Dell recently published a new whitepaper that compares the performance and power efficiency of four of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD and M620 blades vs. four of the Cisco B250 M2 blade servers.  Here is a summary of the key findings:

Performance / watt

The higher performance and lower power draw of the four-blade Dell solutions compared to the UCS B250 M2 blade solution led to the PowerEdge M710HD solution’s 76% higher performance per watt score and the PowerEdge M620 solution’s 108% higher performance per watt score.

Power at Idle

Even with all blades configured with the same amount of system memory, the four-blade PowerEdge M710HD solution consumed 58% as much power at idle as the four-blade UCS B250 M2 solution with its extra DIMMs and supporting circuitry. Similarly, the four-blade PowerEdge M620 blade solution drew just 55% as much power at idle as the Cisco blade solution.

Power at 100% Load

Both of the four-blade PowerEdge solutions, again with the same amount of system memory installed per blade, drew 64% to 67% as much power as the four-blade Cisco UCS B250 M2 blade solution with all blades running at 100% load.

Performance

With the same processor models and the same memory capacity installed in each blade, the four-blade solution based on PowerEdge M710HD blades provided up to 11% higher performance than the four-blade solution based on UCS B250 M2 blades, and the four-blade solution based on PowerEdge M620 blades provided up to 25% higher performance than the UCS blade solution.

Rack density

When the 10U M1000e Modular Blade Enclosure is equipped with its maximum of sixteen M710HD or M620 servers, the solution can fit 1.6 servers per rack unit of space, 2.4 times as dense as the solution with Cisco UCS B250 M2 blades.

Cost

In the configuration tested, the Cisco UCS B250 M2 blade solution costs $112,591.02[1], while the similarly configured Dell PowerEdge M710HD solution costs 34% less at $73,820.00, and the PowerEdge M620 solution costs 33% less at $75,372.00.

To read the report in its entirety, please visit:

http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEfficiencyComparisonofDellandCiscoHighMemoryCapacityBladeServers.pdf

To read the writer’s blog post on this report, visit:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/inside-enterprise-it/archive/2012/03/26/comparison-of-dell-and-cisco-high-memory-capacity-blade-servers.aspx

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.

On March 8, Cisco launched the UCS B200 M3 blade server.   The half-height blade uses processors from Intel’s newly-announced Xeon E5 family, and competes with the Dell M620, HP BL460c Gen8, and IBM HS23 server blades.

The half-height UCS B200 M3 fits into the UCS 5100 series blade chassis.  It supports two Xeon E5-2600 “Sandy Bridge-EP” processors, and according to benchmark publications, this includes the 135-watt E5-2690. 

The blade contains 24 DIMM slots supporting 1333 and 1600 MT/s Registered DIMMs (RDIMMs), with maximum memory of 384 GB using 16GB DIMMs.  An embedded LSI 2004 SAS RAID controller connects to two hot-swap SFF drive bays, supporting SAS and SATA hard drives and SATA SSD options.

The B200 M3 differs from earlier UCS blades in that it includes a mezzanine expansion slot in addition to a modular LAN-on-Motherboard (mLOM) slot.  The only modular LOM offered is the new Cisco VIC 1240, a 4 x 10Gb, FCoE-capable VIC.   Options for the mezzanine slot include Cisco VICs, CNAs from Emulex and Qlogic, and a Broadcom NIC.  Alternatively, an I/O port expander card can be put into the mezzanine slot; this expander enables 4 additional 10Gb ports on the VIC1240 mLOM.   

The mLOM itself is actually optional; In addition to using a mLOM alongside a mezzanine card, the B200 M3 also supports configurations that only contain a mezzanine card.

Mezzanine Card Options for B200 M3

In addition to an internal USB port, the blade also includes two SDHC flash card sockets.  The flash cards intended for these slots are orderable, but won’t be enabled until the release of future firmware and software updates.  The 16GB “Flexible Flash” cards come preloaded with 4 virtual drives, which contain the Cisco Server Configuration Utility, the Cisco Host Upgrade Utility, the Cisco C-Series server drivers set, and a blank virtual drive on which you can install an OS or a hypervisor
Along with the blade, Cisco also announced the new 6296UP Fabric Interconnect.  The 2U interconnect contains 48 fixed ports which can be Ethernet, FCoE, or Fibre Channel, plus it contains slots for 3 expansion modules each of which can add 16 additional ports. There’s also a new FEX for the blade chassis, the 2204XP, with two 10Gb connections per half-height blade plus 4 uplink ports; like the earlier 2208XP it allows port-channeling instead of port-pinning to the fabric interconnect. 

