computing environments in a small physical footprint and can now offer costs equivalent to, or lower than, rack-mounted solutions. The blade server products for the x86 market are reaching the commodity level in both features offered and pricing. This research note provides an evaluation of four primary blade server vendors and their products. This note discusses:» Factors contributing to the implementation of blade servers.» Discussion and graphic comparisons of the four leading blade server vendors with relative product and vendor rankings.» A summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each product.» Recommendations for product selection based on the enterprise s situation. Blade servers are widely used for server consolidation, high availability operations, mission critical applications and high performance computing. While most small enterprises initially focus on the server consolidation and high availability missions, some will require more than one of these options. The vendors evaluated provide products that span all of these areas, allowing for scalability as the enterprise requirements expand. Product Comparison 2

3 Market Overview Web-based services, open systems, and off-the-shelf applications have made microprocessor-based servers the mainstay of the small enterprise data center. The introduction of blade server technology by venture funded start-ups, such as RLX Technologies (assets acquired by HP) and Egenera, in the past five years altered the dynamics of the server market. In 2002, IBM introduced its first blade products subsequently followed by HP and Dell. The physical space savings from blade servers has led many enterprises to implement blade servers in their data centers. Blade servers, by utilizing pre-wired chassis and shared components, allow for dense packing of computing power with a dramatic reduction in external cabling. Consolidating a complete small enterprise data center into the space of a single 72-inch rack dramatically reduces the physical space needed to support the computational needs of an enterprise. Larger enterprises and greenfield installations in smaller business have been the first adopters of blade servers. The new generation of blade servers provides capital cost savings in situations where six or more servers are being purchased. Until recently blade technologies have demanded premium prices and focused on high performance computing environments. For data centers where space was not a factor, standard rack-mounted servers were less expensive. In the last 12 months, the cost of blade servers has dropped significantly, often making them less expensive than competing technologies. HP estimates that the cost to purchase an eight-server blade environment can be as much as 21% less than the equivalent rack-mounted server installation. In addition, vendors are now offering blade servers that are more appropriate for the small enterprise in size, performance, and cost. This cost savings will continue to grow as blade servers become more commoditized. While venture financed blade server vendors exist, such as Egenera and Panta Systems, the blade server market is dominated by the same vendors that dominate the server market for small enterprises IBM, HP, and Dell. Other large vendors are entering the blade server market. Hitachi announced their entry into the North American market in 2006 (with little impact as yet) with their enterprise class BladeSymphony while Bull and Fujitsu/Siemens (in an OEM agreement with Egenera) focus on Asian and European markets. The blade server market is growing rapidly year over year. With blade servers making up less than 10% of the total server sales, there is still major room to grow. Blade server uptake by small enterprises continues to outpace that of the mid-sized enterprise. This growth will continue along with the trend towards application virtualization and the need to provide more computer power in smaller spaces. Blade servers can greatly simplify the data center needs of the smallest enterprise; yet provide the processing needed for the most complex applications. Product Comparison 3

4 Evaluated Products Four major vendors of blade server products were selected for inclusion in this comparison report. All of the vendors evaluated in this note offer products that are within the budgets of most small enterprises and all offer excellent features and functions based on x86 processors. The small enterprise market blade servers are defined as offering:» Rack-mountable chassis.» Support for at least six processor blades.» Onboard management and I/O modules.» Shared power supplies and cooling fans. Price points beginning at about $15,000 for a basic 6 processor blade server (but reaching over $100,000 for high availability configurations). This is within the range of a small enterprise budget and comparable to the cost of a rack-mounted server solution with the equivalent processing power. The vendor products examined in this comparison are: Vendor Product Dell PowerEdge 1955 Egenera HP IBM BladeFrame ES BladeSystem c-class BladeCenter H While other vendors compete in the blade server market, they tend to focus exclusively on niche and industry specific markets or have very little market penetration in the small enterprise area. For these reasons they were not included in this evaluation. Sun Microsystems, specifically, was left out of this note due to its current blade server focus on the large enterprise market. Blade server purchases by small enterprises currently tend to be focused on server consolidation and, to a lesser extent, high availability operations. In the table below, the range of features/functions that are most critical for blade server purchases moves from left to right. While a small enterprise might require high performance computing (HPC), the majority of businesses will focus first on the physical consolidation features of blade servers. Product Comparison 4

5 Server Consolidation High Availability Mission Critical applications HPC Server consolidation with emphasis on physical space savings. SAN and NAS are optional. Data moved from DAS to SAN/NAS. Hot swap and redundant components required. SAN/NAS storage, full redundancy of components and I/O channels. Automated fail-over functions with clustering and virtualization. Dense, high performance computing clusters with high I/O features. Primary Requirements Specialized Requirements Unlike larger enterprises, small businesses generally have not implemented SAN within their facilities. As a result, the blade servers will be purchased with on-board disk storage, more closely duplicating the existing functionality of tower and rack-mounted servers. Some processors in the chassis can be allocated to the role of storage servers, providing shared storage facilities for all of the applications. These can run NAS or iscsi storage software, allowing the blade chassis to provide a complete data center in a single box. Of the vendors evaluated, only Egenera does not offer storage in the blade server, but relies on external SAN/NAS devices. Product Comparison 5

6 Decision Diamond Comparison The Info-Tech Decision Diamond illustrates how the various blade server vendors and their products meet the requirements of the small enterprise market. The Decision Diamond categorizes company/product combinations into the Leader Zone, Competitor Zone, or Follower Zone. Positioning within a zone is based on a two-dimensional composite score comparing the overall Vendor Index with the overall Product Index. Positioning is based on the relative rankings of the evaluated company/product combinations, not absolute scores. Thus a ranking in the Follower Zone does not necessarily indicate a bad product, but simply a product that fails to meet the standard established by the competition. Product Comparison 6

7 Vendor Index This index rates the overall stability/viability of the vendors as well as their ability to execute their corporate strategy and effectively compete in the small enterprise market. Rankings in the major categories are as follows: Vendor Stability/Viability Score Strategy Score Dell Egenera HP IBM Note: For a full explanation of these categories and symbols, please see Appendix A: Methodology. All of the vendors rated are financially stable (Egenera is a venture funded firm) and have very competitive and viable blade server strategies. Product Index This index rates the ability of the vendor to accurately meet the business and technology needs of the small enterprise through an understanding of product features and positioning. Rankings in the major categories are as follows: Vendor Pricing Ease of Use Features Support Architecture Dell Egenera HP IBM Product Comparison 7

8 Summary of Strengths & Weaknesses This table encapsulates the high-level strengths and weaknesses of the various vendor/product sets that were compared. For greater depth on each offering, please refer to the forthcoming ITA Premium Small Enterprise Blade Servers Product Evaluation research notes. Vendor Pros Cons Dell» Very focused on the small to mid-sized market for sales, marketing and service.» Provides in factory customization, configuration and testing of blade solutions.» Well known branding.» Price leader for server consolidation solutions. Egenera» Strictly a blade server vendor with tightly focused R&D.» Advanced blade architecture designed for fully virtualized, high density environments.» Fully integrated management tools.» Provides completely configured highavailability systems as their entry level offering.» Inconsistent in its support of blade technology.» Offers only Intel-based processors, limiting the client choice of CPUs.» Strictly a blade server vendor without significant ties to infrastructure or storage components.» The smallest of the vendors and venture funded.» Main focus on high availability and mission critical solutions that are not initial small enterprise requirements.» Highest initial price due to only offering high availability systems. Product Comparison 8

