Growth Limited by Lack of Standards
and Rapid Change
Although blade servers represent the Faster input/output (I/O) Connections
fastest-growing segment of the server — Fabric speeds are continuing to
market, blade-server growth will be increase; 10 gigabit (10Gb) Ethernet is
limited by a lack of standards and entering the market, equivalent
continued, rapid change during the InfiniBand speeds are coming and
next five years according to Gartner, speeds for both fabrics will increase
Inc. beyond 10Gb.
Gartner projects a compound annual Improved I/O Controls — Blade
growth rate (CAGR) of 19 percent for vendors will deliver increased controls
blade shipments from 2007 through to aggregate, disaggregate and
2012. The dramatic growth in blade prioritize bandwidth to individual
shipments, however, does not blades and virtual machines running
translate to market domination — in on those blades.
2007, blades represented 10 percent of enable resources to be shared.
shipments and Gartner forecasts this More Flexible Storage Options —
will rise to 20 percent in 2012. Storage technology associated with Memory Aggregation — Memory
blades will advance to a point where aggregation will enable one blade to
“We are not suggesting that IT storage can be added to a chassis and use memory located on other blades in
organizations stay away from blades — then assembled into storage area the server. The net effect will be to
blades do address many problems in network pools and network-attached increase memory footprints for an
the data centre,” said Andrew Butler, storage pools, or tied to blade servers operating system beyond the physical
vice president and distinguished in a direct-attached storage-like capacity of a single blade. This will
analyst at Gartner. “What we are configuration. further drive implementation of blade
saying is that IT organizations adopting server aggregation to create larger-
blades need to be prepared for further Deeper Integration with Virtualization style, virtual symmetric
changes in this technology. Blade — Gartner expects blade vendors to multiprocessor designs. By 2012,
servers have been a rapidly changing drive deeper integration between memory and chassis aggregation will
technology, and we fully expect this to virtualization and blades. enable blade technology to address
continue, particularly during the next large vertically scaling workloads.
five years.” Management Software Enhancements
— Blade vendors are focusing on new Standards for Switch Modules — The
Blade servers have been a rapidly functionality, integration and interface current chassis do not currently support
changing technology, and this is enhancements on their blade a common interface and as a result,
expected to continue. Gartner analysts management tools, to help stimulate third-party companies such as Cisco and
highlighted changes in this technology preference for blades over other form Brocade must make unique products for
for the next two to five years. During factors. each and every server vendor. This is
the next two years, Gartner predicts inefficient use of their R&D resources.
the following changes will further alter Beyond the 24-month window, but still Gartner predicts an interface and form-
the market: within the five-year planning window, factor standard will be introduced during
Gartner anticipates the following set of this time frame to enable third-party
Blade Server Aggregation — This additional changes: companies to manufacture products
feature allows for two blades to be common to multiple vendor chassis.
logically joined, creating a single Chassis Interconnections — Today the However, it is unlikely that other blade-
logical server that can then be chassis represents an infrastructure or chassis-related standards will be
provisioned at the bare-metal level. boundary. However, in three to five agreed on by major vendors during the
years time, chassis interconnects will next five years.
8| DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS |
www.datacentresols.com September 2008
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