Ultra-Dense Server Deployments – more power – less space – cost savings

Data Center Consolidation and Virtualization are two hot trends across our customer base. Our customers are asking us to help them reduce the amount of power and space needed for their ever-growing deployments while achieving greater performance and yes, do all of this cost effectively and reliably.

Defining ultra-dense server deployment

Simply put, the objective is to pack as much computing power as you can into as small a form factor as you can reasonably achieve. But first let’s define the unit of measurement that is used in many discussions of ultra-dense servers. A rack unit or U (less commonly RU) is a unit of measure used to describe the height of equipment intended for mounting in a 19-inch rack or a 23-inch rack. (The 19-inch or 23-inch dimension refers to the width of the equipment mounting frame in the rack i.e. the width of the equipment that can be mounted inside the rack). One rack unit is 1.75 inches (44.45 mm) high. The size of a piece of rack-mounted equipment is frequently described as a number in “U”. For example, one rack unit is often referred to as “1U”, 2 rack units as “2U” and so on. A typical full size rack is 42U, which means it holds just over 6 feet of equipment. The trend curve is to utilize blade servers in a 16 1U server configuration and to fit it in a 10U space. In many cases the blade servers are just as powerful as their 1U or 2U counterparts, so the extra density you get with blades comes without sacrificing power.

When you throw in virtualization it allows you to exponentially pack a number of virtual machines into a single physical space. Essentially the entire concept allows you to increase your server density many times over.

How Virtualization increases the horsepower in ultra dense deployments

VMware’s VMotion combined with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) turbo charges your ultra-dense deployments. VMotion allows you to migrate a virtual machine from one physical host to another without any downtime, and DRS takes this a step further and actually load balances virtual machines across multiple hosts for you so you can ensure all of your physical machines share a balanced performance load.

One requirement of these features, though, is that the physical hosts have very similar hardware. With a blade deployment you already know the servers are identical. VMotion and DRS work without substantial configuration tweaks. By adding let’s say another blade and adding it to the cluster you expand the configuration and DRS will manage the specifics.

How ultra-dense deployment can increase consolidation

Many of our customers have a development and test and/or lab environment full of individual servers. The servers are typically high-powered so that they perform well in meeting mission testing and proofs of concept. When not in use the servers are idle. Idle servers still demand power and require administration. By consolidating the servers into an ultra-dense server configuration you can substantially consolidate the space needed for labs and test environments.

Ultra-dense deployment to reduce power consumption

One of many benefits of Ultra-dense deployments is reduced power usage. Many blade servers are designed to consolidate power consumption and even take extra steps to reduce the overall power draw, particularly when the system isn’t being fully used.