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.

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.

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

Dell’s Product Marketing team recently provided me with a pair of Dell PowerEdge M710HD blade servers, so I decided to give you a review, but today I’m taking a different approach and providing you with a review via video.  Since this blog is YOUR blog, let please let me know if you like this format.

The Dell PowerEdge M710HD is a half-height blade server that holds up to two (2) Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 Xeon processors.  The server has two (2) hot-swappable drive bays and 18 memory slot capable of holding up to 192GB of RAM.  Here are the high-level quick specs:

• half-height form factor
• Up to 2 x Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 CPUs (as of this writing, the top CPU offered is the Intel Xeon X5690 3.46Ghz, with 12M Cache CPU)
• 4 Broadcom 5709s 1Gb NICs on the motherboard via the Network Daughter Card (NDC)
• 18 DIMM slots (up to 192GB RAM at 1333Mhz)
• 2 x Hot-Swap Drive Bays supporting 2.5” SSD, SAS , nearline SAS and SATA drives
• RAID 0, 1 with option for onboard battery-backed cache
• 3 x USB ports (2 on front, 1 internal)
• 2 x SD card slots (for embedded hypervisor use)
• Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 6 (or iDRAC6)

Disclaimer: while Dell provided the Dell M710HD blade server for me to review, the thoughts, observations and opinions about the Dell M710HD are solely my own.

An External View of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD

http://youtu.be/zpgdC5q0i3M?hd=1

I did not show the video graphics adapter since it is integrated on the blade server motherboard, but for those of you wondering – it is a Matrox G200 w/ 8MB memory.

An Internal View of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD

http://youtu.be/8nsd98Pq45Y?hd=1

On paper – the Dell M710HD looks like a direct competitor to the HP ProLiant BL490 G6, and it is, however as I showed you in the video, Dell has added something that I really believe could change the blade server market – a flexible embedded network controller.  The “Network Daughter Card” or NDC is the blade servers LAN on Motherboard (LOM) but on a removable daughter card, very similar to the mezzanine cards.  This is really cool stuff because this design allows for a user to change their blade server’s on-board I/O as their network grows.  For example, today many IT environments are standardized on 1Gb networks for server connectivity, however 10Gb connectivity is becoming more and more prevalent.  When users move from 1Gb to 10Gb in their blade environments, with the NDC design, they will have the ability to upgrade the onboard network controller from 1Gb to 10Gb therefore protecting their investment.  Any time a manufacturer offers investment protection I get excited.  An important note – the M710HD comes with a NDC that will provide up to 4 x 1Gb NICs when the Dell PowerConnect M6348 Ethernet Switch is used.  Dell is continuing with the development of the NDC with last month’s announcement of a Converged Network Adapter (CNA) network daughter card option for the M710HD.

In case you are wondering what I/O expansion cards, the M710HD supports, here’s a list from Dell’s website:

1Gb & 10Gb Ethernet:

• Dual-Port Broadcom^®  Gb Ethernet w/ TOE (BCM-5709S)
• Quad-Port Intel^®  Gb Ethernet
• Quad-Port Broadcom^®  Gb Ethernet (BCM-5709S)
• Dual-Port Intel^®  10Gb Ethernet
• Dual-Port Broadcom^®  10Gb Ethernet (BCM-57711)

10Gb Enhanced Ethernet & Converged Network Adapters (CEE/DCB/FCoE):

• Dual-Port Intel^®  10Gb Enhanced Ethernet (FcoE Ready for Future Enablement)
• Dual-Port Emulex^®  Converged Network Adapter (OCM10102-F-M) – Supports CEE/DCB 10GbE + FCoE
• Dual-Port Qlogic^®  Converged Network Adapter (QME8142) – Supports CEE/DCB 10GbE + FCoE
• Brocade^®  BR1741M-k Dual-Port Mezzanine CNA

Fibre Channel:

• Dual-Port QLogic^®  FC8 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) (QME2572)
• Dual-Port Emulex^®  FC8 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) (LPe1205-M)
• Emulex^®  8 or 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel Pass-Through Module

Infiniband:

• Dual-Port Mellanox^®  ConnectX-2^TM  Dual Data Rate (DDR) and Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand

For more information about the Dell PowerEdge M710HD, please visit Dell’s website at http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/poweredge-m710hd/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-m710hd&cs=555&s=biz.

Dell announced today a refresh of the PowerEdge M910 blade server based on the Intel Xeon E7 processor.  The M910 is a full-height blade that can hold 512GB of RAM across 32 DIMMs.   The refreshed M910 blade server will also feature Dell’s FlexMem bridge that enables users to use all 32 DIMM slots with only 2 CPUs.  You can read more about the M910 blade server in an earlier blog post of mine here.

