The evolution of Blade Computing has moved from mere server consolidation to a way of managing IT assets which brings significant business benefits. This paper aims to explain those benefits to the business and IT manager, and show how blade computing can be implemented to save money and improve the way IT serves the business needs.
QUOCIRCA INSIGHT REPORT October 2007 Moving to a Blade World How Blade Computing improves your business Contacts: The evolution of Blade Computing has moved from mere server consolidation to a way of managing IT assets which brings significant business benefits. This paper Clive Longbottom aims to explain those benefits to the business and IT manager, and show how Quocirca Ltd blade computing can be implemented to save money and improve the way IT Tel +44 118 948 3360 serves the business needs. Clive.Longbottom@quocirca.com ? Blade computing is not just about a new server form factor Dennis Szubert Blade computing is a new computing architecture, providing a highly dense, scalable and Quocirca Ltd powerful flexible platform to support an organisation?s software needs. Tel +44 118 948 3360 ? Business benefits are manifold Dennis Szubert@quocirca.com Blade computing does not only provide the means for more compact centralised data Richard Phillips centres, but also increasingly addresses power and cooling concerns, as well as providing IBM a highly flexible, long term platform for an organisation?s computing needs Tel +44 ? The key to blade computing is in the engineering of the total system phillir@uk.ibm.com Each blade has to interact with other blades around it, and this requires specialised chassis with high performance connections ("busses") built in to the system. The chassis also needs to allow for adequate power and cooling provision. ? Each blade can be focused on a highly specific workload Although general purpose blades are available, specific blades aimed at security, caching, memory, storage and network connectivity are becoming more widely available. Also, each compute blade can run different operating systems, and can be tuned for specific workloads. ? Blade computing enables high levels of investment protection A blade chassis should be forwards and backwards compatible with the same vendor?s blades, so ensuring that new investments will be able to fit alongside existing ones. Also, older investments can be cascaded to support lower importance workloads, extending the lifetime value of individual blade components. ? The "ilities" are fully catered for with blades Availability, scalability and manageability are all catered for within a blade system. Each component is capable of being replaced with the overall system still running, and as REPORT NOTE: extra scalability is required, new components can be added dynamically to the system. This report has been written ? The overall cost of blade computing will be lower independently by Quocirca Blades make the most of utilising commodity sub-components - standard CPUs, disk Ltd to provide an analysis of drives, network interfaces and so on. Therefore, initial and ongoing costs are lower. the benefits of blade computing and how it can be Also, vendors at the sub-component and assembly level have worked hard on power implemented. The report requirements, such that the equivalent blade compute power will need a fraction of the draws on Quocirca's power (and therefore the cooling) of a standard server farm. Also, due to the density of extensive knowledge of the the system, data centres can be smaller, driving down the needs for space cooling even technology and business further. arenas, and provides advice ? Blade computing offers a flexible platform for utility computing on the approach that The dynamic nature of a blade computing platform means that it is ideal for providing organisations should take to the underpinnings for strategic technical approaches such as service oriented create a more effective and efficient environment for architectures (SOAs) or grid computing. future growth. Conclusions Blade computing creates great opportunities for businesses to optimise existing infrastructures and to prepare for new strategies such as SOA to support the business. The highly modular nature of a blade system means that investment protection will be high, while the flexible nature of the various blade components is well suited to meeting the ongoing dynamic changes within an organisation?s business processes. An independent report by Quocirca Ltd. www.quocirca.com Commissioned by IBM and Intel ... [download for more]