9 Vendor Pros Cons HP» Strong company with broad product line and good focus on small and mid-sized enterprises.» Excellent blade offering with state-of-the-art technology.» Good pricing on entry level systems. IBM» Strong company with broad product line.» Third generation blade server provides backwards compatibility and state-of-the art technology.» Heavily committed to blade technology.» c-class chassis not backwards compatible with previous p-class products.» Priced higher than equivalent entry level products.» Smaller enterprises are not the primary company focus. Leader Zone Product Highlights The three leaders in the blade server market, from their product and vendor positions as well as market share, are Dell, HP, and IBM. These companies introduced blade products in IBM and HP have continued to support and expand their product lines. Dell, while not dropping out of the market, did deemphasize their blade offerings until their release of the PowerEdge These vendors offer an integrated suite of management capabilities that work well with other servers in their product lines. Basic blade server products, with minimal high availability options, were evaluated. All of these vendors offer the ability to configure their products as high availability and mission critical platforms by adding options such as redundant management and I/O modules. Dell s new blade product, the PowerEdge 1955 introduced in 2006, resolves many of the issues that Dell had previously experienced in their products, including only offering an Intel Pentium processor blade. The PowerEdge 1955 is based on the same technology as their recently introduced PowerEdge 1950 rack-mounted server line. Product Comparison 9

10 Dell is quite focused on the small to mid-market and the PowerEdge is no exception to this. In a recent Info-Tech IRD survey, Dell blade server garnered 35% of the respondents orders. The pricing is aggressive, offering very good value for basic server consolidation operations, and can be upgraded to include redundant or high availability features as well. Dell provides basic provisioning and management capabilities for the blade servers, but relies on separately offered third party packages for operating system and application management. Besides pricing, Dell also leads in its ability to customize, configure, and test blade servers before they are shipped to the customer. For smaller enterprises using more generic configurations and applications, this can be a significant advantage by reducing the installation time. HP introduced its BladeSystem c-class product in 2006 replacing the p-class product. The c-class offers very high I/O capabilities from the blades to external devices; this includes the ability to incorporate Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches in the chassis or to utilize pass-through connections to an existing network infrastructure. The pricing also sets the HP product line into the leader zone slightly below Dell and above IBM. HP offers a wide range of options for processor blades, including both Intel and AMD CPUs. Management capabilities include provisioning, management and power management of the blade server. Optional software (from both HP and third-parties) is used for OS and application management. The IBM BladeCenter H, introduced in 2006, is a follow-on and forward compatible extension of the stillavailable BladeCenter. Existing blades can be used in the BladeCenter H, while new processor blades can take advantage of the higher I/O capabilities offered by the PCI Express (PCIe) lanes. The BladeCenter H is more expensive than the HP offering which resulted in its lower placement in the Leader Zone. IBM offers both Intel and AMD x86 processors as well as its proprietary Power CPU. The IBM management capabilities include provisioning, management and power management of the blade server. Optional software is used for OS and application management. Competitor Zone Product Highlights For this comparison Egenera was the sole competitor zone entrant. Egenera is the smallest vendor and is also the only venture-funded company in this evaluation and offers only blade server related products. Egenera is one of the early innovators in the blade server market and one of the survivors among the smaller vendors. Product Comparison 10