Cisco also announced that in the second half of 2012 they would introduce multi-domain management capability for UCS.

Daniel Bowers is Vice President and Senior Analyst for Ideas International.  He possesses 19 years of IT industry experience in roles spanning server hardware and software engineering, product marketing, and server administration. His primary areas of expertise include blade servers, virtualization, and datacenter technologies.  This is Daniel’s first guest blog post for Blades Made Simple.  You can find out more about Daniel and Ideas International at http://www.ideasinternational.com/PDFs/Analyst-Biography-Daniel-Bowers.pdf

The International Data Corporation’s (IDC) released their  Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker today covering Q4 2011.  Despite a 7.2% decrease in the worldwide server factory revenue, the blade market continued to experience growth in 4Q11 with factory revenue increasing 8.3% year over year.   Other key facts from the IDC press release:

• Bladed servers (including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades) accounted for $2.3 billion in revenues, or 16.1% of quarterly server market revenue.
• 89.6% of all blade revenue is driven by x86-based blades, which now represent 22.5% of all x86 server revenue.

HP maintained the number 1 spot in the server blade market in 4Q11 with 47.4% revenue share – down from 51% in 3Q11, while IBM grew from 18.2% in 3Q11 to 21.5% revenue share in 4Q11. Cisco and Dell rounded out the top 4 blade server vendors with 11.0% and 8.7% factory revenue share, gaining 5.3 and 1.3 points of blade market share, respectively from Q311.

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “While there was softness in other segments, blades remained a strong point and continued as a driver of growth for the server market. The blade server category achieved both its highest reported revenue and revenue share in the fourth quarter of 2011.  IDC believes blades are a key element in a server vendor’s portfolio as they are a strategic footprint in the datacenter and important for vendor revenue and profitability. A converged blade platform is an opportunity for additional pull-through revenue beyond the server, including storage, networking, software, and services.”

For the full IDC report covering the Q4 2011 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at:
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23347812

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.

According to a recent event posting by Cisco, the 3rd generation of Cisco UCS blade servers will be revealed on March 6, 2012.  The server launch event advertises that Cisco will announce the B200 M3 blade server, and C220 M3, and C240 M3 rack servers on March 6th, 2012. These soon-to-be-announced servers are 2 socket servers built on Intel’s upcoming E5-2600 Romley processors and Patsburg chipsets.

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.

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

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.

Hot off the presses is the latest IDC worldwide server market revenue report for Q3 2011. The gist of the report is that while some of the numbers are slightly adjusted, really not much has changed in the blade server market.

Revenue growth for the entire server market (all servers, not just blade servers) slowed considerably showing only 4.2% year over year growth bringing in $12.7 billion. Growth in the world of servers continues but this marks the slowest growth rate for any quarter since Q1 2010. IDC believes that overall server sales will continue to decelerate due to weakening economic conditions around the globe. “After nearly two years of steady revenue growth, the server market began to decelerate in Q3 2011 as demand stabilized for many system categories,” said Matt Eastwood, group VP and general manager. Incidentally, IBM and HP are both holding steady, tied for the #1 spot in revenue share, at 29.8%.

When looking at the blade server market specifically, growth was steady for Q3 2011 but not as explosive as Q2 2011. IDC reports “solid growth” in the quarter with a revenue increase of 16.4% year over year (vs 26.9% growth in 2Q11). Shipments increased 2.4% (vs 6.2% reported growth for 2Q11). One thing that hasn’t changed since last quarter is that 89% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems. Also, blade server sales representing  20.8% of all x86 server revenue. This shows continued steady growth for the blade server segment but that the pace may be slowing slightly.

#1 market share: HP managed to hold the majority margin moving to 51.0% in Q3 2011 from 51.9% in Q2 2011.

#2 market share: IBM continues to see its margin chipped away slightly down to 18.5% in Q3 2011 from 19.1% in Q2 2011.

#3 market share: Cisco’s disruptive market penetration seems to have slowed at 10.7% overall compared to a solid 10% in Q2 2011.

#4 market share: Even Dell dropped slightly to 7.2% revenue share from 8.2% last quarter.

In looking at the totals, the top four vendors represented 87.4% of the revenue share in the blade servers market which is actually down 2% from last quarter. Cisco grew revenue share by less than 1% which means that some of the displacement of the remaining top vendors is not accounted for. Does this mean there may be some new players in the “others” category that we should be watching? Without a detailed breakdown it’s hard to tell but I’ll definitely be looking forward to comparing the numbers next quarter to see if the trend continues. It could, after all, just be a factor of the margin of error in the statistics.

