Blade Servers - IMEX Research

2. Market Drivers & Industry Dynamics
The Rise of Blade Computing ......................................................... 3
Computer Architectures - Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out ............................................ 3
Deficiencies of Current Architectures....................................................................... 3
CISC vs. RISC..............................................................................................................................4
HW vs. SW Provisioning ..............................................................................................................5
The evolution of Blade Architectures ....................................................................... 5
Fabric Architecture for Blades......................................................................................................5
Shared I/O architectures ..............................................................................................................6
Growth Drivers for Blade Servers ............................................................................. 6
Towards de facto standardization ............................................................................. 7
Change is afoot on the server front. ......................................................................... 7
Intel Microprocessors Roadmap ............................................................................... 8
Xeon with 64 -bit extensions ........................................................................................................8
Xeon Product Line........................................................................................................................9
Itanium Product Line ....................................................................................................................9
Workload Types & Variations .................................................................................. 10
Managing Datacenters - Cost by Function Performed...............................................................10
Datacenter Workload Distribution ..............................................................................................10
Explosion in Data Base Size Growth....................................................................... 11
Scale-Up Versus Scale-Out Computing .................................................................. 11
WW Server Revenues by ScaleOut vs. ScaleUp Segments .....................................................12
Scaleout Computing...................................................................................................................12
Integration....................................................................................... 12
Interconnects............................................................................................................. 12
Interconnects in Supercomputers ..............................................................................................13
Another approach from the startups ..........................................................................................13
Clustered Computing................................................................................................ 15
Economics of Rack vs. Blade Servers ......................................... 16
Acquisition Costs...................................................................................................... 16
TCO Analysis............................................................................................................. 16
Assumptions...............................................................................................................................16
Evolution of the x86 Server Market............................................................................................18
Driving Factors Behind Blade Servers .......................................................................................18
Server Utilization and Quality-of-Service ...................................................................................19
Challenges .................................................................................................................................19
State of IT Spending 2010.............................................................. 20
Data Center Requirements ............................................................ 21
Data center Manageability .........................................................................................................21
Evolution of Storage for Blade Server Environments ........................................... 22
Blade Server Storage - Requirements .......................................... 25
All Blades Are Not Created Equal..............................................................................................25
Web/Edge Server Blades...........................................................................................................26
Flexible Midrange Server Blades ...............................................................................................26
Storage Blades...........................................................................................................................26
Rapid Increase in Areal Density Brings Opportunity..................................................................27
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