Open Blade Servers?

Greg Smith points to this ZDNet story on new Intel chips aimed at blade servers, writing "Proprietary blade servers are coming on strong from IBM, Dell and HP. Where are the open blade servers? How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?"

Comments

Open What?

[coene]

A blade server is a hardware product, it really has nothing todo with software, outside of the Operating System Clustering/Scaling functionality.

Google does not use blade servers, last I knew it was just a large amount of x86 boxes running Linux.

Open Source hardware? Does that even make sense? Either have drivers (or release the specs) that allow your hardware to be used on an Open Source operating system, or dont.

Want an "Open Source Blade Server"? Yeah, thats called an HP with Clustered Linux on each blade...

Re:Open What?

[Moekandu]

I believe, what he is asking, is whether or not someone will develop a "blade" hardware standard that in not proprietary. That way you can go down to Fry's, buy the parts and put together your own chassis with blade servers and storage enclosures.

Much like the ATX, NLX and FlexATC form factors. Off the shelf backplanes, barebones blades, etc.

Give it a couple years or so. 1U and 2U barebones server kits are getting pretty prevalent. I think it will come down to how quickly small/medium business will embrace blade servers before Intel and others will start putting out "whitebox" solutions.

Patiently waiting,
Moekandu

"It is a sad time when a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs."

Easy - by not using blade servers....

[mzito]

We won't see open blade servers for quite a while, if ever. Normal servers are only "open" because they use a common set of interconnects (standard power, ps/2 keyboard, 100BaseT), etc. On a blade server, you have to unify all of those interconnects in a hot-swappable fashion. The result? A customized connector and backplane architecture.

In addition, there's no incentive for companies to open a standard for blade servers - they'll make more money by selling the chassis and blades, as well as the management software that is generally required for these types of servers.

As far as Google goes, they rolled out their infrastructure for such a low cost because they did the following things:

1) didn't use blade servers(more on that in a sec)
2) bought in large quantities
3) bought generic/semi-generic servers (by which I mean "not IBM")

Not using blade servers was a sharp idea because the real advantages of blade servers come in certain particular situations. These include where power/heat/space is really expensive or where you need a lot of hosts without a lot of performance (like QA, staging and development environments). Remember, that while they use less space, power, etc., they also use laptop/low-power cpus and hard drives, so the performance can be lower, especially for i/o intensive operations. If you're not hugely space-constrained, using 1U servers will save you money in the long run.

Thanks,
Matt

proprietary doesn't necessarily mean bad...

[deviator]

why is there almost ALWAYS a knee-jerk reaction to the word "proprietary" by the slashdot editors?

Just because the blades are "proprietary" doesn't mean they're bad. They're denser, thus easier to physically manage and run with lower power requirements than other types of servers. Just because they weren't created by a committee of "free-thinking" open source advocates doesn't mean they're useless to companies who need more processing power at lower cost.

Seriously, the commercial market offers added value in their products that still lacks in many open source projects.

Re:Google - Free Servers

[puto]

I was unclear, when I meant coming straight out, I meant right out of the factory. No distributors costs, but dell or compaqs actual costs. Which they would never publish, only allude to 6% margin.

I certainly didnt mean pc shop.

But if ia pc shop has an account with Tech data and other biggies then it is not unusal for 20-20 point markup on a pc. A pc that can be built with 2 gig processor, 256 meg, 19 inch monitor, getforce, nic, sound, yadda, for about 700 bucks. Will easily sell for 1200 bucks and people will think they are getting a deal, well lets subtract 100 bucks for xp home. And lets also remember that with a corporate account there are places cheaper than Pricewatch. so we say profit is 400 dollars. That is a little more than 6 percent on the homefront.

Now I am not saying all PC shops do this, but most still have a healthy margin on the hardware. Because Johnny Six Pack still thinks you buy cheap you get cheap.

The actual manufactures of the the seperate parts run on fairly slim margins, but the retailers control the prices. That is why we see such a disparity of prices on the web.

I was a buyer for a fairly large shop up until recently, and we sold good boxes, good prices, and made at least 200 a box on a bad day. The only time we lost out was when we went up agains some of HP's all in one deals from Walmart or circut city. And we could still match them with better equipment and make 50 bucks on the hardware, but we didnt, of course we gave three year warranties, and people usually shelled out the extra 200 bucks, cause they had someone to throw the thing at if it didnt work.

I also was a buyer in South America and bought things right off the boat. And you would not beleive some things I was able to get at very low prices.

The hardware market is all price controlled. The margins are higher than they make out. But the larger the company the more staff, etc you gotta support, more perks, got to make shareholders happy. So you gotta to fudge margins, it is what we Americans or good at.

So to end this rant. If I know I can call Tech data, get quality brand parts, sell a pc at a good price, comparable with dell. and I am going low here, make 150 bucks on top of my built in build cost. And knowing I have nowhere near the buld discounting on hardware parts as they do. Dell is making mucho bucks.

Puto

Re:Completely Worthless Post....

[frovingslosh]

I'll agree, but I'll give a reason to back it up:

How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?" Am I supposed to know what timothy is talking about here? I sure don't. Google hasn't informed me of any "low cost" and the article and timothy's write-up don't say anything (else) about it. Perhaps if he's going to make a big deal of something he should explain what is revolutionary or amazing here, or at least do more than imply a special amazing but unmentioned price.

Not only that, but the last line of the ZDNEt write-up says The new 800MHz chip, which uses ServerWorks' LE3 chipset, will list for $289 each in 1,000 unit quantities. OK, low power is nice, dual processors are OK, but hardly anything special, particularly when they only run at 800 mhz. After all, the reason for a dual processor is to gain more processing power and speed, but a dual processor 800 meg chip will not perform as well as a simple single processor 1600 mhz chip and is more complex to program for. A single processor 1600mhz AMD chip is less expensive and will outperform this chip. I see no reason to get excited if the cpu chip price is $289!