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “Blade systems represented the fastest growing segment in the server industry and now account for 16.0% of total server revenue – a historic high.”

Probably the most interesting aspect of the report is the introduction of hyper-scale servers. “Hyper-scale servers are designed for large scale datacenters with streamlined system designs that focus on performance, energy efficiency, and density.” This sounds like the mantra for blade servers with the main difference being the lack of management and high availability capabilities at the hardware level. Basically these represent the miles of simple, rack mount commodity servers used by the likes of Google and Facebook. This is a $428 million dollar server segment and growing.

For the full IDC report covering the Q2 2011 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at http://www.idc.com.

If you are like me, you are constantly referring to manufacture web sites for product specs, available options, etc.  Today, I’ve put together a list of web sites that will help streamline your search.  Since links change and new ones get added, I’ve put out a “helpful links” tab at the top of my blog as well for you to reference and bookmark.  As I get recommendations from my readers, I’ll update the “helpful links” tab, so be sure to add it to your favorites.

Cisco QuickLinks – http://ciscoquicklinks.com/

Cisco UCS 3 D Model – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/ps10279/ucs_kaon_model_preso.html

Cisco UCS 5100 Blade Chassis – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10279/index.html

Cisco B-Series Blade Servers – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/index.html

Cisco UCS Manager – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10281/index.html

Cisco UCS Site Preparation Guide – http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/hw/site_prep/guide/siteprep_tech_specs.html

Manage your Cisco UCS via iPhone App;  SiMU Lab (Simple iPhone Management of UCS) – http://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/simu-lab/id385832700?mt=8

Cisco UCS Emulator Download – http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/ucsemulatordownload
 

Dell blade solutions (main page) – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/blade-server-solutions.aspx

Dell M1000e Product Page – http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/pedge_m1000e/pd.aspx?refid=pedge_m1000e

Dell PowerEdge M1000e Technical Guidebook (PDF) - http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m1000e-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell Blade Server Product Page – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/blade-server-solutions-dell-m-series-blade-servers.aspx

Dell Technical Guidebook for the M610 Blade Server (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m610-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell Technical Guidebook for the M710 Blade Server (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/server-poweredge-m710-tech-guidebook.pdf

Dell M-Series I/O Solutions Guide (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/blade_io_solutions_guide_v1.2_jn.pdf

Dell M1000e Technical Whitepaper (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/poweredge-m1000e-white-paper-en.pdf

Power Distribution Whitepaper for M1000e Chassis (PDF) – http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/pe_m1000e_selection_whitepaper.pdf

Dell Systems Management Consoles Product Page – http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/dcsm-dell-consoles.aspx

Dell Tech Center (single site for Dell technical info, demos, blogs) – http://www.delltechcenter.com/

Dell Power Planning Calculator – http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pedge/topics/en/config_calculator?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

HP BladeSystem Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/bladesystem/index.html

DDR3 Memory Configurator – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/options/tool/hp_memtool.html

HP BladeSystem Enclosures Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/enclosures/c-class/index.html

HP Proliant Server Blades Main Page – http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02d/3709945-3709945-3328410.html

HP Blade Interconnects Main Page – http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/c-class-interconnects.html

HP Configurator Tool – http://h30099.www3.hp.com/eGlue/eco/begin.do

HP Server / Software Demo Site (recorded demos) – http://h20324.www2.hp.com/SDP/Content/Booth.aspx?ID=63

HP BladeSystem Power Sizer – http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/cache/347628-0-0-0-121.html

NEW  IBM System x Mobile App: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/resources/mobileapp/

IBM Support site for Fixes and Downloads:  http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

IBM BladeCenter H Power Recommendation Document (from BladesMadeSimple.com) – PDF, 440kb

IBM Power Guide  – http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101706

IBM BladeCenter Benchmarks – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/resources/benchmarks/results/

IBM BladeCenter Main Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/

IBM BladeCenter Chassis Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/chassis/index.html

IBM Blade Server Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/

IBM BladeCenter I/O Module Product Page – http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/ethernet.html

IBM BladeCenter Interoperability Guide – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000020&lndocid=MIGR-5073016

IBM BladeCenter Products and Technology Redbook – http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/SG247523.html

IBM BladeCenter and System x Reference Documents (xREF) – http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/pages/xref?Open

IBM Standalone Solutions Configuration Tool (SSCT) – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000008&lndocid=MIGR-62168

IBM Server Configuration and Options Guide HTML – http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?brand=5000008&lndocid=SCOD-3ZVQ5W

If I’ve missed any important websites, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them.