According to the Dell  press release issued today, the systems being refreshed with the Intel Xeon E7 processor, which include the PowerEdge M910 blade server  as well as the PowerEdge R910 and R810, offer customers substantial performance gains including;

• Up to 38 percent improvement in Oracle application server and database performance over previous generation Xeon 7500 “Nehalem-EX” based servers *.
• Up to 18:1 server consolidation ratio over four socket dual core processor based systems offering up to 93 percent lower operation costs resulting in a one year return on investment**.
• Up to 34 percent improvement in SQL database virtualization performance and 49 percent higher performance per watt with the combination of Xeon E7 processors and new Low Voltage memory (LV RDIMM) offerings***.

According to Dell, the new Intel Xeon E7 CPUs will be shipping this week.

NIC Partitioning (NPAR)

Dell is also announcing the addition of a Converged Network Adapter (CNA) for the M710HD’s network daughter card, or NDC.  I wrote about the NDC in this post, but as a recap,  it’s a removable card that provides the blade server’s LOM (LAN on Motherboard) network adapter.  Previously Dell offered a 4 port Gigabit Ethernet card, but this 2nd offering opens the ability for users with the M710HD to upgrade to a fully converged 10Gb infrastructure.  This card is also the first adapter to offer the industry’s first “network partitioning” or NPAR scheme that makes it possible to split the 10GbE pipe with granularity free of any fabric vendor lock-in.  NPAR enables optimal use of physical network links allowing each 10GbE port to be carved up into multiple physical 1GbE NICs without the use of software and without any CPU overhead.  For example, each 10GbE port can be divided into up to four multiple physical NICs totaling 10Gb offering more flexibility.  The NPAR scheme is handled by the Unified Server Configurator, enabled by the Lifecycle Controller that is embedded on the server.  For more information on the Unified Server Configurator, check out Dell’s website:
http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/solutions/unified-server-configurator.aspx

*Oracle: Based on Dell and Oracle testing performed in March 2011 running an industry-standard SPEC Java Enterprise benchmark . SPEC® is a registered trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.  Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

**Consolidation: Up to 18:1 server consolidation performance with return on investment in about one year” claim estimated based on comparison between 4S MP Intel® Xeon® processor 7041 (dual-core with Intel® HyperThreading Technology, 4M cache, 3.00GHz, 800MHz FSB, formerly code named Paxville) and 4S Intel® Xeon® processor E7-4870 (30M cache, 2.40GHz, 6.4GT/s Intel® QPI, code named Westmere-EX) based servers. Calculation includes analysis based on performance, power, cooling, electricity rates, operating system annual license costs and estimated server costs. This assumes 42U racks, $0.10 per kWh, cooling costs are 2x the server power consumption costs, operating system license cost of $900/year per server, per server cost of $36,000 based on estimated list prices, and estimated server utilization rates. All dollar figures are approximate. Estimated SPECint*_rate_base2006 performance and power results are measured for Intel® Xeon® processor E7-4870 and estimated for Intel Xeon processor 7041 based servers. Platform power was measured during the steady state window of the benchmark run and at idle. Performance gain compared to baseline was 18x (truncated).

***Based on the DVD Store 2 benchmark testing  performed by Dell Labs in March 2011.  Actual performance and power draw will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

UPDATED 11:30 a.m. EST (4/6/11) - Intel announced today the next version of their 4 socket chipset, known as “E7”.  Previously known with the codename of Westmere EX, the newly released Xeon 7600 will be rebranded as the Intel Xeon E7.  Following suit with the Intel “tick-tock” strategy, this refresh falls under the “tick” with a new core design and a smaller die at 32 nm.  The E7 CPU family increases the core capacity to 10 cores (20 with Intel’s Hyper-Threading feature) and has up to 30MB of last level cache that is sharable across all cores.  The integrated memory controller now offers 4 scalable Memory Interconnects with speeds up to 6.4 GT/s and there are now 4 full-width Intel QuickPath Interconnects linking the 4 CPUs together.  The Intel Xeon E7 will also provide support for 32GB DIMMs, although not every manufacturer will offer 32GB on their blade servers.

Here’s the complete Intel Xeon E7 Product Family Offering:

  As expected, Dell, HP and IBM all announced a refresh of their blade servers.  Here’s what has been announced to be refreshed:

Dell – announced a refresh in the PowerEdge M910 today at 10 a.m Pacific.  Click here for my blog post about this announcement.

HP – refreshed their BL620c G7 and BL680c G7 with new speeds using the Intel Xeon E7.  This refresh will not be the Gen 8 models – expect that to come with the release of the next generation Intel 2 socket offering (Sandy Bridge).   The BL680cG7 is a double-wide server that offers 64 DIMM slots for a total of 2TB of RAM (along with 40 cores of CPUs across 4 CPUs.) 

You can find the QuickSpecs on the BL680c G7 with the refreshed CPU on HP’s website at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13742_na/13742_na.html.    The QuickSpecs on the BL620c G7can be found here: http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13747_na/13747_na.HTML

Revised with corrections  3/1/2011 10:29 a.m. (EST)
Almost a year ago, I wrote an article highlighting the 4 socket blade server offerings.  At that time, the offerings were very slim, but over the past 11 months, that blog post has received the most hits, so I figured it’s time to revise the article.  In today’s post, I’ll review the 4 socket Intel and AMD blade servers that are currently on the market.  Yes, I know I’ll have to revise this again in a few weeks, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. 

