Cisco announced on Jan. 26, 2012 a field replacement program for Cisco UCS B440 Blade Servers.  Cisco Field Notice FN – 63430 describes the problem as a failure of a MOSFET, or Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor, power transistor on the blade server that can cause the component to overheat and emit a short flash which could lead to complete board failure.  According to Cisco.com, Cisco is directly contacting UCS B440 Blade Server customers and will replace UCS B440 Blade Servers currently deployed at customer sites.  Cisco is making UCS B440 Blade Server hardware modifications, and a hardware replacement program has been launched.

To identify the affected systems and any available workaround, please visit the Cisco Field Notice at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/ts/fn/634/fn63430.html

• Display is approximately 28” x 10.3” x 1.7” and weighs 18lbs.
• Each case is exactly the same for all blade servers being auctioned.
• Plaques will show the Realm Name and Mo/Yr of start and end date.
• The copy on the plaque varies.  An example of one reads: Blizzard Entertainment has carefully preserved and archived our retired server blades, releasing only a limited number for a noble cause. To us, this server blade is more than just hardware: within the circuits and hard drive, a world of magic, adventure, and friendship thrived. From fishing in quiet lakes to defeating Arthas in Icecrown Citadel, this blade was home to thousands of immersive experiences across the world of Azeroth and beyond. We thank you for the safekeeping of this important part of history.
• The signatures are printed on the plaque are not original and include the World of Warcraft team.

Current bids range from $107 to $225.  Details of the blade server configuration is not provided, however I would speculate, 2 x Intel 5400 CPUs with 64GB of RAM and 6 Network Interface Cards (NICs.)  UPDATE – one of our readers, Marrtins, commented below that he received a response from the auction that, “I  apologize but these server blades are non-working. All memory has been  wiped and they are non-functioning. They are strictly pieces of art.”

The auction runs through January 30, so go to http://stores.ebay.com/Blizzard-Blade-Servers and place your bids while you can!

In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that engineers would be able to double the number of components on a microchip every two years.  Known as Moore’s law, his prediction has come true – processors are continuing to become faster each year while the components are becoming smaller and smaller.  In the footprint of the original ENIAC computer, we can today fit thousands of CPUs that offer a trillion more computes per seconds at a fraction of the cost.  This continued trend is allowing server manufactures to shrink the footprint of the typical x86 blade server allowing more I/O expansion, more CPUs and more memory.  Will this continued trend allow blade servers to gain market share, or could it possibly be the end of rack servers?  My vision of the next generation data center could answer that question. 

Before I begin, I want to emphasize that although I work for Dell, these ideas that I’ve come up with through my experience in the blade server market and from discussions with industry peers.  They are my personal visions and do not reflect those of Dell nor are the ideas mentioned below limited to Dell products and technology. 

The First Evolution of the Blade Server – Less I/O Expansion
Last November I wrote an article of my first vision of “The Blade Server of the Future” on CRN.com.  In the article, I described two future evolutions of the blade server.  The first was the integration of a shared storage environment (below).  While the image depicts the HP BladeSystem C7000 modified with storage, my idea stems from the increase of onboard NICs driving a lot of the individual blade traffic.  With 10Gb / CNA technologies being introduced as a standard offering, and with 40Gb Ethernet around the corner, the additional mezzanine cards and I/O expansion found on today’s blade server technology may not be required in the near future.  The space freed up from the removal of the un-needed I/O bays could be used for something like an integrated storage area network, or perhaps for PCI expansion.

The Next Evolution of the Blade Server – External I/O Expansion
PCI expansion is another possible evolution within the blade server market.  As CPUs continue to shrink, the internal real estate of blade servers increase, allowing for more memory expansion.  However, as more memory is added, less room for I/O cards is available.  While I mention that additional I/O may not be needed on blade servers with the standardization of large onboard Ethernet NICs, the reality is that as you cram more into a blade server, the more I/O will be required.  I believe we’ll see external I/O expansion become standard in future evolutions of blade servers.  Users of RISC technologies will be quick to identify that external I/O is nothing new and in fact, even in the x86 space has been an option through Xsigo.com however my vision is that the external capability would be an industry standard like USB or HDMI.  While the idea of a standardized external I/O capability like shown in the image below is probably more of a dream than a reality, it leads to my long term vision of where blade servers will eventually evolve to.

