This free white paper from the experts at IDC posits solutions to the key problems posed by data center crowding: geometrically growing power and cooling costs; the spiraling cost of management; and the sheer number of server footprints. Learn how blade servers can help by drastically cutting energy costs, even over traditional rack-optimized servers-letting data centers surpass their old power and cooling "ceilings" while reducing overhead and staying green; cutting down on deployment time, repairs, monitoring, and management-by enabling a single point of management for all blades inside the same chassis; minimizing real estate requirements with a space-saving design; and even slashing operational costs by virtually eliminating unplanned downtime, with high availability and redundancy to minimize processing interruptions. Blade server architecture is optimized for the future of business. Download this free IDC white paper and discover what it can do for yours.
W H I T E P AP E R V i r t u a l i z i n g t h e I n f r a s t r u c t u r e w i t h S u n x 8 6 B l a d e s Sponsored by: Sun Microsystems Inc. Jed Scaramella Jean S. Bozman April 2009
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y moc. Sun Microsystems has a long history of engineering systems that are optimized for cdi. network-enabled workloads. In the age of blade servers, this is translating into new ww designs for network enablement that improve the rate at which data is transmitted to w and from the blades themselves. Sun has innovated by developing a sophisticated 510 shared network interface card (NIC) called the Sun Blade 6000 Virtualized 4.53 Multi-Fabric 10GbE Network Express Module (Sun Blade Virtualized NEM), which 9.8 takes the place of embedded physical switches within the blade platform — and 05.F speeds the performance of the system, especially for enterprise applications accessing large data sets. 0028.2 This white paper looks at ongoing customer requirements for server platforms and a 78.8 number of pain points that have developed in recent years, as computer systems 05. have become packed more densely within the datacenter. Power and cooling costs P have risen at four times the growth rate of the actual costs of acquiring the servers AS themselves — and management costs have grown at eight times the acquisition-U 10 price growth rate. Beyond that, the sheer number of server footprints has multiplied 710 so quickly that the overall solution has become too complex to manage easily or cost- AM effectively. Cabling for rack-optimized servers has also become tangled — ,m figuratively and literally — meaning that any reduction in cabling would also improve ahg operational efficiency. nimarF IT staffers managing servers in the datacenter have also grown weary of configuring te many types of servers over and over — and they are looking for ways to visualize the ertS entire big-picture view of physical servers and logical servers with a single-pane-of- ne glass view that speeds remediation of any configuration or management issues. epS Reducing IT staff time associated with routine maintenance and management tasks 5 :s is another way to make operations more efficient and less costly. retrau This IDC white paper describes new server blades from Sun Microsystems and a qda new shared NIC technology embedded within the Sun Blade Virtualized NEM, which eH l are combined in a bladed server solution for the datacenter to address many of these abol operational issues. It also describes the competitive nature of the blade server G segment, which continues to be one of the fastest-growing segments within the worldwide server market and has attracted the attention of some of the largest IT companies worldwide.
S I T U AT I O N AN A L Y S I S
Blade servers have been the focus of much attention in the datacenter in recent years, given the value proposition they provide: unified management of multiple blades; support for different types of processors and operating systems "under the same roof"; and the prospect of power/cooling cost reductions per physical server, which leads to improved energy efficiency for the enterprises that deploy blade servers.
This section of the white paper explores the dimensions of the worldwide blade server market, as it describes the ways in which blade servers address important, top-of-mind challenges for reducing ongoing costs within the datacenter. O v e r v i e w o f C u s t o m e r R e q u i r e m e n t s
The Cost of IT In the continuing effort to support overall business demands, datacenter managers must overcome a distinct set of challenges. While it is still not completely clear what the recent economic slowdown will mean for IT spending during the next year, it is clear that IT organizations will be pressured to provide higher levels of service within increasing budgetary constraints.
Working against customers is the fact that the operational costs of running a datacenter have grown to eclipse the capital expenditure of the IT equipment. Due to a rapid explosion in the installed base of servers, datacenter budgets have been placed under duress by the personne... [download for more]