May 24, 2011  - IDC came out with their 1Q 2011 worldwide server market revenue report today showing that Cisco has finally entered the market standings with a 3rd place standing at 9.4% factory revenue share .  IDC’s findings also showed that both HP and IBM decreased their blade server market share from Q4 2010.

According to IDC, worldwide server sales (all servers, not just blade servers) for 1Q 2011 increased 12.1 % year over year to $11.9 billion in factory revenues. IDC also reported the blade server market accelerated and continued its strong growth in 1Q with revenue increasing 23.8% year over year with shipments increasing to 5.4% compared to 1Q 2010.  Overall, blade servers represent 15.2% of the quarterly worldwide server revenues.  Interestingly enough, 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 20.5% of all x86 server revenue.

Here’s a summary of the top 4 blade server market share (based on factory revenue share):

#1 market share: HP decreased their market share from 53.4% in Q4 2010 to 50.0% in Q1 2011

#2 market share: IBM decreased their market share from 28.1% in Q4 2010 to 20.2% in Q1 2011.

#3 market share: Cisco at 9.4% in Q1 2011

#4 market share: Dell at 8.2% in Q1 2011

HP maintains the #1 market share spot now holding an impressive 50% of all blade server factory revenue market share.  An interesting observation, though, is that both HP and IBM have fallen over the past 12 months when compared to Q1 2010.  As you can see in the chart, HP dropped 6.2% market share and IBM fell 3.4% market share year-over-year.  Is this contributed to Cisco’s entry into the market place? 

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “After several years of being a highly consolidated market where the top 3 vendor accounted for over 80% of blade revenue, the recent entry of Cisco has introduced a viable new competitor to the market.”  While the quantities of Cisco UCS customers were not mentioned into the IDC report, according to Cisco’s Omar Sultan’s blog (http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/they-were-wrong-about-ucs-what-else-are-they-wrong-about/) , there are 3,820 customers as of Cisco’s 2nd Fiscal Quarter 2011.

For a full summary of the IDC Quarterly Server Tracker report, visit my other blog at:
http://corus360.com/company/blog/idc-shows-hp-as-the-server-leader-for-q1-2011

If you’ve been reading this blog over the past six months, you’ll know that I’ve continued to bust on Cisco for not providing market share numbers after selling their UCS product line for two years.  I believe the wait is now over.

I’m hearing rumours that this next week (May 23 – 27, 2011) we should finally be seeing Cisco’s UCS market share numbers.  From what I’m hearing, the numbers are going to be very positive for Cisco.  To be perfectly clear, I have not heard of any official market share numbers, but I know that IDC should be releasing their Q1 2011 Blade Market Share numbers next week so if the rumours are right, we’ll see Cisco on their chart.  I’ve heard from an unofficial source that Cisco sold about ~17,000 blade servers in Q1, 2011.  If this turns out to be true, I am not sure that Cisco UCS will be in the #3 blade server spot as Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, commented in a Cisco Financial Analyst Conference in Q4 of 2010: http://blogs.cisco.com/ar/john_chambers_discusses_ucs_market_share__wow/ 

Since I’m not an analyst, I can only wait until next week when “hopefully” the curtain will be lifted and we’ll finally get to see what the true story is behind Cisco UCS’ market share.

Stay tuned…

Cisco announced today the refresh of their UCS B440 M2 and B230 blade servers with the newly announced Intel Xeon E7.  The Cisco UCS B440 M2 is a full-width blade that offers up to 4 Xeon E7-4800 processors and 32 memory slots, for up to 512GB RAM, as well as 4 hot-swap drive bays.  Since the server is a full-width blade, it will have the capability to handle 2 dual-port mezzanine cards for up to 40 Gbps I/O per blade.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis can house up to four B440 M2 servers (maximum 160 per Unified Computing System). 

The Cisco UCS B230 M2 offers 32 DIMM slots handling up to 256GB of RAM, 2 x Intel E7-2800 CPUs and 2 x hot-swap drives, all within a half-width form factor.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis can house up to eight B230 M2 servers (a maximum of 320 per Cisco Unified Computing System). 

Specific speeds of the Intel Xeon E7 CPUs being offered by Cisco were not available at the time of this writing.  Availability is unknown but expected to be around late Q2 2011.

For more details about Cisco UCS blade servers, visit Cisco’s web site at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/index.html

For more information on the Intel Xeon E7 Product Family, click here.