11 Egenera is focused heavily on high availability and mission critical computing. Its products ship with full redundancy capabilities built-in and the prices are higher than the basic products offered by the other vendors in this survey. As high availability and mission critical options are added to the other vendor products, Egenera becomes more price competitive. Its product is unique in this evaluation in that Egenera does not offer any on-board NIC, HBA or storage for their processor blades. All storage requirements, including system boot, are done from external sources, requiring additional third party devices. Unlike other vendors, the Egenera BladeFrame ES is fully configured for high availability at the outset and will not be appropriate for basic server consolidation environments. Egenera s architecture is the most appropriate for high availability or mission critical environments. Its overall product rating was reduced because of the lack of other product offerings, higher price, and more limited support capabilities due to the smaller company size. The Egenera Processing Area Network (PAN), PAN Manager, and integrated virtualization capabilities provide advanced management tools for its blade environment, but require the IT staff to learn an additional, non-standard management tool. However, the features and functionality of Egenera s products can clearly provide benefit to the small enterprise that needs a high availability or mission critical solution. Follower Zone Product Highlights For this comparison all four of the evaluated products fell within the Leader or Competitor Zones. As a result there are no products in the Follower Zone. Recommendations 1. Evaluate the business requirements. Business requirements drive the vendor selection for blade servers. For server consolidation or space savings the vendors in the Leader Zone provide excellent offerings. If commodity server operations are the primary driving force for blade integration, then the lower priced Dell offerings should be the first choice. A need for a high availability or mission critical computing environment may move the decision towards any of the vendors, including Egenera. 2. Select the processing capabilities to meet application needs. All of the vendors offer a variety of processing blades to meet most enterprise application requirements. Different processor blades can be included in a chassis, allowing a mix and match environment. If server virtualization is being used, select processor blades that include hardware assisted virtualization. Ensure that the processor blades have enough RAM to support all of the applications with minimal swapping to disk. Product Comparison 11

12 3. Sufficient Connectivity and Input/Output Bandwidth must be available. For integration into an existing network infrastructure the I/O modules from Dell, HP, and IBM provide good compatibility options as well as pass-through connections. Egenera s I/O solution does not require any third party support, as all external connections appear to be individual NIC and HBA devices. The I/O bandwidth offered by all of the evaluated products will match the needs of normal applications. Dell, HP, and IBM offer higher bandwidth I/O options by adding additional NICs and HBAs to their processor blades. Dell and Egenera limit the total bandwidth from the processor blades to the I/O modules to a respectable 10Gb/s. HP and IBM offer higher throughput if needed. Bandwidth also includes SAN/NAS connectivity, so these performance requirements must also be reviewed. 4. Evaluate products from all Zones. For the majority of small enterprises, the offerings from HP, IBM, and Dell meet the enterprise needs. For high availability, mission-critical, or HPC environments, the Egenera product can also be seriously considered. However, the price advantage and overall capabilities of the Dell offering places it in the small enterprise leader zone for good reason. 5. Get price quotes from all vendors. This market is extremely competitive and pricing is always changing. Depending on the specific configuration and system requirements, Dell may not always be the most cost effective. Carefully define the enterprise requirements and get pricing from all vendors. Bottom Line Blade servers are finding their way into enterprises of all sizes, with the smallest and the largest businesses leading the migration. Products from these four evaluated blade server vendors offer capabilities to support most small businesses. While any would be a good choice, their pricing sets them apart. Unless there are some unique features or functions not offered by a vendor, the deciding factor for most enterprises will be price, which usually places Dell in the driver s seat. Product Comparison 12

13 Appendix A: Methodology Vendor Stability/Viability is a measure that traditionally favors the larger manufacturers and the findings are no different in this case. The vendors ranked highest in this category are IBM and HP, both large vendors with diverse product offerings. Dell, also a major vendor, ranked slightly lower, but still very high. Egenera, the only venture-funded firm represented, is newer and has no public record of its growth or profitability. Venture-funded firms tend to carry higher risk of failure then publicly traded companies. Vendor Stability Weight Revenue and Profitability 20% Ability to Fund Growth 10% Breadth of Market and Products 15% Strength of Brand and Market Presence 15% Leadership Quality and Track Record 10% Staffing Experience and Skill Levels 10% Level of Intellectual Capital 10% Track Record of Success 10% Vendor Strategy is a measure that traditionally favors the more focused and/or market-specific vendors over those vendors with more diversified portfolios. In this study this didn t necessarily hold. In particular HP and IBM ranked quite high based on their clear commitment to blade technologies. Because of Dell s focus on the small to mid-market it received a high rating in this evaluation. Egenera, which does nothing but blade servers, focuses heavy toward mission critical and high availability computing. As these are not necessarily the primary focus for the small enterprise when moving to blade servers, this reduced Egenera s overall score. Product Comparison 13

