State of the Server Blades & Virtualization Industry 2007
(right click to download; left click to open)

Driven by the lure of volume economics inherent in their scalable modular architecture and now on the heels of mass adoption of virtualization in data centers, blades are ushering in a paradigm shift in the IT industry, enabling their adoption as blade PCs, small to medium servers all the way to high performance supercomputers. Consolidation achieved through integration of industry standard servers, storage and network elements and using virtualization and autonomic management lie at the heart of this paradigm shift.

Integrated blades-based solutions have started to increase efficiencies and reduce total cost of ownership by as much as 45% in both IT Computing and IP Telecommunications infrastructures. As open standards (driven by associations such as blade.org) further crystallize standardization at the physical and API interface levels, vendors are creating product differentiation at the middleware, data management, and vertical industry solutions levels.

Server, Storage, Networking and Management Blades interconnected through high speed fabric midplane in effect act as Local Area Grids (LAG©s) of today, showing up in Next generation Data Centers. They will, in the future, become the nodes connected in Wide Area Grids (WAG©s) at the Campus, Metro, and Long Haul environments and act as the infrastructure platform of choice converging computing and IP telecom industries.

"Blade Servers will continue to experience an explosive growth in the future, growing to 33% of all server shipments by 2010. The total market opportunity is projected to reach over $11.1 billion in blade systems by 2010 and $14.2 billion in Blade Systems and Services, opening up major opportunities for semiconductor, boards, interconnect fabrics, systems, middleware and services vendors and for associated venture investments” said Anil Vasudeva, Principal Analyst & Founder of IMEX Research, a technology markets research and consultancy company, based in San Jose, California. 

"Preparing Your Data Center for Blade Servers"
(right click to download; left click to open)

“A rack of blade servers can generate as much as 14 kilowatts, nearly the heat given off by two electric ovens.” – Walter Schwarz, Fluent

“It’s now possible to pack racks with equipment requiring 30,000 watts per rack or more in connected load. This compared to only 2,000 – 3,000 watts per rack a few years ago.”

Blade servers offer tremendous advantages in cost, performance, space requirements, modularity, and responsiveness, but is your data center ready to handle them? This session will help you understand key challenges with powering and cooling blade servers. You will also
learn how to avoid power and cooling problems and failures in your data centers, while keeping your energy costs under control, and preparing for future expansion and consolidation.

Thursday April 12th - 11:15 am – 11:55 am - Industry Insight Premier

Lowering Total Cost of Ownership With High-Density Cooling Strategies
(right click to download; left click to open)

As power densities and energy costs steadily climb, energy efficiency becomes a high priority. Beyond reducing the energy consumption of the IT equipment itself, cooling represents the greatest opportunity to cut energy costs, accounting up to 35 percent of data center power usage. So how can you improve efficiency without sacrificing – and even IMPROVING – availability? This presentation will share tips that can save you money and enable capacity today while laying the groundwork for even greater savings tomorrow.

Madara has more than 26 years of experience in the air conditioning industry. He is responsible for the strategic direction and operating performance of Liebert’s Environmental business for mission-critical cooling applications around the world. Prior to joining Liebert, he spent 21 years with residential and commercial air conditioning manufacturer York International. A graduate of Bucknell University with a BSME, and a MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Madara is an active member of ASHRAE

Thursday April 12th - 12:45 pm – 1:15 am – Analyst Presentation

Business Agility Through Virtualization
(right click to download; left click to open)

Server virtualization has been a hot topic for 2006. Most people think of server virtualization as a technology that can be used for aggressive consolidation. But there are many more business solutions that are enabled through virtualization. Join Andreas M. Antonopoulos to examine how you can increase business agility through virtualization. This session will review 10 business solutions that can be implemented with virtualization technolgies, provide a roadmap for implementing virtualization successfully and look at the synergy between virtualization, blade servers and storage networks.

