Blades growing fast, but limited by blunt standards
1 min read
Although blade servers are the fastest-growing segment of the server market, they’re hindered by a lack of standards and rapid change over the next five years.
So says analyst Gartner, which forecasts 19% compound annual growth rate from last year to 2012 – then representing 20% of the market.
“We are not suggesting that IT organisations stay away from blades,” comments Andrew Butler, vice president and Gartner analyst. “Blades do address many problems in the data centre.
“What we are saying is that IT organisations adopting blades need to be prepared for further changes in this technology. Blade servers have been a rapidly changing technology, and we fully expect this to continue, particularly during the next five years.”
During the next two years, Gartner predicts several specific changes, including blade server aggregation, faster I/O connections, improved I/O controls and more flexible storage options.
For example, on the aggregation front, Gartner expects that creating single logical server blades from multiple physical blades will become a standard blade server capability by 2010.
Equally, when it comes to faster I/O, the analyst simply points to continually increasing fabric speeds: “10 gigabit Ethernet is entering the market, equivalent InfiniBand speeds are coming and speeds for both fabrics will increase beyond 10Gb,” says Butler.
And there’s another prediction: deeper integration with virtualisation. Gartner expects blade vendors to drive this, with support for embedded hypervisors and further integration of virtual machine management with physical machine management.
Then after the two year point, there’s another set of developments, mostly around management software enhancements, memory aggregation and, finally, an interface and form-factor standard for chassis switch modules to enable third-party companies to manufacture products common to multiple vendor chassis.
