[LINK] Blade servers solve space dilemma

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Wed Feb 11 10:29:59 AEDT 2009


<brd>
10-12% improvement in space utilisation with blades I can believe.

Tom's factor of 100 I find difficult to take seriously, even with 
virtualisation and application optimisation.
</brd>
 
Blade servers solve space dilemma
Andrew Colley
February 10, 2009
The Australian IT
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25029197-24169,00.html

GROWTH can be a two-edged sword for data centre operators. New customers 
bring more revenue but they may also require an expensive lease on new 
floor space.

That was the dilemma facing Leighton Holdings' data centre business, 
Infoplex, early last year. Last March Infoplex faced taking a new lease 
on hosting centre space to sustain a fleet of servers and routers that 
was rapidly growing towards 1200 devices.

Infoplex general manager Scott Crane said that was an expensive prospect 
before the global financial crisis.

"Data centre space is not cheap and until the start of the financial 
crisis it was very hard to get. More has become available now, but it 
was difficult to find places to put racks and storage," Mr Crane said.

Infoplex started testing new blade server equipment - including some 
from incumbent supplier Dell - in a bid to extract more capacity from 
its data centre.

It tried blade servers from a number of suppliers. The computing 
performance of the equipment was comparable, but the new Dell blade 
equipment delivered an unexpected energy rating bonus.

"Ironically, we got a 12-13 per cent power saving going to these 
chassis. Not only have we saved space but ironically we've saved power. 
We also have a denser computing environment over the same amount of 
space," he said.

Between April and September the company changed more than 60-70 per cent 
of its server hardware to the new blade equipment - about 600-700 servers.

Mr Crane said hosting centre usage improved 12 per cent after the 
transition, enabling the company to hold off for 12-18 months on plans 
to obtain new hosting centre real estate.

"Theoretically we would have bought more server space last March and 
we're playing with that idea now, to be ready later this year," Crane said.

The migration process went smoothly, Mr Crane said. However, he 
conceded, it was 26 per cent more expensive to lease the new blade 
server equipment compared with the older infrastructure.

The increase in cost was more than offset by improvements in utilisation 
and energy saving, he said.

"They're more expensive, but that is offset by savings on space and 
power," he said.

However, it appears that at least some of the company's decision was 
based on convenience.

Crane conceded equipment from other vendors may have been slightly more 
advanced, but there were benefits from staying with Dell.

His staff were "comfortable" with the Dell infrastructure and changing 
vendors would require additional costs, he said.

The company plans to continue migrating to new servers in coming months.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au




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