Blades Cut Both Ways

5:20 PM -- Offering storage within a blade is nothing new, although supporting server blades and storage blades within the same chassis is something that vendors are only just latching onto. This week at SNW, for example, HP will take the wraps off its first dedicated storage blade, the SB40c, along with two new offerings for its EVA family of products.

Blades can undoubtedly offer big benefits to users, especially in data centers where space is tight. The idea of a technology that can be simply slotted in and out of a chassis with the minimum of fuss is also good news, particularly with IT departments currently stretched to the limit.

With the 876-Gbyte SB40c, HP feels that it is making blades an increasingly attractive proposition by enabling users to add a storage blade to the c-Class chassis and server blades it launched earlier this year. (See HP Brandishes Blades and HP Unveils Blade Design.)

"We're trying to give more incentives to customers to rack mount customers to move to blades - it's very easy to use and install," Kyle Fitze, director of SAN marketing at HP's StorageWorks division, told Byte and Switch last week.

"One of our strategies is to 'blade everything,' " explained the exec, adding that users will be seeing more server and storage blades from HP. Although the exec would not go into specifics, he confirmed that HP will also be offering higher capacity storage blades at some point.This is all well and good, but we should not get too carried away with all this blade brouhaha. After all, the SB40c essentially provides direct attached storage for a server blade within HP's c-Class architecture -- a storage networking blade, which would require additional backup features, is still some way off for HP.

Then there is the ongoing problem of interoperability. At the moment, users still can't swap out blades from different vendors within the same chassis, thanks to all those proprietary blade architectures. (See A Blade That Cuts Both Ways.) Earlier this year, Sun made a nod towards this problem when it announced that it is looking to build an extension to the PCI Express I/O standard into its blade servers, but this was little more than dipping a toenail in the water. (See Sun Glints Off Blades.)

The convergence of blade servers and storage within the same chassis certainly makes practical sense, but beware -- you could end up being tied closer to your vendor than ever before.

— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch