IDEAS Insights

Dell Embraces Egenera's PAN Manager to Create a Virtual Datacenter

On Tuesday, Dell and Egenera will be announcing a strategic OEM agreement where Egenera’s PAN Manager will be available on Dell PowerEdge servers. PAN Manager is a unique management tool that is at the heart of Egenera’s enterprise BladeFrame servers, providing the ability to virtualize and manage not only virtual server environments, but also storage and I/O. Essentially, PAN Manager allows IT managers to create an entire virtual datacenter where nothing is tied to physical hardware. Compute, storage, and network resources can be dynamically allocated when needed and where needed. PAN Manager includes application clustering that allows virtual servers to failover automatically, and also full server failover to remote locations for disaster tolerance. All of these capabilities are tied together with a strong Egenera management framework that implements the high level of security demanded by many of Egenera’s financial services and government customers.

How will Dell benefit from this relationship? Dell has traditionally been firmly positioned in the industry-standard server space, providing a wide selection of servers at a great value. For virtualization, Dell PowerEdge servers support a host of third-party software, including VMware. Dell servers can be managed using the Dell OpenManage framework. In today’s market, Dell can compete very effectively with other vendors on simple server virtualization and SANs. But what it lacks is a management tool that can pull everything together into an entirely virtualized datacenter. That is where PAN Manager comes into play. With PAN Manager, Dell leaps over many of its competitors with the ability to create the virtualized datacenter of the future today using inexpensive industry-standard components.

Will this OEM relationship ultimately be extended to Sun, HP, and IBM, allowing the creation of heterogeneous virtualized datacenters? IDEAS feels that it is unlikely that HP and IBM will be offered the opportunity to partner with Egenera due to the intense competition Egenera experiences from these two vendors on a daily basis. But Sun may be a real possibility in the future. Sun already has a long-term OEM relationship with Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens has an OEM relationship with Egenera for PAN Manager. However, neither Sun nor Egenera has indicated that a deal is in the works.

We at IDEAS feel the OEM relationship is a win-win for Dell and Egenera, as well as the customers of both companies. This deal actually began when Egenera’s customers, who also own Dell servers, asked both companies to extend the benefits of Egenera’s virtual datacenter to Dell’s commodity hardware. The Egenera BladeFrame with PAN Manager is an outstanding product, but its cost precludes many IT departments from deploying it in general computing environments. However, the low price of the PowerEdge servers allows Egenera’s virtual datacenter to be brought into the mainstream server market, giving Dell an advantage that IBM, HP, and Sun cannot match. This relationship could really become very interesting should Dell decide to deploy PAN Manager on its new PowerEdge M1000e blade servers, or link PAN Manager into the OpenManage framework. Neither of these projects has been formally announced, but they both make sense as the relationship grows and matures. If you currently deploy Dell servers, you owe it to yourself to learn a little more about this new Dell/Egenera relationship.

HP's ProLiant Expands to Eight-Sockets

HP has announced that it is re-entering the eight-socket industry-standard server market with the ProLiant DL785 G5. Three years ago, HP dropped its eight-socket ProLiant DL740 and DL760 servers, claiming that blades and four-socket servers could fill the void. Why the sudden reversal of strategy? It is primarily being driven by large SQL databases and the relentless drive to consolidate industry-standard servers. Another factor that is prompting customers to scale up is energy costs. A large, virtualized server has the potential to be much more energy efficient than a collection of smaller servers. It is obvious to us that this is the right time for HP to re-enter the eight-socket market it once led.

This time around, HP has some serious competition to contend with. Sun is betting on the Sun Fire X4600 that supports up to eight Opteron processors in a single 4U enclosure. Sun claims it will be upgrading this server to the quad-core "Barcelona" processor in the near future. IBM recently introduced the 4U System x 3950 M2 modular server that features four quad-core "Tigerton" Xeon processors in each module. Up to four modules can be interconnected using NUMA technology IBM acquired when it bought Sequent. Unisys has traditionally been one of the leaders in this market with the ES7000/one, and will need to upgrade its existing servers to four-core processors to remain competitive in this market.

