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Server Buying Guide Aspects to consider when buying a new server

SalesPanda Editorial Content

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About this document

Technology landscape changes extremely fast with many new inventions and

innovations reaching the Enterprise Technology Market. SalesPanda helps

technology buyers understand technology, research products, find solution

providers and connect with them. SalesPanda technology editorial team

releases meaningful content to assist buyers at various stages. Buying Guides

explain a technology, elucidates use cases, highlights salient characteristics,

identifies leading providers and helps understand what to look for in order to

protect IT investments. This document might be used by individuals looking for

buying a server for any of the use cases described in the document. To

evaluate a server, there are some basics that need to be considered. This

document covers the fundamental considerations in evaluating and procuring

servers. This document will be useful to various levels of IT leadership who

evaluate or influence IT decisions. This is also a good primer for non-IT

business leaders understand basic concepts of technology. This document is

part of a series of buyer guides developed by the editorial team of SalesPanda

to assist IT and non-IT decision makers buy Enterprise Technology Solutions.

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Table of Contents

1. Server Use Cases

2. Server Specification

a. Form Factor

b. CPU

c. Hard Disk

d. RAM

3. Important Players

4. Market Trends

5. Pricing Guide

6. Vendor Viability

7. Infrastructure as a service

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1. Server Use Cases:

Servers are devices used in organizations for various computational needs.

Servers can be used for a variety of purposes starting from HTTP/Web,

Application, Database, Security, Mail, Network Management and various others.

Organizations need servers off and on for:

a. New Workloads: Servers can be needed for new requirements like a new

application deployment, rollout to different location, disaster recovery and

various new workloads.

b. Scaling up or out: Servers can be added for enhancing capacity of and

existing node of servers by scaling out. For scaling up also, new bigger

servers can be bought and the smaller existing server be used for some

other workload.

c. Server refresh: Depending on the nature of existing ones, servers need to

be refreshed every 5 years or so. Sometimes even earlier. That is also a

good time for a technology refresh in terms of the database, operating

system and also fundamental aspects of server technologies.

2. Server Specification Elements:

Servers are typically categorised by the following aspects:

a. Form factor: Form factor defines the shape, size of physical attributes of

the server. There are 3 form factors of a server:

i. Tower: This is where the server typically

stands on a floor/furniture independently.

There is an individual casing of the server

inside which all the elements of the server

resides. Tower servers are typically not

found inside data centres but are usually

found in smaller organizations and in server

rooms.

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ii. Rack: In rack form factor, these servers can be mounted on racks in

data centres/server rooms. Racks are typically 19 inches wide and

42U or 23 U high. Servers are typically 1U, 2U, 4U, 8U high. 1 U is

1.75 inches. Typically, a piece of equipment being installed has a front

panel height 1⁄32 inch (0.031 inches or 0.787 millimeters) less than

the allotted number of Us. Thus, a 1U rack-mount server is not 1.75

inches (44.4 mm) tall, but is 1.719 inches (43.7 mm) tall. 2U would be

3.469 inches (88.1 mm) instead of 3.5 inches (88.9 mm). This gap

allows a bit of room above and below an installed piece of equipment

so it may be removed without binding on the adjacent equipment.

iii. Blade: Blade servers are stripped down modular designed servers

which can work only when put in a blade enclosure, which can hold

multiple blade servers. A typical enclosure has 6,8,16 blade servers

depending on the size. The enclosure provides common power,

cooling, networking, various interconnects and management. Blade

servers also vary between half blades and full blades by their size. A

blade enclosure is fit into a Rack and its height is defined by ‘U’. A

typical blade enclosure can be 10U in height.

b. CPU Types: Commonly used commercially available servers come with the

following types of CPU architectures:

i. X86: Commonly found architecture in

most entry level and also higher end

servers. Common manufacturers are

Intel and AMD.

ii. RISC: IBM, Oracle (erstwhile SUN)

have their own RISC architecture

CPU-s. IBM has Power Architecture

Servers and Oracle produces

SPARC.

iii. Itanium: Manufactured by Intel for

HP, these are processors designed for high performance computers.

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iv. CISC: While X86 is also part of CISC CPU types, there are lesser

known CPUs designed as per this architecture. IBM z-series

mainframes come with Z-architecture CPU-s.

CPU-s are defined by the number of cores available in the CPU.

CPU-s are typically quad core to six cores.

CPU of a server is also defined by the clock speed. The higher the

clock speed, the more instructions a processor can process. Typically

clock speeds are designated by frequency units like GHz. Sometimes

CPUs are defined by MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second).

Smaller servers have 1-2 CPU-s, mid range servers have 2-4 CPUs

and high end servers have more number of CPUs.

c. Hard disks: Servers are defined by the size and type of disks provided for

native storage inside the server. Hard disks are typically SAS or SATA. SAS

stands for Serial-attached SCSI. SATA Stands for Serial Advanced

Technology Attachment. SAS drives are more advanced than SATA by

speed and reliability. SAS Drives come in 10K and 15 K RPM speeds. Solid

State Drives are more recent technologies, but are not available extensively

with low and mid-range servers. Typical hard disk sizes are 300 or 500 GB.

There are typically 2, 4, 8 or more bays available.

d. RAM: Servers come with the Random Access

Memory (RAM) for execution of programs with

associated data. Servers are characterized by the

amount of RAM available. For smaller servers,

RAM available is in the range of 4-8GB. In larger

servers, RAM available is typically few GBs per

core.

3. Important Players:

In the common enterprise server market, there are the following significant players:

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a. IBM: IBM has x86, Power and Z (mainframe) servers. Earlier models like i-

series (AS400) servers are included in the Power Systems range now. IBM

offers blade centres and blade servers for both x-series (x86) and power

(RISC) architectures. IBM offers

some combined packages called

Pure Systems like Pure Data and

Pure Analytics.

b. HP: HP has the x86 series by the

name Proliant and the Itanium

powered server range called

Integrity range. Integrity servers are

typically more powerful machines

and also have HP Superdomes and

HP Nonstop in the Integrity range of

servers. HP also offers blade form

factors in both range of servers

especially for the small and mid-range ones.

c. Oracle (SUN): SUN also has x86 range of servers and RISC servers

(SPARC). SUN also offers Blade servers for both x86 and RISC servers.

Oracle also offers a super cluster range of products.

d. DELL: Dell provides mostly x86 servers across all form factors of tower,

rack and blades. These are all sold under PowerEdge brand.

e. CISCO: CISCO is now one of the leading brands of x86 servers today. They

entered the server market around 2009 with its Unified Computing System,

combining compute, network and virtualization resources in a single box.

4. Market Trends and recent developments:

The server market is impacted heavily by the advent of cloud offerings of IAAS

(Infrastructure as a service). Server buying moved from end customers to IAAS

providers. With an overall increase in workloads however, the server market grew

at a nominal rate of 2.1% globally in 2013 as per Gartner. However, revenues

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declined by 4.5 %. IT Infrastructure business is not growing at par with other areas

in IT as more and more IAAS options are available from the likes of Amazon Web

Services (AWS), Softlayer (IBM) and many other players.

In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to buy the x86 server business of IBM for $2.6 B.

Lenovo bought IBM’s PC business in 2004.

Organizations are also making better use of their servers through virtualization.

The following are some key trends in the server market:

a. Increasing onslaught of IAAS providers: More and more organizations

are opting for different forms of cloud offerings before buying infrastructure

in-house.

b. Server: Virtualization software

from third-party providers like

VMware and also server OEMs like

IBM helps virtual servers to be

produced from a single physical

one, and it ensures the physical

resources that are available are

utilized more effectively and

efficiently. CPUs, Memory, Disk and all other resources can be allocated to

virtual server on demand. This is most suitable when there is various

workloads in the organization which peak at different points in time over a

day, week, month or any other period of time. Server virtualization helps in

utilizing unutilized resources kept in headroom to handle occasional peaks in

workloads. Along with Server Virtualization, organizations are also using VDI

(Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and Storage Virtualization. In server

virtualization, these virtual servers are also referred to as virtual machines

and the environment to create and monitor VMs are called hypervisors.

c. Open Compute Project: Organizations with large distributed workloads are

also looking at cheap standardized servers based on the Open Compute

Project (OCP) specifications, made by lesser-known manufacturers such as

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QuantaQCT and Wiwynn, instead of established vendors like HP or Dell.

(QCT is owned by Quanta, a Taiwanese company that makes servers for

Dell.)

5. Pricing Guide:

The top 5 vendors are vying for the same space and hence are comparable in

price. Companies have different server offerings based on various configurations

and specifications. Here’s an approximate guide for price ranges in Indian Rupees.

Broad Specs Range

Entry Level

Servers

One Socket Tower 50,000 – 1,00,000

One Socket rack (1U) ~60,000

Two Socket Tower 90,000-175,000

Two Way rack (1U) 1,00,000 - 1,75,000

Two Way Rack better CPU 1,75,000 – 3,25,000

Blade Server 1,00,000 – 2,00,000

Enclosure 5,00,000-15,00,000

Mid-range

Servers

Typically 2-4 CPU-s (x86) 5,00,000 – 8,00,000

RISC 7,00,000 – 12,00,000

High-end

servers

Varies based on configuration

Along with servers there are various other connectors, displays, drives etc. which

might be required. One primary component required is an Operating System.

Windows – commercially available with license fees + annual support

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Linux – Offered by Redhat, SUSE etc. for installation and support fees

UNIX – HPUX by HP, AIX by IBM, Solaris by Oracle come for a price typically

along with RISC servers of those makes.

6. Support and vendor viability:

When deciding on a server, support ecosystem for the server also needs to be

kept in mind. The following aspects of support and vendor viability are to be kept in

mind:

a. End of sale / End of Support: Typically, server companies announce end

of sale and then end of support. The

support capability tapers off towards the

end. So it is not advisable to buy servers

which are past their peak and would reach

end of life soon.

b. Support infrastructure: There should be

a reliable support infrastructure from the

company or its partners for any issues

faced.

c. R&D Spend and new technology focus:

R&D spend of the product gives an idea

of the commitment the company has on the future.

d. Skills on OS: There should be skills available in the market for the OS of

choice. Skill availability can be in-house or available in the market.

e. Server Management skills: Skills are typically available in the market for

commonly available servers. It is important to pick servers where server

management skills can be hired in-house or can be got on hire.

Servers are fundamental requirements in each IT environment. There are pros and

cons of servers on the cloud and servers in-premise. Prior experience and future

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outlook play a significant role in determining the brand of the new server to be

procured. The size of the server is determined by the workload it is expected to

handle and performance output expected. For an independent, technology

agnostic estimation of infrastructure required and an architectural assessment,

please get in touch with SalesPanda experts for help.

7. Infrastructure as a service:

Organizations are increasingly going

for Infrastructure as a service. There

are benefits and concerns. It is like

using a taxi cab and not owning a car.

One needs higher capital to own a car

– that is the classic CAPEX to OPEX

benefit of IAAS. The same

specifications discussed earlier hold

true in case of servers on the cloud –

only you can take them on demand

and pay as you go. Apart from these,

operating system also needs to be specified on the cloud and also for on-premise

ones. IAAS providers provide virtual server instances to consumers. They can also

provide dedicated servers. The typical benefits of cloud servers are:

a. Low start up cost

b. No network infrastructure required except an internet

c. Space, HVAC etc. also factored in – not required separately

d. Can stop service with no/minimal notice

e. Scaling up and down is easy

There had been the concerns about security and privacy. I personally believe that

a leading IAAS service provider will have better security and privacy that most

organizations can manage to put on their own. There are companies at cross

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roads of this decision on whether to put on the cloud or on-premise. We shall

address all these in a different buying guide.

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