The Future of the Blade Server – Modular Everything
Blade servers rely on connectivity to the outside world through a mid-plane and I/O modules.  They are containerized within the chassis that houses them allowing them to be an ecosystem for compute resources.  What if we took the idea of how the blades connect to the blade chassis and extended it to an entire rack?  Imagine having a shelf of blade servers that docked directly to a rack midplane (aka a “rackplane”).  In fact, anything could be designed with this connectivity: storage trays, PCIe trays, power trays.  What ever technology you need, be it compute power, storage or I/O could be added as needed.   The beauty of this design is that the compute nodes could communicate with the storage nodes at “line speed” without the need for point-to-point cabling because they are all tied into the “rackplane”.  Here’s what I think it would look like:

On the front side of the modular rack, a user would have the option to plug in whatever is needed.  For servers, I envision half-size blade servers housed in a 1 or 2U shelf.  The shelf could hold any number of servers, but I would expect that a shelf of 8 – 12 servers would be ideal.  Keep in mind, in this vision, all we need are CPUs and memory inside of a “blade server” so the physical footprint of the future blade server could be the size of today’s full-length PCIe card.  Each of the shelves, whether they are servers, storage or compute, would have docking connectors similar to what we see on today’s blade servers but on a much larger scale.  On the back side of the modular rack, you would have the option to add in battery protection (UPS), cooling and of course, I/O connectivity to your data center core fabrics. 

One of the most obvious disadvantages of this design is that if you had a problem with your “RackPlane”, it would take a lot of resources off line.  While that would be the case, I would expect that the design would have multiple rackplanes in place that would be serviceable.  Of course, if the racks were stacked side-by-side with other racks, that could pose a problem – but hey, I’m just envisioning the future, I’m not designing it…

What are your thoughts on this?  Am I totally crazy, or do you think we could see this in the next 10 years?  I’d love your thoughts, comments or arguments.   Thanks for reading.

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market.

If you are a reader of BladesMadeSimple, you are no stranger to Dell’s Network Daughter Card (NDC), but if it is a new term for you, let me give you the basics. Up until now, blade servers came with network interface cards (NICs) pre-installed as part of the motherboard.  Most servers came standard with Dual-port 1Gb Ethernet NICs on the motherboard, so if you invested into a 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) or other converged technologies, the onboard NICs were stuck at 1Gb Ethernet.  As technology advanced and 10Gb Ethernet became more prevalent in the data center, blade servers entered the market with 10GbE standard on the motherboard.  If, however, you weren’t implementing 10GbE then you found yourself paying for technology that you couldn’t use.  Basically, what ever came standard on the motherboard is what you were stuck with – until now.

 Dell has broken the long-standing design concept of embedding the LAN onto the motherboard (aka LOM) and replaced it with a small, removable mezzanine card called a Network Daughter Card, or NDC.  The NDC provides the buyer with a flexibility of choosing what they want ( 4 x 1GbE, 2 x 10GbE or 2 x Converged Network Adapter.)  This innovation is exciting to me, as it not only provides a possible upgrade path to future technologies, but it also changes the way we look at server technology.  No longer does the on-board NIC have to be integrated onto the motherboard, but it can be a removable card that can be easily replaced or upgraded.  In a few years when this is standard architecture on every x86 server, remember where you saw it first.

But wait – there’s more.  In addition the NDC is the first adapter to offer the industry’s first network partitioning, or “NPAR” scheme that makes it possible to split the 10GbE pipe while working with any of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e 10GbE Ethernet Switch Modules.  So, what’s the big deal about NPAR?  Let me explain.

With the increased amount of virtualization in the data center, combined with an increase in data and cloud computing, the network’s efficiency is becoming compromised driving many organizations to embrace a 10GbE network.  While moving to a more robust 10GbE environment may be ideal for an organization, it also brings challenges like ensuring that the appropriate bandwidth for all resources is available in both the physical and virtual environments.  This is where NPAR comes in.  Network Partitioning allows for administrators to split up  the 10GbE pipes on the NDC into 4 separate partitions or physical functions and allocate bandwidth and resources as needed.  Each of the four partitions is an actual PCI Express function that appears in the blade server’s system ROM, O/S or virtual O/S as a separate physical NIC. 

Each partition can support networking features such as:

• TCP checksum offload
• Large send offload
• Transparent Packet Aggregation (TPA)
• Multiqueue receive-side scaling
• VM queue (VMQ) feature of the Microsoft® Hyper-V™ hypervisor
• Internet SCSI (iSCSI) HBA
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) HBA.

Administrators can enable/disable any of the features per partition and they configure a partition to run iSCSI, FCoE, and TCP/ IP Offload Engine (TOE) simultaneously.

Each of the four partitions per port (8 per NDC) can be set up with a specific size and a specific weight.  In the example shown on the above, you see that Physical Port 1 has 4 partitions:

• Partition 1 (red) = 2Gbps, running as an iSCSI HBA on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 2 (orange) = 2Gbps, running as an FCoE HBA on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 3 (green) = 1Gbps, running TOE on on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
• Partition 4 (blue) = 5Gbps, running as a Layer 2 NIC on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

Each partition’s “Maximum Bandwidth” can be set to any increment of 100Mbps (or .1Gbps) up to 10000 Mbps or 10 Gbps.  Also, note, this is for send/transmit only.  The receive direction bandwidth is always 10 Gbps.

