IDC: Steep Drop in Server Sales

Revenue in the worldwide server market declined 24.5 percent year over year to $9.9 billion in the first quarter of 2009, according to IDC’s Quarterly Server Tracker, which found the lowest quarterly server revenue in the survey’s 12-year history.

“Market conditions worsened in all geographic regions during the first quarter as customers of all types pulled back on both new strategic IT projects and ongoing infrastructure refresh initiatives,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president of Enterprise Platforms at IDC. “Most enterprise organizations are deferring new IT procurements and instead focusing on extending server lifecycles and improving existing asset utilization.”

Cisco Unveils Blade Server Memory, Pricing

Cisco Systems continued its gradual rollout of its Unified Computing System today, outlining memory enhancements in its new blade server and centralized management. Cisco also discussed pricing, emphasizing that the substantial investment required for its Nexus switches will enable savings that ripple throughout the next-generation data center.

But even as Cisco was unveiling its new technology and pricing, the vendor lanscape continued to shift around it, as reports emerged that IBM plans to forge a deeper relationship with Cisco rival Brocade Systems (BRCD). Big Blue said it would begin selling switches and routers from Foundry Networks, which Brocade acquired last year. 

Cisco’s news today included some details of memory enhancements for Cisco blade servers using Intel’s Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) processor, which hadn’t been announced when Cisco launched its UCS initiative on  March 16.

Cisco said it has boosted the memory capacity of the Xeon 5500, using a custom ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) to provide the processor with a four-fold increase in the number of memory modules it can access. This expands a UCS Xeon 5500 system from 144GB to 384GB, and also gives users the option of using more affrodable memory configurations.

First Look at Cisco’s New Blade Server

Here’s a first look at the new server product from Cisco Systems. The new Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) CS B-Series blades are based on the future Intel Nehalem (the next generation Xeon processor). Cisco says the blades offer patented extended memory technology to support applications with large data sets, and will allow significantly more Virtual Machines per server. Each blade server chassis utilizes network adapters for access to the unified fabric. The new UCS system is being discussed now in a webcast.

Cisco’s product information is light on details about the server, with CEO John Chambers saying additional details would follow in early April. Cisco’s 6U blade server chassis can hold either eight half-slot servers or four full 1U servers, along with two fabric extenders.

Server Spending Slows, But Blades Benefit

Worldwide server unit shipments in the fourth quarter of 2008 declined 12 percent from a year earlier, while revenue was down 14 percent to $13.5 billion, according to new data from IDC.  “All server vendors, geographies, and technology segments were impacted significantly as the global recession gained momentum and market conditions weakened as the quarter progressed,” said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president of IDC’s Enterprise Platforms Group. “It now appears the slowdown will worsen before any improvement is seen in late 2009 or early 2010.”

IBM maintained the lead in overall server market share with 36.3 percent, according to IDC, followed by HP (29.0 percent), Dell (10.6 percent) and Sun Microsystems (9.3 percent).

The Battle for the Data Center

After months of rumors, Cisco has confirmed that it will soon launch a server product line. Cisco CTO Pamasree Warrior made it official in a New York Times story, which looked at how the move will impact Cisco’s partnerships with IBM, HP and Dell.

“Industry experts say that Cisco’s push into the server market will disrupt that comfortable symbiosis and could cause an all-out war among the tech titans for one another’s customers,” Ashlee Vance wrote.

There will be much more to write about Cisco’s server initiatives in months to come. But if Cisco’s vision for “unified computing” becomes a reality, it will have broader implications for data center staffing and culture, as noted by Gartner’s Lydia Leong.

HP Launches Thermal Logic Energy Tools

HP today rolled out Thermal Logic, a portfolio of tools to give HP BladeSystem users  more precise control over power and cooling. The initiative reflects server vendors continuing focus on offerings to boost energy efficiency in high-density enterprise data centers. 

Thermal Logic is a set of energy measurement and management technologies HP has built into its products, and includes several new wrinkles for data center managers:

• HP Dynamic Power Capping, which allows companies to control the amount of power used by each server, which can reduce costly overprovisioning of power. HP monitoring software allows users to confirm peak usage for each server and cap at that level, rather than relying on guesstimates based on nameplate power capacity. Dynamic Power Capping is expected to be available in mid-December.
• A new cooling architecture, HP Parallel Redundant Scalable Enterprise Cooling (PARSEC), which divides each BladeSystem enclosure into multiple zones with dedicated fans, allowing users to make better use of variable fan speeds. This allows custom configurations for servers and storage, rather than adapting all fans to one high-powered blade.
• HP Active Cool fans, which feature a new design based on aircraft technology that the company says can cool 16 blades using just 100 watts of power. HP says it has applied for multiple patents covering the new fan technology.

“With these new solutions from HP, customers are able to drive down data center costs by reducing energy consumption and, at the same time, minimize environmental impact,” said Peter Gross, chief executive officer, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, an HP company. “HP’s Green Business Technology initiative is built on decades of innovation and experience in data center design and deployment, resulting in solutions that empower CIOs to turn energy efficiency into business benefits that impact the bottom line.” 

Note: HP does not indicate how many PARSECs are needed to complete the Kessel Run.

Blade Servers and the Density Dilemma

Are blade servers the answer? That depends upon the question, and some data center operators should be asking more questions before looking to blades, according to Microsoft’s James Hamilton. High-density blade server installations can create as many problems as they solve, James argues in a thorough examination of server density on his Perspectives blog.

Hamilton points out that filling racks with blade servers can result in rack power loads of 25kW and beyond, which usually leads to liquid cooling solutions - which may not have been factored into the original cost/benefit analysis for the blade servers. It’s an informative look at power, space, cooling and PUE in evaluating the cost of optimizing your data center.

“I’m not saying that there aren’t good reason to buy high density server designs,” Hamilton writes. “I’ve seen many. What I’m arguing is that many folks that purchase blades, don’t need them. The arguments explaining the higher value often don’t stand scrutiny. Many experience cooling problems after purchasing blade racks. … In short, many data center purchases don’t really get the ‘work done per dollar’ scrutiny that they should get.”

Rackable to Offer IBM BladeCenter in ICE Cube

Rackable Systems (RACK) will offer customers the option of packing its ICE Cube data center container with IBM BladeCenter servers, the two companies said today. The move is the latest step toward a more open approach to containers and will provide more choice to customers shopping for containers. It may also focus attention on container design as a differentiator between the growing number of vendor options.

Rackable previously had only offered the ICE Cube container with its own custom rackmount servers, following the lead of the Sun MD (Blackbox) from Sun Microsystems’ (JAVA). Subsequent products from Verari Systems and HP have offered the option of packing other vendors’ gear in their containers.

In a conference call with analysts in May, Rackable CEO Mark Barrenechea discussed the ICE Cube as a “deployment option” - another form factor for Rackable’s customers. The new agreement, in which IBM BladeCenter will be the only blade server platform available for custom ICE Cube implementations, reflects a more strategic approach to the container.