The Future of the Server: Questions From Symposium

Transcription

1 Events, G. Weiss, J. Enck Research Note 28 October 2002 The Future of the Server: Questions From Symposium The "Future of the Server" presentation at Gartner's U.S. Symposium in October 2002 generated a large number of questions on RISC vs. Intel, the impact of Linux, Windows, Unix, mainframes and next-generation architectures. Core Topic Hardware Platforms: Server Platforms Key Issue How will centralized and distributed servers evolve during the next five years? Strategic Planning Assumptions By year-end 2005, a variation of symmetric multiprocessing that combines modularity and scalability using an Intel architecture in economic building blocks based on a variation of nonuniform memory access (NUMA) will result in a new class of mainstream servers (0.8 probability). In 2007, Itanium Processor Family servers will represent approximately 10 percent of the total server market revenue (0.8 probability) with its growth coming at the expense of RISC servers (0.9 probability). In 2007, IA-32 servers will represent approximately 50 percent of total server market revenue (0.8 probability). Linux will not gain significant share (greater than 20 percent) of shipped revenue in complex business applications (such as customer relationship management) before 2005 (0.6 probability) and in high-end enterprise database systems before 2007 (0.6 probability). The "Future of the Server" presentation at Gartner's U.S. Symposium (6 October to 11 October 2002) elicited a number of questions about the future direction of server technologies and operating systems. Here, we take the mainstream questions of the attendees and provide our position as further elaboration on topics addressed by the presentation. Is it likely that Hewlett-Packard (HP) will abandon PA-RISC solely for Itanium Processor Family (IPF)? HP's stated intention is to evolve all of its HP-UX servers to IPF. We expect that the last PA-RISC enhancements will occur by year-end 2003 or 1H04 as HP completely refreshes the HP9000 with next-generation IPF processors. Does the fact that IPF only makes slight inroads in displacing IA-32 in Gartner's forecast illustrate a lack of pervasive independent software vendor (ISV) market interest? Acceptance of new technology such as IPF demands new software ports from ISVs. ISVs must perceive the benefits of the technology, and many ISVs currently writing in the IA-32 application space do not see price/performance advantages or new market opportunities. In the absence of perceived benefits, many ISVs in the IA-32 space simply cannot justify the effort required for an IPF port. However, IA-32 penetration is a somewhat misleading issue, because Intel has clearly stated that IPF is designed to erode reduced instruction set computer (RISC) market share at the high end of the market. In that space, we don't believe that ISVs yet see sufficient differentiation and market opportunity to make it worthwhile to shift significant resources to IPF for the uphill battle of displacing RISC. Gartner Entire contents 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Will Linux on RISC gain any traction? Linux on RISC will probably gain no more than 10 percent of the overall combined Intel and RISC server market share. Users are perceiving the most value from low and midrange Intel server pricing and contemplating reducing or displacing RISC systems. A Linux RISC strategy will require users and ISVs to support and maintain multiple application binaries and track the releases of the Linux distribution for the Intel version and the RISC variant. Although many of these applications should be able to move readily from Intel to RISC with recompiles, in general, support costs will rise. What would increase the adoption rate of IPF? There are several possible accelerants for IPF. One possibility is to force artificially a shift from IA-32 to IPF by discontinuing eightway IA-32 servers and possibly four-way IA-32 servers. Another accelerant would be to increase the price/performance benefit of IPF over IA-32 right now, IA-32 represents a better "value" than IPF for most market segments. Finally, improving the performance of 32-bit applications under IPF would remove a barrier users face when evaluating IPF under the current technology, 32-bit applications pay a performance penalty when running under IPF. Is there any relationship between IBM's future release of AIX 5L and Linux? In IBM's AIX road map, it could attempt to provide source code compatibility between Linux and AIX to enable applications to run on either operating system with no code modifications. IBM may also make AIX available for the IPF (although it has not indicated this). The most immediate route is for IBM to offer Linux partitions on the pseries along with AIX, so that users could run Linux and AIX applications in separate partitions on the same server. Would it be a risk to put mission-critical applications with a database in a Linux environment instead of Unix? We consider Linux still to be a risk in mission-critical applications, if the requirements for such applications include: a need for disaster recovery, minimal planned as well as unplanned downtime, ability to scale and predict the effects of growth in performance, use of a variety of tools to manage data-centertype operations, and support by vendors with platforms that provide high levels of reliability, availability and serviceability. Most users have deployed Linux in front-end or network edge applications, but more results are needed from the use of Linux 28 October