Furthermore, admins can configure the weighting of each partition to provide increased bandwidth presence when an application requires it.  In the example above, Physical Port 2 has the “Relative Bandwidth Weight” on all 4 partitions set for an equal weight at 25% – giving each port equal weight.  If, however VMkernel NIC 1 (red) needed to have more weight, or priority, over the other NICs, we could set the weight to 100% giving that port top priority.

If you are feeling really adventurous, you can oversubscribe a port.  This is accomplished by setting the 4 partitions of that single port to having a Maximum Bandwidth setting of more than 100%.  This allows each of the partitions to take as much bandwidth as allowed as their individual traffic flow needs change – based on the Relative Bandwidth Weight assigned.  Take a look at the following:

The example above shows each of the four partitions’ Maximum Bandwidth (shown in .1 increments so 10 = 1 Gbps)

• Partition 1 = 1 Gbps
• Partition 2 = 1 Gbps
• Partition 3 = 8 Gbps
• Partition 4 = 8 Gpbs

Total for all 4 partitions = 18 Gbps, which means the port is 80% (8 Gbps) oversubscribed.

Some additional rules to note from the NPAR User’s Manual:

• For Microsoft Windows Server, you can have the Ethernet Protocol enabled on all, some, or none of the four partitions on an individual port.
• For Linux OSs, the Ethernet protocol will always be enabled (even if disabled in Dell Unified Server Configuration screen).
• A maximum of two iSCSI Offload Protocols (HBA) can be enabled over any of the four available partitions of a single port. For simplicity, it is recommended to always using the first two partitions of a port for any offload protocols.
• For Microsoft Windows Server , the Ethernet protocol does not have to be enabled for the iSCSI offload protocol to be enabled and used on a specific partition.

For more information on the Network Partitioning capabilities of the Dell Network Daughter Card, check out the white paper at: Dell Broadcom NPAR White Paper

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market.

I’ve learned over the years that it is very easy to focus on the feeds and speeds of a server while overlooking features that truly differentiate.  When you take a look under the covers, a server’s CPU and memory are going to be equal to the competition, so the innovation that goes into the server is where the focus should be.  On Dell’s community blog, Rob Bradfield, a Senior Blade Server Product Line Consultant in Dell’s Enterprise Product Group, discusses some of the innovation and reliability that goes into Dell blade servers.  I encourage you to take a look at Rob’s blog post at http://dell.to/mXE7iJ.

I also want to highlight some other innovations that Dell is offering on certain blade servers:

Network Daughter Card (NDC) – unlike the network interface cards built into the blade server motherboard, the NDC is a daughter card that offers choices of 4 x 1Gb NICs, 10Gb NICs or CNA.  The NDC is a new feature and not offered on every blade server, but for more info, check out this earlier blog post I wrote: http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/05/a-review-of-the-dell-poweredge-m710-hd-blade-server/

Network Interface Card Partitioning  (NPAR) – this is a feature found on certain blade server models that allows you to divide up the onboard 10Gb NICs into “virtual NICs”.  The cool thing is this can be performed without a specific network I/O module so you don’t have to worry about being locked into any specific I/O module and without the use of any CPU overhead or specialized software.   Read more about this at http://bladesmadesimple.com/2011/04/dellapril5announcements/.

Let me put these innovative features into a real life scenario (note – this is simply an example and doesn’t confirm or deny any future product release from Dell.)  Imagine today you invest into a blade server with a 10Gb NDC using NPAR to split up the 10Gb pipe into smaller 1Gb virtual NICs. and 10Gb capable Ethernet I/O Module and in 18 months, a 40Gb Ethernet Switch module comes out.  You could theoretically replace the NDC and the Ethernet module with the 40Gb flavor (if/when it ever is available)

The next time you choose a server, look beyond the speeds and feeds and look at the innovation, the reliability and the value the server can offer.

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market.

I always find it interesting to hear how customers are using blade server technology “in the real world.”   Brickworks, a $1.7 billion Australian brick company with over 60 locations and 1,000 employees, recently provided The Australian with details about how Citrix XenApp Enterprise combined with VMware vSphere and Dell rack and blade servers helped develop a more efficient workplace for its employees.  Read the full article at:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/brickworks-builds-solid-system-using-citrix/story-e6frgakx-1226129943367

Kevin Houston is the founder of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 14 plus years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.    Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global 500 market. 

#IWorkForDell

If you are wondering what is new about BladesMadeSimple.com besides my recent announcement – the answer is the site’s look.  Hopefully you will find the new look easier to navigate than the previous theme, but if you find any issues, please let me know at bladesmadesimple AT gmail.com.