Cisco

Cisco released their first 4 socket blade offering in April 2010  known as the “UCS B440 M1“.

 This blade is a full-width blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (6 to 8 cores)
• Max of 512GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 2 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x hot-swap drive bays

The Cisco UCS B440 M1 blade server also has 2 x mezzanine expansion card slots that are capable of holding a variety of converged network adapters (CNAs) with a minimum of 10GbE connectivity.  Each Cisco UCS 5108 chassis can hold 4 x UCS B440 M1 for a total of 28 UCS B440 M1′s per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, that’s a max of 896  CPU cores and 14.3TB of memory per 42u rack. 

You can read more about the Cisco UCS B440 M1 on Cisco.com.

Dell
Dell has two 4 socket blade offerings, the PowerEdge M905 and the PowerEdge M910.  Anytime you see a “5″ at the end of a Dell server number, you can be assured that it has an AMD processor whereas the servers ending in “0″ are Intel processors.

The PowerEdge M905 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 8300 or 8400 (up to 6 cores)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 192GB (across 24 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

The PowerEdge M910 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 (up to 8 cores)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 512GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

Each Dell M1000e chassis can hold 8 x PowerEdge M905 or PowerEdge M910′s for a total of 32 Dell PowerEdge M905/M910 per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, for the M905 that’s a max of 768 CPU cores and 6.1TB of memory per 42u rack; for the M910 that’s a max of 1024 CPU cores and 16.3TB of memory per 42u rack.

You can find out more about the Dell PowerEdge M905 and PowerEdge M910 on Dell.com.

HP

HP has been in the 4 socket blade offering space for the longest, so they have the largest collection of servers to review.  Keep in mind, the “Gx” at the end of the server signifies the family generation of the product, so the G5 is older than the G7 (yes, common sense, but if I don’t spell it out, someone will comment on it…)

The BL680c G5 is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7400 CPUs (up to 6 cores each)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 128GB (across 16 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

(You may ask – why am I listing this older generation blade server?  Quite simply because HP still mentions it on the HP.com website.)

The BL680c G7  is the next generation to the BL680 G5 and it was first mentioned June 2010.  The BL680 G7 is a double-width (2 x full-height) blade that offers:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (up to 8 cores each)
• 6 x 10Gb FlexFabric NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 1TB (across 64 DIMM slots)
• 7 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x hot-swap drive bays

HP uses a naming schema that is fairly easy to understand.  Anytime you see a “5″ at the end of a HP server number, you can be assured that it has an AMD processor whereas the servers ending in “0″ are Intel processors.   HP offers a pair of AMD servers that parity the  2 Intel blade servers mentioned above.

The BL685c G6  is a full-height blade that offers:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 8300 or 8400 (up to 6 cores)
• 4 x 10Gb Flex-10 NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 256GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

The BL685c G7  is the newest AMD offering in a full-height blade that comes with:

• 4 x AMD Opteron 6100 (up to 12 cores)
• 4 x 10Gb FlexFabric NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 512 GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 3 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 2 x hot-swap drive bays

I’ll be talking about FlexFabric in the near future, but for now think of it as HP’s version of the Converged Network Adapter.  You can read more  at www.hp.com/go/flexfabric.

Here are the totals (sorry, too much info for fancy summarizing:)

BL680c G5

BL680c G7

BL685c G6

BL685c G7

You can find out more about HP’s blade servers at HP.com.

IBM

The IBM HX5 was announced March 2010.   The HX5 is a 2 CPU blade server that uses a modular approach allowing users to add a memory blade (called the MAX5) or an 2nd HX5 to create a 4 CPU offering.  While I covered the technology back in March (check it out here) I’m looking at the 2 x HX5 combination as IBM’s 4 socket offering.

The IBM HX5  is a double-wide (2 x 30mm) blade that comes with:

• 4 x Intel Xeon 7500 CPUs (up to 8 cores each)
• 4 x 1Gb Ethernet NICs LOM (LAN on Motherboard)
• Max of 256GB (across 32 DIMM slots)
• 4 x I/O mezzanine expansion card slots
• 4 x internal drive bays

Each IBM BladeCenter H chassis can hold 7 x HX5 blade servers for a total of 28 HX5 blade servers per 42u rack.  To save you from doing the math, that’s a max of 896 CPU cores and 7.1TB of memory per 42u rack.

Summary
Here’s a summary of all of the current 4 socket blade servers (click to enlarge):

Here’s a summary of the top offerings (shown in yellow on the chart):

Most CPU Cores in a Blade Server:  HP BL685c G7
Most I/O Expansion in a Blade Server: HP BL680c G7
Most Memory in a Blade Server: HP BL680c G7

Most Memory in a 42u Rack: (tie) Dell M910, HP BL680c G7, HP BL685c G7
Most CPU Cores in a 42u Rack: HP BL685c G7

Yes, I know that there are slim chances that anyone would fill up a rack with 4 socket servers, however I thought this would be good comparison to make. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below.