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John Humphreys, Lucinda Borovick, Randy Perry
IBM Corporation
In the past decade, organizations have dramatically increased the number of network devices in their datacenters, adding critical functionality but complicating datacenter management. The Internet boom, in particular, fueled an explosion of single-function network appliances, creating a highly complex and inefficient datacenter topology that is difficult and expensive to manage and vulnerable to security threats. In today’s competitive business environment, CIOs are seeking to simplify their datacenter topology to cut costs and create a network infrastructure that is secure, easy to manage, always available, and capable of adjusting to unpredictable workloads and changing business needs. In rearchitecting their infrastructure for greater efficiency and flexibility, many organizations are consolidating their rack-optimized, datacenter servers into a blade server chassis and then integrating the storage fabric and Layer 2 switches into the chassis. Blade servers were originally viewed as a means of conserving datacenter space and power, which were at a premium during the Internet boom. However, they are now valued more for their ability to increase availability and manageability and to lower acquisition and ownership costs. Integrating Layer 2 switches into the chassis further enhances the consolidation and manageability benefits of a blade server and provides the necessary backplane to support basic server workloads. The blade server allows server capacity to be allocated dynamically to handle changing application loads. One company that has acted early in combining the benefits of blade servers and intelligent switches is IBM, which has embedded and integrated a Layer 2–7 Gigabit Ethernet switch module designed by Nortel Networks into its eServer BladeCenter offering. With the inclusion of a Layer 2–7 switch, IBM switching functionality within the blade server chassis. Th expects to add new capabilities and benefits to its blade server offering, including increased application availability and performance, improved manageability and security protection, easier scalability, and greater flexibility to support on-demand computing. To validate the benefits of embedding and integrating Layer 2–7 switches into a blade server chassis, IDC interviewed IT executives at nine major organizations that have deployed blade servers within their datacenters. IDC asked a number of questions about the cost savings and other benefits of server consolidation and embedding Layer 2–7 switching into the blade server. Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA P.508.872.8200 F.508.935.4015 www.idc.com 2 #3852 ©2003 IDC IDC found that the combination of server and LAN switch consolidation delivers more benefits than just server consolidation or LAN switch consolidation alone. Enterprises in the IDC study that migrated from rack-optimized servers in the datacenter to blade server configurations will be able to reduce their average cost of ownership for server and network infrastructure by 48% over three years through server consolidation and reduced server acquisition and maintenance costs. Embedding Layer 2–7 switch functionality within the blade server chassis would reduce these costs by an additional 33%, for a total savings of 65%, by bringing similar consolidation and While this consolidation is an important first step, organizations can go further in simplifying their datacenter topology by integrating and embedding Layer 3–7is LAN switch consolidation opens the door for tasks performed by function-specific appliances to be consolidated into the blade center chassis. In addition, adding switching intelligence to t maintenance savings to the networking infrastructure and by further reducing acquisition costs.
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