February 07, 2000, Issue: 1603
Section: Technology
Get the Skinny on Rackmount Servers -- Rackmount server
makers are remodeling their lines, keeping service providers
in mind
Jan Stafford
Forget The Zone diet plan or Jenny Craig's new spokeswoman. The real
slenderizing revolution is taking place in the e-business data center. Today,
Internet and application service providers want their servers slim, stacked,
cheap and easy. The parallels with current events abound, as these demands
from the leaders of the Internet world have brought a bit player into a starring
role. Nowadays, the unglamorous rackmount server is in "the zone" as the
center of attention.
"Major vendors are focusing more attention on rackmount servers," says Ed
Wagner, an analyst for Dataquest Inc., San Jose. In the past, many vendors
had only a few rackmount models in their lines and did not promote them
heavily. "That's changed dramatically," Wagner says. "Right now, racks are
the way to go for the service provider (SP) market."
Compaq Computer Corp. is the latest vendor to remodel its lines with SPs in
mind, following the course laid last year by Sun Microsystems Inc. with the
Netra t1 and IBM Corp. with its RS/6000 B50. Unveiled Jan. 31, the new
ProLiant DL servers put heavy-metal computing power and light-rock
manageability into small, rackmountable boxes.
"The Internet data center is expanding the boundaries beyond the functions
that have traditionally been in the server," says Paul Gottsegen, director of
Compaq's North American Industry Standard Server Division. "SPs have an
overall need for radical simplification, so we redesigned our server lines to
simplify product choice and usage."
Coming this spring will be Hewlett-Packard Co.'s radically redesigned
entry-level server line for SPs. "We're taking a long, hard look at what the
Internet data center needs to be," says Les Wilson, HP worldwide
mission-critical solutions manager for enterprise and Web infrastructure.
"Those needs are obviously very different from enterprise data centers of a
few years ago."
In a way, the server vendors have created a monster. The availability of
high-performance, relatively low-cost servers enabled the whole Internet
market explosion. "Without reliable servers, the Internet would still be in the
hands of corporations and organizations with mainframes," Wagner says.
Because server vendors enabled the mainstreaming of the Internet, they now
have to feed the monster with servers tailored to its needs.
"SPs need to be able to add new services fast while providing high levels of
network availability," says David Lawler, Sun Microsystems' Netra t1 product
line manager. "They need to keep costs under control by making the most of
existing facilities, equipment and staff." That means servers designed for SPs
must be small, reliable, easy to use, and easy to expand and scale.
They Need Their Space
A top priority for Internet data centers is conserving space. "A lot of ISPs are
the typical garage-space start-ups," says Lou Boffa, marketing manager, IBM
peripheral products and ISP practices for KeyLink Systems, a distributor in
Cleveland. "Even heavily funded SPs find that data center space is at a
premium."
Servers can be as slender as 1.75 inches high. Introduced last June, Sun's
Netra t1 server is one unit (1.75 inches) high. Forty can be stacked in a single
19-inch rack. With Compaq's new ProLiant DL380 3U (5.25-inch) server,
14 servers can be stacked in a standard Compaq 42U rack. As many as 20
IBM RS/6000 B50 3U servers, 60 discrete network connections and more
than 720 GB of internal storage can be placed in a 19-inch rack.
Usually, calling something "dense" is an insult. In rackmount servers, however,
being dense is "a good thing," as Martha Stewart would say. Thus, the "D" in
Compaq's new DL line stands for dense.
"Whereas performance was measured in TPCC benchmarks, now it's
measured in performance density," says HP's Wilson.
The raw performance of Compaq's rackmounted DL servers is identical to
sister products in the freestanding or tower form factor, says Gottsegen. New
performance enhancements added to the Compaq DL380 are a 733-MHz,
Intel Pentium III processor, 133-MHz GTL bus, RCC 3.0 LE chipset and
high-performance 133-MHz SDRAM.
Radical simplification and economics also determine the SP's fondness for
single- or dual-processor servers. "SPs are buying a lot of inexpensive
two-bys, the sweet spot in the server market today, rather than splurging on
eight-bys," says Wagner.
"Having one single processor server for every discrete application implifies
management," says Gottsegen. Whereas vertical scalability has been the focus
in server functionality in the past, Internet data centers want small form factor,
low-priced servers that have horizontal scalability, which allows SPs to
increase throughput by running the same service on several systems at the
same time.
Of course, some applications-such as database processing or complex mail
serving-don't benefit from horizontal scaling. "These do well with vertical
scalability offered by symmetrical multiprocessing systems, such as the Sun
Enterprise 6500 server," says Lawler.
Radical simplification has driven home the "keep it simple, stupid" maxim in
designing servers that are easy to deploy, manage and expand. In Internet
data centers, manpower is as crunched as space is. "Service providers want
stuff built in: built-in Fast Ethernet connectors, built-in remote manageability,
built-in remote power on/power off, automatic server restart, and on and on,"
says Lawler. "Reducing operator intervention is a must."
Easy And Serviceable
Ease-of-management features are present in most SP servers today. "This
enables systems integrators for Web servers to get the same interface they'd
get from the monitor attached to the server itself," says Gottsegen.
Even making servers easy to put into racks is important. Sun's Netra t1
chassis has cable hooks on the back so SPs don't have to tie down servers by
hooking ties on fan holes, for example.
Serviceability features on new rack-mount servers include front-accessible,
hot-pluggable SCSI disk drives that allow easy service and maintenance
without interrupting system operation.
"The biggest downtime cause is people," says Wagner. "The design of the box
has to make it easy to administer for people who are, frankly, not as
well-trained as IT managers once were."
Those same people have to be able to expand systems quickly.
"Easy-to-access expansion slots are a must," says KeyLink's Boffa.
Lower cost and simpler operating systems have helped Intel-based servers
"make great gains" over Unix-based ones, Wagner says. The Linux flavor of
Unix OS could save the day for Unix.
Rackmounted, single-purpose appliance servers are the next frontier. Compaq
and Maxtor Corp., among others, plan to make announcements soon. |
