InformationWeek

January 5, 1998

Servers Scale Up

New applications, server consolidation drive demand for more-scalable systems

By Mary Hayes , Bob Francis , and Martin J. Garvey

Scalable Servers sers increasingly rely on new applications with rapidly growing, sometimes unpredictable demands for server performance, such as Web commerce and data warehousing. Those users need servers that can scale as their needs increase. Providing that scalability-through multiprocessing and other techniques-will be a common theme among practically all hardware vendors this year.

Server consolidation will also drive the need for bigger systems. Many companies are sick of the costs and management effort associated with hundreds of distributed servers and want to consolidate data and applications onto fewer, larger machines. Dow-Corning, for one, is considering consolidating several midrange Sun Microsystems servers onto a 64-processor Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000. "Our current systems need to be over-configured to handle full loads," says Ken Carls, associate IT consultant with the Midland, Mich., chemical manufacturer. "The goal is shared system resources."

Vendors are taking several approaches. This year, most will increase the number of processors available in a single system using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). Also hot will be a relatively new approach called Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA), claimed by several vendors to eliminate some of the bottlenecks of SMP when building highly scalable systems.

Software will also be key. Some vendors are readying operating system updates that support many processors, or are using clustering software to let servers share workloads.

NT Servers: Eight-Way Is In
SMP improvements will appear in everything from low-end servers to mainframes. Servers running Windows NT will move upmarket this year as vendors ratchet up the standard for high-end NT PC servers from four-way to eight-way.

Some vendors, including Data General, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, NCR, and Unisys, have already made the move. "Our users tell us they're ready to deploy NT as a strategic platform and that they're ready for high-end servers running NT," says Maria Cannon, general manager for Enterprise NetServer operations at HP.

Rick Kish, CIO at Barnes & Noble Inc. in New York, is purchasing several HP eight-way servers to run the bookseller's Web servers. The machines offer scalability that's essential to ensure the bookseller can provide uninterrupted service as traffic grows, says Kish. "On the Web, if you have downtim e, you're losing sales," he says. "We want to be able to scale up to meet our needs, and an eight-way system gives us the headroom we need."

These machines aren't cheap, but Kish says they still provide computing power at a lower price than mainframes or minicomputers.

The first generation of high-end NT servers is based on the Pentium Pro processor, which Intel is phasing out this summer in favor of its forthcoming Deschutes microprocessor-designed for servers and scalable to eight-way multiprocessing. Compaq Computer, Dell Computer, and IBM say they'll wait for Deschutes to move to eight-way servers. "We're not going to deliver an eight-way Pentium Pro server," says Mike Perez, VP of Compaq's server division, "because [with Deschutes] we can deliver new technology with much better features and a better upgrade path."

Many eight-way Deschutes systems will be based on designs from Corollary Inc., which Intel purchased last year to proliferate low-priced eight-way multiprocessing technology in the market.

Not all NT vendors will stop at eight-way. Unisys, in Blue Bell, Pa., plans to deliver a 32-processor NT system by year's end. "Unisys now is a company that has the courage to bet its entire future on NT for the enterprise," says Fred Ruessli, Unisys Computer Systems Group VP of worldwide marketing and business systems.

Clustering Takes Off
NT clustering, using technology from Microsoft, Compaq- Tandem, and others, is also likely to take off in 1998. However, Microsoft's initial NT clustering software provides only failover; it doesn't offer scalability through workload sharing.

As NT servers get bigger, service and support will become a key differentiating factor between vendors, says Martin Reynolds, an analyst with Dataquest. "These are extremely complex systems, and you don't want the customer to have a bad experience, so you're going to see these companies provide as much help as possible," he adds.

While NT servers move up to challenge Unix systems, vendors of U nix-based SMP servers have their eyes on the data center with mainframe-class servers.

HP shipped the 16-processor V2200, the first in a line of high-end systems, in the fourth quarter of last year. In 1998, HP plans to deliver V-class servers with up to 32 processors and to accelerate the rate of performance improvement overall, says Dan Glessner, HP's manager of enterprise servers.

One of Sun's chief goals in 1998 is to join HP, IBM, and others in delivering a full 64-bit Unix operating system. Currently, Sun's Solaris can support 64-bit disk files, but an upgrade next year will also allow 64-bit processing. "This feature will enable a new class of very large applications," says Rich Green, VP of Solaris at Sun.

Sun claims it can fit more processors in a box than any other SMP vendor; its high-end Ultra Enterprise 10000 uses 64 UltraSparc processors. Sun executives say they'll deliver systems this year that will scale even higher, with processor speeds exceeding 300 MHz.

Many users are t urning to these big Unix servers for their growing data warehouses. Fleet Financial Group in Hartford, Conn., is building a warehouse of information about its 9 million customers. Fleet doesn't know if its Ultra Enterprise 6000 servers can handle the job, and is looking closely at the UE 10000. "We're looking at upwards of a terabyte of data in 1998," says Alan Hubbard, Fleet's VP and manager of database services and support.