Not only are there a number of these large industry-standard servers from which to choose, they are all remarkably different in architecture, size, and capabilities. Each company has taken a slightly different approach to the same set of problems. HP and Sun feel the NUMA-like Direct Connect and HyperTransport capability in Opteron gives that architecture an advantage over Intel’s current Xeon architecture. IBM and Unisys had to design their own chipsets, incorporating their own NUMA implementations, to scale their Intel servers beyond four-sockets. Of course Intel will soon include its own version of Direct Connect in Xeon, making that a moot point. Another area of differentiation is the level of expandability. Sun, with its eight sockets in a 4U enclosure, has the least expandability of the group. HP puts its eight sockets into a single 7U enclosure, along with a large number of memory DIMMs, I/O slots, and disk drives. IBM and Unisys designed multiple 4U modules that have limited expandability per box, but good expandability when multiple boxes are considered.

So whose strategy is best? We at IDEAS feel the decision ultimately comes down to the customer's existing space constraints, storage architecture, and the ability of the customer to accurately predict future capacity needs. If space is very tight, then the modular components that IBM and Unisys offer would provide the opportunity to start small and scale up as needed. Sun’s server with its eight-sockets in a single box would also be an excellent solution for this situation, although it would require a SAN or storage array. If customers can accurately predict that their application needs will eventually include eight quad-core processors, then the ProLiant DL785 G5 is the right choice. At 7U, it is 1U less than two of the modular servers from IBM and Unisys, plus it has great expandability. The DL785 G5 also does not require scalability cables to go from four to eight sockets. That reduces latency and adds to the overall reliability. Finally, HP’s choice of the Opteron architecture and its HyperTransport allows for seamless eight-socket connectivity compared to today’s Xeon. Overall, we feel the ProLiant DL785 G5 is an excellent choice for today’s industry-standard scale-up requirements.

NetApp In 2008 - New Brand Identity, Storage Efficiency, And Market Share

NetApp, no longer Network Appliance, held its annual analyst conference on March 10th-12th in New York City.  NetApp provided a fairly comprehensive business update as well as its roadmap for 2008 and beyond.  Quite a bit of information was shared over the 1.5 days or so, but the essence of NetApp’s messages to the analyst community boiled down to two main areas: increasing data center efficiency for its customers and growing its market share.  All this is to be done under the new brand identify of NetApp, which features a new logo with the byline “Go further, faster”.

However the name “NetApp” is not really new.  The company has been referred to as NetApp for several years. In fact, it’s a certain bet that many storage professionals under 30 years of age wouldn’t be able to guess on a game show that the original name of the company is Network Appliance.  Similar to KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and IHOP (International House of Pancakes), NetApp is better known by its shortened nickname.  But the company has made the new name official.  So official in fact, that the executives have instituted a one dollar fine for employees who mistakenly utter the old name “Network Appliance.” Again, it's safe to say that no one under 30 will pay this fine. It’s important to note that there is more to brand identity than a company name and logo. The key piece going forward will be for NetApp to create company awareness to its existing and potential customer base. The historical connotation of “Network Appliance” is one of economical and fast file servers – more of a box type company.  The name "NetApp" must imply an IT solutions company that can solve business problems at both SMB and enterprise levels.  NetApp must execute on this message in order to achieve is market share growth objectives.

And speaking of market share, this is a key strategic area.  NetApp has engaged in a research project to assess the level of its company awareness and account penetration among major storage customers.  To NetApp’s credit, they shared these results with the analyst community even though they were not all that positive. NetApp identified what it determined to be the highest spending purchasers of storage products. This is defined by NetApp as the Storage 5000 (S5000), a NetApp term, not used or recognized across the industry.  NetApp’s findings show that within the S5000, only 10% are existing customers where NetApp has a high penetration rate. An additional 17% are existing customers where NetApp has what it considers to be a low penetration rate. This totals to only 27% of the S5000 where NetApp has any presence at all. Of course the good news (that NetApp was quick to point out)is that over 70% of the S5000 represents an opportunity for new business.

So how does NetApp plan to expand its market share into the remaining S5000 accounts? The short answer is to save its customers time and money by building efficient and cost effective storage infrastructures. NetApp will focus on disk based backup, server virtualization, and Ethernet based storage to provide optimum IT consolidation. As proof points, NetApp customers provided testimonials as to how they significantly saved on hardware and software, thus decreasing equipment overhead and energy costs. Consolidation and money savings is a strategy that should withstand tough economic times. NetApp Vice Chairman Tom Mendoza stated very clearly that tough economic times present NetApp with the opportunity to go on the offensive to sell its products since customers will ultimately save.
   
Creating savings during tough economic times is an interesting value proposition; however, efficiency should not be a goal limited only to a soft business climate. And of course, the value proposition is not limited exclusively to NetApp. The message for NetApp may be a new identity and market expansion, but the message to end users should be to look for their storage providers to demonstrate how they can decrease overall infrastructure costs.