Key Takeaways:

• Why virtualization is much more than consolidation
• Ten solutions you can build with virtualization and the risks level of each
• Five pitfalls to avoid with virtualization
• An implementation roadmap for virtualization

• Why blades, storage networks and virtualization work so well together

Integrating Blades Into Next-Generation Data Centers
(right click to download; left click to open)

This presentation will review the current state of large data centers today, which are struggling under the weight of geometrically increasing power and cooling loads. It will review how the current set of blades has exacerbated this problem, due to the large power densities of these devices, and will discuss what actions vendors are taking to help with this issue in the future. Additionally, it will offer advice on what data center managers can do with blades today to minimize the impact of these challenging issues.

A Realistic Recipe for IT and Business Agility
(Presentation will be available soon)

Mix one part blades with two parts virtualization. Add a cup of Open
Source, a dash of Web 2.0, and a pinch of ITIL. Roll out on a grid.
Sprinkle liberally with magic pixie dust, and bake for 1 hour in a warm SOA.

Voila!

No? You're right to be skeptical about insto-mixes promising instant IT and
business agility. Instead, let's talk seriously about modular computing and
how these genuinely tasty ingredients can be effectively combined in a healthy,
hype-free way.

Flexible Power Architecture for Your Dynamic Data Center
(right click to download; left click to open)

The frequency of MAC (moves/adds/changes) in data centers and computer rooms is increasing due to changes in business growth priorities and new technology deployment (like blade servers). This is, in turn, drives the need for the backup power architecture to be flexible enough to support the dynamic data center growth. This presentation will present best practices and new technologies in high-density, modular, scalable and energy efficient backup power protection architectures.

Sriram Ramakrishnan is the Business Unit Manager for Powerware Data Center Solutions with Eaton. He has worked in various business development, marketing and engineering capacities over the last 12 years within the power quality and mission-critical environment of GE and Eaton. Having earned his graduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida and his MBA from Duke, Ramakrishnan’s accomplishments include four US patents, with several additional applications pending.

Please contact the vendors below to receive a copy of the case study presented at BladeSystems Insight April.

Teak Technologies

10-Gb Congestion-Free EthernetTM Switching Solutions
for the IBM BladeCenter and Data Centers

Sanjay Dua, Chief Marketing Officer
sdua@teaktechnologies.com

OpenService

Security Management Center for Unified Threat Management

Art Zins, VP, Business Development
azins@openservice.com

Brocade

Brocade Blade Server SAN Solutions

Nelson Stewart, Product Manager, Embedded Switches
nelson.stewart@brocade.com

Citrix Systems, Inc.

Diskless Blades for WebServers case study

Christopher Fleck, Vice President Platform Development
Christopher.Fleck@citrix.com

NetEffect

The NetEffect case study details how 10GbE interconnects
can deliver high performance, low latency, and low power
while enabling a single unified fabric for data networking.

Brad Davidson, Account Manager
bdavidson@neteffect.com

Emulex Corporations

The Benefits of Virtual HBAs and Blade Server Integration

Rose Mesnard, Senior Account Executive
rose.mesnard@emulex.com

Blade Network Technologies

“Does 10G Ethernet Have a Role to Play in Your Datacenter?”
by Vikram Mehta, President & CEO, BLADE Network Technologies

Tim Shaughnessy, Director, Marketing
tim.shaughnessy@bladenetwork.net

Dell, Inc.

Dell PowerEdge Blades Simplifying Information Technology

How PowerEdge Blades help support one of the largest online
consumer database marketing services.

Aaron Hansen, Enterprise Product Group Marketing
aaron_hanson@dell.com

NetXen

“Data Center Efficiency and the Intelligent Network”

Cheryl Patstone, Director of Corporate Marketing
Cheryl@netxen.com

APC

Case Study: Mary Kay.

Mark Larochelle
mlarochelle@egenera.com

Supermicro

SuperBlade Presentation

Raphael Wong, Head of Blade Product Group
raphaelw@supermicro.com