Fleet sees a direct link between its data warehouse and company profits. The system will let Fleet track the way customers use automated teller machines and live tellers, as well as PC banking and banking over the Internet. "We're using our data warehouse to figure out what makes a customer profitable, and to make sure we keep our profitable customers," says Hubbard. "If a customer has only $100 in the bank but regularly calls our call center for an update, that customer isn't profitable."

Sun will also deliver more advanced storage subsystems in 1998. "If storage doesn't scal e, then database applications can't scale," says Shahin Khan, Sun's director of marketing for data center and high-performance computing. "We think scalability is a holistic concept. It's like conducting an orchestra: Every item needs to play its part to be scalable."

Silicon Graphics Inc. aims to scale up using a completely different architecture: NUMA, which lets users scale systems across multiple distributed nodes, each of which can consist of several processors together with local memory. Silicon Graphics says NUMA will let vendors avoid the performance bottlenecks that shared-bus SMP systems will face as vendors attempt to make them even bigger.

Noise About NUMA
Silicon Graphics says NUMA will set the company apart in 1998. "We recognized the limitations of a bus system in 1990," says Ihab Abu-Hakima, VP and general manager of the Mountain View, Calif., company's enterprise server division. "We believe NUMA is the next-generation architecture, and that SMP is an architecture that's at the end of its life."

By midyear, Silicon Graphics plans to deliver an operating system update that will double the processors its NUMA machines can support, to 128. "Our goal is to be one of the top three [Unix] vendors in terms of market share in the next few years," says Abu-Hakima.

Sequent Computer Systems Inc. and Data General are among the vendors banking on NUMA. But others, including Sun and HP, argue that NUMA is more appropriate for the technical world. They'll borrow what they want from it and leave the rest alone. Only time will tell who's right, says Jerry Sheridan, an analyst with Dataquest. "At this time, there is no clear winner," he notes.

Data General already delivers its version of NUMA. In 1998, the Westboro, Mass., company will push what it considers its two big differentiators: its NUMA systems and its Fibre Channel storage products. The Aviion AV 20000 NUMA system, due this year with as many as 32 Pentium Pro processors, will compete with systems from HP, IBM, Sequent , and Sun, according to Data General.

Last year, Digital moved from fighting Intel to selling it the rights to the Alpha processor. This year, it will deliver faster SMP servers based on both SMP and NUMA architectures. One key focus for Digital will be clustering. "Our vision for clusters is to make individual nodes operate as one machine, and we've worked on the challenge since 1983," says David Poole, director of the company's enterprise server product line. Poole says Digital plans to increase scalability and reliability with Galaxy, a new set of systems that will combine clustering and SMP.

Sequent, which has long pitched itself as a provider of Unix systems for data-center applications, will broaden that focus in 1998. "This year we'll offer NT and Unix on the same system," says John McAdam, president and chief operating officer of the Beaverton, Ore., company. It's not clear exactly when NT will become widely used for data center applications, McAdam says, "but you need NT capability as part of the road map."

IBM's Overlapping Servers
IBM has big plans for each of its overlapping server lines this year, including the RS/6000, seen by some observers as an also-ran in the Unix server market.

IBM's high-end RS/6000-based SP clustered system is becoming popular for data-mining applications. For more mainstream use, IBM will ship the Model S70, with a 64-bit AIX operating system and 12-way SMP. Don Johnson, IBM marketing manager, says the new system is well-positioned to compete with Windows NT. "The main value proposition we provide is AIX and our HACMP [failover software] vs. NT with Wolfpack," he says. "AIX and HACMP are years ahead."

IBM's AS/400 division is also fighting the assault of NT servers, both by improving performance and by running NT on the AS/400 alongside IBM's OS/400 software. Ollie Ayers, IS director of $500 million telemarketing company Central Talk Management in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., likes the dual-operating-system approach. Central Talk handles more than 400,000 phone records a day; it currently uses NT for file serving and AS/400s for the company's data warehouse. "If all the work is on the AS/400, I give up file-serving performance, and if I go all NT servers, they won't handle all the data we have," Ayers says.

At the high end, IBM's mainframe division is readying faster processors and a range of other enhancements for delivery in IBM's next System/390 mainframe generation, due in the second half. The new processor is expected to boost performance by about 50% compared with the 60 to 65 Mips delivered by IBM's current processor line. IBM says it will also improve multiprocessing and input/output performance.

George Walsh, IBM's System/390 director of hardware and industry business, says the S/390 is being readied to compete for more new applications, such as electronic commerce and data warehousing, with improved support for TCP/IP, different types of data, and Java apps.

More Unix and even NT vendors are pursuing the same goals. With each t ype of system rapidly scaling up to handle bigger workloads, users will have new platform choices for their most demanding applications. Analysts say users can expect their future data centers to become mixed environments, with NT and Unix machines muscling their way in alongside the mainframe.

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