BUSINESS
Power cooling a factor in server choice: IBM
24-05-2007
by Emmet Ryan
The increased importance of power cooling is driving European firms towards blade servers according to IBM.
"Power cooling is a problem that has become more visible to businesses in recent years," Tikiri Wanduragala, senior sales consultant with IBM System x told ENN. Processors on blade servers use shared power and cooling systems, generating less heat than traditional servers. Wanduragala said traditional businesses such as banks were looking at way to improve power cooling in a drive to become more efficient.
"It varies [in terms of importance] from country to country but it is becoming an issue. There is a massive shift in thinking that's happening."
He said industries such as banking were looking at upgrading their server systems as demands on their computers systems increase. "It's not crazy for a major European bank to look at upgrading [between] 1,000 and 7,000 servers," said Wanduragala.
He made the comments at IBM's executive briefing centre in Raleigh North Carolina where Big Blue is holding its BladeCenter briefings this week.
Wanduragala said the opening up of the European banking sector will place new demands on the industry as the size of organisations changes. "With deregulation, there are a lot of mergers and acquisitions and more cross border deals occurring. At present the largest European bank only has a 5 percent to 7 percent market share," he said.
On average around 2.6 servers are installed every minute in Europe. The bulk of these are traditional servers, accounting for about 1.5 billion units per quarter. Wanduragala said firms are moving towards blade servers and brick style symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems. "Brick style and blade servers are key growth areas in Europe," he said.
SMP systems involve two or more identical processors being connected to a single shared main memory. These systems allow any processor to work on any task no matter where the data as the task is located in memory. SMP systems can easily move tasks between processors to balance the workload efficiently.
Wanduragala said the demand for blades and SMPs varied across Europe. Blades are particularly popular in Ireland, Britain, France, Germany and the Mediterranean while firms in Nordic countries opt for SMPs.
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