14 Vendor Strategy Weight Quality of Client Service and Support 15% Quality of Products and/or Services 15% Level of R&D Spending 10% Target Market Applicability 20% Accuracy of Market Perception 10% Clarity of Sales Marketing Strategy 20% Effectiveness of the Sales and Marketing Strategy 10% The purchase price is the only component of the Product Pricing category considered in this evaluation. Each vendor s product offering was evaluated using a configuration with six x86 processor blades. This included the chassis, management modules, processing blades and any required I/O components. Dell is the low price vendor for this evaluation. Dell offers a fully configured and tested blade server configuration based on commodity components with equivalent pricing. All vendors offer a variety of options for expanding the capabilities of their blade servers. These extensions were not considered in the initial price evaluation since not all enterprises will need them. Egenera does not break out their component pricing separately, but offers completely customized, fully redundant high availability systems. For this evaluation their entry level, fully configured blade server was used for the pricing. Product Pricing Weight Purchase Price 100% Basic Support Price 0% Enhanced Support Price 0% License Terms & Conditions 0% Product Comparison 14

15 Ease of Use is a measure of both the ease with which the system can be set up and its ease of operation. There are no user components so these were all not used in this evaluation. All of the products scored well in the ease of setup since most functions are equivalent to installing any new server. Egenera scored lower in this rating than the others due to the use of their proprietary PAN Management software for all management functions. While excellent for larger installations, this tool requires an additional learning curve for basic configurations that is not needed by the other vendor products. Product Ease of Use Weight Ease of Setup, Administrator Component 60% Ease of Setup, User Component 0% Ease of Use, Administrator Component 40% Ease of Use, User Component 0% Product Features are a broad category that includes the typical feeds and speeds information for baseline capabilities, as well as any enhanced or differentiating capabilities. On top of these, performance/reliability and scalability are also measured to give an indication of the all-around capabilities of the device. Dell, HP and IBM all scored well in this weighting due to the availability of both basic and enhanced features. Egenera was rated lower since it does not offer a product focused on the base, non-high availability functionality that would be an initial choice of most small enterprise data centers. Product Features Weight Basic/Baseline Features 25% Enhanced/Differentiation Features 25% Performance/Reliability 25% Scalability 25% Product Comparison 15

16 The Product Support category is where the various support capabilities are evaluated and ranked. While warranty support is an aspect of this category it was not evaluated as a separate item for these products. All vendors did well in this area, but Dell, with its custom configuration and testing support, scored slightly higher than the other vendors. Product Support Weight Baseline Support 60% Enhanced Support Options 40% Base Warranty 0% Extended Warranty 0% The Product Architecture category for blade servers measures the maturity of the product and the breadth of supported platforms. For blade servers this latter item focuses primarily on third party offerings, such as I/O modules, and the range of different processor blades offered. Given that all of these server products integrate well into existing architectures, the Integration with Vendor s Other Products and Integration with Competitive Products were rated at only 10% each. The architecture of all vendors rates well. Although each vendor uses a different approach to their products, all are mature, functional and expandable. The focus for most small enterprises is on x86 platforms and all vendors offer a variety of processor options. IBM ranked slightly higher than the others due to the availability of its Power processor technology. Although most small enterprises will not need that technology, the fact that it is available provides some additional breadth to the IBM offering. Product Architecture Weight Maturity of Architecture 50% Integration with Vendor s Other Products 10% Integration with Competitive Products 10% Breadth of Supported Platforms 30% Product Comparison 16

17 Harvey Balls represent a relative score from zero to four with four being the top score. Info-Tech provides IT research and advice to more than 21,000 IT professionals worldwide. Our practical, actionable research is specifically designed to have a clear and direct impact on your organization. Info-Tech's products and services help our clients work faster and more effectively. Our research improves the IT decision-making process, expedites critical IT projects, and helps our clients keep current enabling them to achieve greater personal and corporate success. More About Info-Tech Product Comparison 17