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Follow UsOn an average, a large organization would have some 20 to 50 servers, and a small to medium one would have about 5 to 10. ISPs, ASPs, call or data centers have server farms where they house several hundred servers. With an average PC server being about twice the size of a PC, you can imagine the space that these take up. With an increase in premium on space, there is a demand for servers that take up very little space, but can deliver the same, if not more, processing power and storage.
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Slim
ser-vers promise to meet this need. These are full-featured servers some 1.75” thick (this thickness is commonly referred to as 1 U). Forty two of such 1 U servers, with one or two CPUs per server, can fit horizontally into a six-foot rack, much like a huge almirah with 42 drawers. These slim servers are called rack servers as they fit into a rack. The rack will have one monitor, keyboard/mouse in common for all the servers it hosts, with a mechanism to switch the keyboard/mouse and monitor across all servers in the rack.
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Where is server slimming heading? |
| In the race to make servers that occupy less space without compromising on power, the winner will be one that can pack servers creatively. IBM, Intel, and Compaq are already talking about a ‘stereo components’ philosophy. Servers will resemble today’s stereo systems wherein boxes–much like a CD player, tuner, tape deck, etc–will handle different tasks, like storage, networking, and processing. You build your server out of such blocks. Technologies like IBM’s Remote Input/Output, InfiniBand, and even Ethernet can be used to tie several computing nodes together, and having them communicate with storage and networking to be located elsewhere. |
Sun, IBM, HP, Network Engines, Dell, VA Linux Systems, Compaq, and others sell servers that fit into a rack. Racks were there before the I U servers themselves. In those days, a huge rack could take four or five servers. Then came the 2 U servers, and finally the thinner 1 U ones.
It was Network Engines that first came out with a two-processor 1 U server, and Sun came out with its single-processor Netra T1 server in 1999. Compaq introduced its skinny Photon 1 U server (officially called ProLiant DL 360) in June 2000, which has two PIII/800 MHz and 4 GB of memory (twice that of Network Engines’). It also supports disk drives that can be swapped without shutting the machine down and has a 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI slot. In addition, it runs cooler, requiring only four fans to Network Engines’ seven and therefore consumes less power. On the Linux front, VA Linux Systems in March this year launched a two-processor 1 U server that includes management software to enable administrators to control the servers from afar.
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Change on the move |
| IBM is offering the ability to change fans, cards, power supplies, and disk drives without shutting off the system. Its servers also contain ‘chipkill’ technology, which lets the memory to continue working even when a module fails. IBM is also adding ‘software rejuvenation’ features that will let Windows-based machines automatically restart periodically. |
Rack servers are very popular, and you might think that they are the last word in slimness. The latest move in slim-server technology, however, is towards achieving the power of two to eight servers per U of thickness. Or, to stack several hundred servers in a single rack. These servers, called ultradense servers, achieve high density by vertically stacking several exposed motherboards inside an enclosure that is several Us high, much like keeping books in a bookshelf.
Compaq, IBM, HP, Network Engines, and Intel are manufacturing ultradense servers, with Compaq’s models, code-named QuickBlade, arriving later this year.
How they stay slim
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Drawbacks of being slim |
| The main problem faced by slim machines is the dissipation of tremendous heat generated by their fast CPUs, and little room for the cooling fans because of the slim design. To overcome this, Network Engines has introduced heat pipes that use evaporating alcohol to cool the dual CPUs in its new Sierra server. RLX Technologies use Transmeta’s Crusoe processor, which remains relatively cool and consumes lesser power. |
How do these servers manage to be so slim? The functions of slim and traditional servers are the same; they differ only in their features. Inside the cabinet of traditional servers you’ll find a motherboard, multiple hard disks, a bulky power supply, a huge processor, a fan, and loads of empty space for add-on cards, that you probably will never use.
Both rack and ultradense servers do away with this space. This is made possible by changes in technologies and with miniaturization. For starters, CPUs of today are only a fraction of the size of the older bulky Xeon CPUs. Some tight designing puts the RAM at an incline saving on height. The electronics on the board itself are smaller, hard disks have become slimmer, other storage devices can be external, power supply has become smaller, and so on.