Change is coming to BladesMadeSimple.com.  I created this site out of my passion for the blade server technology in late 2009.  Over the years, I have worked toward creating a site that can be a repository for blade server news and information.  The site has been my hobby and I have put hours of effort into creating content without receiving a single penny from outside advertising (although I have been on several invitation-only blogger events.) One of the things I worked hard for was to be a neutral voice, not leaning toward any one hardware vendor, but that’s where the change is coming. I have been in the “technology reseller” role industry since 1997 where I have had to be knowledgeable on everything from PCs to printers to software to enterprise servers for all the Tier 1 vendors.  As you can imagine, having to be expert on all of those areas takes its toll over the years, so I decided to make a change in my career and get out of the reseller world.  On Monday, August 15, I will be moving to Dell as a server specialist (aka Next Generation Data Center Specialist) supporting Global 500 customer accounts on the East coast of the U.S.  This role exposes me to some of the biggest data center environments in the world and it lets me narrow my focus to allow me to promote Dell.  This is a huge opportunity for me, but it obviously also impacts this site.  

Over the past couple of years, I’ve seen my site traffic increase to over 140,000 views this year with an average of 900 views a day – the highest being over 2600 views.  I tell you all that, not to brag, but to show there is a need for this site.  Now that I’ve taken a job with Dell, it is a conflict of interest for me to promote HP, IBM or Cisco technologies – but I’ve planned for this.  One of the first changes that I’ve made is to incorporate new blood.  If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen my requests for help with the writing of the blog.  I’m happy to say that I have had four people ask to help out; two of which have already started writing: 

Thales Osterne  -  has over six years in the IT field with four years of experience in IBM BladeCenter and System X.  When he is not blogging, Thales works as a product manager for IBM System X & Bladecenter at Lanlink Informatica, a major business partner in Brazil.  He is fluent in Portuguese and English.  http://bladesmadesimple.com/author/thales-osterne/

Chris Fricke -  in his day job is a Systems Architect for Clackamas County in Oregon and an HP customer.  The opinions expressed in his writings do not ncessarily reflect those of BladesMadeSimple or Chris’ employer.  Follow Chris on Twitter @sysgeekguy. http://bladesmadesimple.com/author/chris-fricke/

The goal is for the new writers to provide content for the site, without any prejudice toward one vendor.  I will maintain ownership of the site and will moderate and oversee the writings to ensure they write about content relative to the site and insure the site doesn’t turn into a bashing ground toward any one vendor.  I will also continue blogging, but my posts will be specific to new Dell products or will be vendor neutral articles. 

This site will live on.  I appreciate each and every person who has read this blog or provided comments and feedback.  The site was created for you, so I hope you will continue reading and supporting BladesMadeSimple.com.

-Kevin Houston

In case you haven’t heard, “cloud” discussions are here to stay and everyone has their own recommendations for you to start building your cloud environment, but which is best for you?  Intel has created the “Intel® Cloud Builders” program aimed at making it easier for you to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure.

The Intel® Cloud Builders site is a collection of Cloud Design architectures resources from all of the major vendors like Cisco, EMC, Dell, HP and IBM.  Once you understand your cloud requirements then you can filter through the architectures based on one or more of the following:

1) Usage Models

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Policy-Based Power Management
• Scale-out Storage
• Trusted Compute Pools
• Unified Networking
• Client-Aware (self-service)

2) Cloud Computing Categories

• Build and Simply Your (existing) Cloud
• Improve Efficiency
• Enhance Security

3) Preferred Ecosystem Partner (allows you to pick your preferred hardware or software vendor)

While the site provides useful information, it is still limited.  For example a search in “all Dell” within the Content Library returns 3 documents; “all Cisco” returns 1 document and “all HP” returns 2 documents.  I see really good potential for this site, but Intel and their Ecosystem Partners are going to need to provide more documentation.  I would also like to see Intel introduce a filtering category that allows you to choose between rack servers and blade servers. 

Overall, I would give the site a 3 out of 5, so if you are looking for a resource to help you with your cloud design, check out Intel® Cloud Builders at http://www.intelcloudbuilders.com/

One of the biggest challenges related to blade servers in an existing data center is how to power and cool.  APC wrote a white paper (link below) that explains how to asses the options to best power and cool your blade environment. 

According to APC’s whitepaper, there are five basic approaches to cooling a blade server environment:

The white paper also goes into detail on how to select the type of cooling methods as well as some major considerations to review:

The whitepaper concludes with some cooling approaches that datacenters should not use:

• Reducing air temperature set-pion on the computer room A/C units to attempt to solve hot spots
• Replacing vented tiles in a raised floor with a tile that has less resistance
• Using fan trays installed in the top of racks
• Isolating racks away from rows in an open area on all sides

To find out why these ideas are not recommended by APC, or to read the full APC whitepaper, go to:

http://bit.ly/BladePower