Are Blades Cutting It?

Industry messages about blade servers and the storage switches that go with them – are decidedly mixed. On the one hand, we hear they're a disappointment; on the other, that blades are the fastest-growing segment of the server market.

Representing the first camp is analyst firm TheInfoPro Inc. (TIP), which conducted a survey of 70 server managers, 35 percent of whom viewed blades as "unnecessary, costly, and an immature technology." The firm says the early excitement around blade servers was premature. (See Study Highlights Blade Disappointment.)

"Many expected to see improvements in server manageability, along with cost, energy, and space savings, and today's blades just aren't delivering those benefits across a range of configurations," says Bob Gill, TIP's chief research officer, in a prepared statement.

From the storage perspective, more bad news came in August from Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), which reported disappointing sales in the blade department (see Blunt Blades Bloody Brocade). OEM partners Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), execs maintain, just didn't get the message out fast enough.

Another blade camp has a different message. "Blades are the fastest-growing segment of the Intel-based server market," says Tim Golden, director of product marketing for PowerEdge servers at Dell. He says that while the "attach rate" of blade servers to SANs (meaning the percentage of blade server users who adopt SAN switch blades) is less than 20 percent right now, it is "growing very rapidly." Besides Brocade switches, Dell also sells Fibre Channel fabric switches from McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) and Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX) in blade form.Other blade server vendors give similarly high growth rates and even higher attach rates for SAN. Steve Gillaspy, group manager of HP's BladeSystem, claims that more than 40 percent of BladeSystem users adopt a switch blade. HP has partnerships with Brocade, Emulex, McData, and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC).

Of course, blade server vendors with SAN partnerships may have more vested interest in big attach rates. But Pat Buddenbaum, product line manager for blades at , puts SAN attach rates at more than 30 percent – and Intel doesn't yet offer a specific vendor's FC switch as a blade. Instead, that percentage refers to the group of Intel blade server users that deploy the gear's FC interface to connect to SANs.

An interesting word on blades comes from , which is so far the only FC vendor not to offer a blade-level version of its switch. "We've been approached by all the vendors and we are evaluating it," says Ed Chapman, director of marketing for Cisco's Storage Technology Business Unit. He suggests that next year Cisco may have something definitive to say on the subject.

All this input, including Cisco's reticence, makes several things clear with regard to blades. First, blade server uptake is a force to be reckoned with, even if blades aren't yet taking the data center by the kind of storm some hoped for. Second, blade servers show every sign of growing faster than other kinds of servers, including rackmount ones. Third, storage networking is intrinsic to the value of blade servers. It's clear that a large percentage of blade server sales take some form of SAN gear along.

So when will the picture get clearer? Perhaps not for a couple of years. If you take a cue from Cisco, next year will see momentum build to a point where it can't be ignored.— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch