New Rules in the Consolidation Game

Hitachi Americas’ Steve Campbell talks to Business Management about new trends in server consolidation that could spell better IT service levels at a lower cost.

Steve Campbell is Vice President, Marketing and Solutions, of the Server Systems Group at Hitachi Americas, Ltd. Before joining Hitachi in 2006, Steve served as vice president of marketing for Sun's Enterprise System products, where he was responsible for leading Sun’s mid-range and high-end platforms together with data center initiatives focused on consolidation, mainframe migration and high performance computing. Before joining Sun, Campbell had extensive experience in mission critical and supercomputing.

BM. Consolidation is an old game. Why does it need new rules?
SC. There have always been plenty of reasons to consolidate IT infrastructure. When you reduce the number of systems crowding your data center floor tiles, you save a lot of money in a lot of different ways. You reduce the complexity of the environment, so you reduce the administrative burden. You minimize the cost of managing resources. You reduce power consumption. Your server utilization rates can increase and you can unlock capacity, so you can delay or eliminate the need to make additional hardware purchases. And you’re also improving the level of service delivered by IT, so business agility and productivity increase.

But now there are some exciting new choices for consolidation—both products and technologies—that many businesses are either not aware of or have not yet fully evaluated and implemented.

BM. Are you referring to virtualization?
SC. Virtualization has been around for a while too. I’m talking about new ways to implement virtualization, yes, but I’m also talking about new hardware options. Let’s start there.

Over the past few years, data center managers have taken two very different approaches to consolidating mission-critical applications. One approach is to go out and buy the most powerful, massively scalable, sophisticated SMP system on the market and load it up with applications that used to run on multiple servers, thereby simplifying the environment. Another approach is to buy lots of smaller server units that can be racked and stacked right up to the ceiling; and if one fails you swap it out and there’s no disruption. This is ‘consolidation’ in the sense that you can standardize the server and operating system platform and actually cut the total floor space needed for your compute power.

The new consolidation option I’m talking about combines the best aspects of both of these approaches. And the basic hardware platform is a blade server.

BM. Blade servers have been in use since 2001. How is this a new option?
SC. Well, I didn’t say just any blade server! There is a new breed of blade systems on the market today capable of handling mission-critical application workloads. And let me give you a little background about blade servers for context. Blade computing was introduced in 2001, as you said, as a novel way to pack more compute power into less space. With a blade system you simply insert processor modules into a common chassis that contains core components such as power and cooling, so it saves space even compared to rack-mount servers.

Initially, customers were very enthusiastic about blade computing. But over the past few years, the limitations became apparent. Inadequate scalability, compromises in I/O and other capabilities, and excessive heat generation and cooling costs caused many data center managers to seek other alternatives. They felt they could not really rely on blade servers for mission-critical applications.

Hitachi has responded by developing the first true enterprise-class blade server. And when I say it’s enterprise-class, I’m saying it’s the first blade server that provides the level of performance, scalability, reliability, and flexibility needed to run mission-critical applications with total confidence. But at the same time it’s based on industry standards, so you save money and keep your options open. For example, it uses server modules that run Intel processors; it uses standard PCI Express and PCI-x I/O cards; and you can run Windows and Linux—or both. So now you can use BladeSymphony as a consolidation platform instead of buying a massively expensive SMP server; and you can use it to replace your rack-mount servers, cutting costs and saving space.

BM. But how is BladeSymphony truly different? Can you give some examples?
SC. You mentioned virtualization earlier—let’s go back to that. To data center managers, virtualization is a beautiful thing because it allows you to pool your resources. You can allocate processing power on demand. And you get better utilization rates from the systems you already have, so you don’t need to buy as many new systems. That makes it a good option for consolidation. But there are a couple of problems with traditional virtualization solutions. One is that they’re typically third-party solutions, so you have to evaluate multiple products to find the best one, configure it for your environment, learn how to install and use it, and troubleshoot problems that come up. The other issue is that virtualization software often slows down your applications.

What Hitachi has done is embed mainframe-class virtualization right into BladeSymphony. So there’s nothing required of you to make it work right. It just runs, right out of the box, at no extra cost, thereby reducing total acquisition costs. We call the technology Virtage. It’s based on Hitachi’s years of experience with virtualization in the mainframe world. And it is true Hypervisor virtualization, not an emulation technology, so it’s naturally faster and won’t slow your applications down. Virtage is implemented in the system’s firmware and reduces the overhead associated with software virtualization, increasing performance.

BM. So Virtage is one piece. What else makes a blade server “enterprise-class?”
SC. Well it has to deliver the performance users expect on 64-bit applications; it has to support industry standards like Windows, Linux, PCI-X and PCI Express, and it has to scale to meet spikes in the workload. So what we’ve done is provided support for up to eight Intel Dual-Core Itanium 2 blades or Intel Dual-Core or Quad-Core Xeon blades in the same 10U chassis. You can mix and match the processor modules, and you can also scale up or scale out the system. The Itanium Server blades can scale up processor, memory, and I/O. You can run Windows and/or Linux, and you can use your existing PCI cards.

Enterprise-class also means extremely reliable, so the BladeSymphony chassis components are hot-swappable. The system uses Hitachi’s mainframe-class memory management; there are redundant switch and management modules; the backplane and I/O are reliable; power supply modules are N +1 or fully redundant; and the event of a failure the N+M cold standby feature automatically detects the fault and provides fast recovery.

And enterprise-class means flexible. The system should allow you to consolidate at the database tier, the application tier, the edge tier, or all three. BladeSymphony is the only blade server that does that.

BM. What other trends do you see in consolidation?
SC. Naturally companies want to push the benefits of consolidation right to the edge—and by that I mean they want to pack even more power into ever-smaller spaces, and they want a system that’s simpler to deploy at the edge and application tiers of the enterprise data center.

We’ve just introduced a blade system that addresses both of those needs. It’s a 10-blade, 6U system that is absolutely loaded with compute power, but with a level of simplicity that is unprecedented—just right for edge or application tier consolidation. For example, it is the only blade system with a 110-volt power option, so it plugs right in to standard power outlets with no special equipment or adapters. And it draws significantly less power than any rack-mount server that delivers comparable performance—and far less power than fully loaded alternative blade systems—so it saves money.

BM. Forgive me for pointing this out, but Hitachi is not well known in the U.S. server market. Why has Hitachi entered the American marketplace now, and why with this particular product line?
SC. The BladeSymphony line was first introduced in Japan three years ago, and it was a smash hit. It helped make us the leading blade server platform in Japan, according to IDC, and that success led to the launch of our U.S.-based server systems group. We are now serving the entire North American market. As you know, Hitachi is already a major player in the worldwide server market. This is the company that introduced its first computer in 1958—back when HP was still in the garage—25 years before Sun was born. We introduced the first mainframe in 1961. We introduced the first supercomputer in 1982. And not only have we been doing this for a long time, we do it all—UNIX servers, blade servers, rack servers, even PC servers.

We’re an $80 billion dollar, globally diversified company, and now we have a very strong presence in North America, with more than 15,000 total employees in the U.S. alone. And we are well connected with Hitachi Data Systems, which makes some of the most powerful and sophisticated storage products in the world, as well as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Hitachi Consulting, and many other Hitachi businesses within the United States.