3 as a high-end database server a matter of the maturity and development of the operating system. We believe that such proof points will emerge when the 2.6 version of the kernel appears toward year-end 2003 or early Will Linux replace OS/390 or z/os? No. IBM has no intention of replacing z/os and is not investing in Linux for that purpose. IBM's strategy is to augment the value of z/os by having Linux run in partition on z/os and add to the viability of the mainframe as a vehicle for application consolidation in which selected applications may be running on underutilized Intel servers. IBM's intent is to enhance the viability of the mainframe, not replace it. Is Windows Datacenter (Microsoft) a good idea? Certainly it's a good idea for Microsoft it increases Microsoft's credibility in the midrange and high-end server markets. Enterprises should consider Datacenter under two circumstances: 1) they need to run an Intel architecture with more than eight processors (Datacenter is a Microsoft licensing requirement in this case) or 2) they are looking for a vendor partnership to improve the end-to-end availability of key Windows-based applications. Why does Egenera premium-price its server? How do you classify Egenera by your definitions? Egenera calls its server BladeFrame, but its architecture is not intended to compete with current high-density blades. Egenera is positioning the system as a modular alternative to current symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems, such as Sun Microsystems' 12K/15K, IBM's pseries and HP's Superdome. It includes the features of high-end systems, such as high-speed I/O, as many as four CPUs per blade, server virtualization and, instead of individual local disk, virtual networked connections to storage area network (SAN) storage. Therefore, Egenera should be classified as borrowing some of the principles of blade architectures to create modularity, but focused on the needs of the data center in stateful transactions against large attached and networked storage. Aimed at the mission-critical high-end applications, Egenera will have to persuade users that its $250,000 entry pricing and bladelike approach will bring greater value compared to current-generation SMP systems with modularity through partitioning. 28 October

4 In what areas will Linux displace Unix (low, medium or high end)? A better way to approach Unix replacement is to look at the application and market segments in which Linux is likely to replace Unix. The roles where Linux is most suitable are in: replicable deployments, such as agencies; point-of-sale (POS) store controllers; front ends to reservation systems; Web servers primarily handling online e-commerce transactions; appliancelike roles for caching; firewalls and other network functions; file-andprint servers; compute "farms" for technical and scientific applications; and video streaming. Most such applications tend to be in network-related functions. Linux has also been deployed by a number of financial services and investment houses doing quantitative analysis related to security transactions, because of the improved performance levels of Intel microprocessors compared with RISC. Until we see more ISV activities from customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) vendors, plus the needed scalability to function in back-end deployments, we advise that enterprises restrict Linux to Web servers and replicated roles, such as POS, agencies, branches and shop floor types of applications. Will vendors support Linux at the high end? Unix vendors, such as IBM, HP and Sun, currently see minimal user interest in deploying Linux instead of Unix in high-end commercial applications for the back office. Linux has and will find market acceptance in compute farms and high-performance technical applications. We do not expect this situation to change for the next three to four years, since Unix retains a considerably wide competitive advantage in functionality for high-end database servers. Who will address and satisfy the need for heterogeneous virtualization? If by "heterogeneous virtualization" we mean transparent workload management and resource utilization across crossvendor platforms, we don't expect this need to be filled in the five-year planning period, because it entails a high degree of vendor collaboration and effort among their platforms and operating environments. We expect that partial virtualization will be addressed within the vendors' own platform families, such as Sun's containers, IBM's logical partitions and HP's vpars, and through third-party products, such as VMware. 28 October

5 What is the impact of the new blade technology on staffing? Will there be reductions in required full-time equivalents (FTEs) per server? The real benefit of blades is not the hardware it is the benefit of a comprehensive management software stack that drives the hardware. This management stack will provide fault detection, fault recovery, load shaping and many other functions that are commonly performed by administrators today. This will result in lower FTE/server ratios. However, note that the same software stack that drives blades will also drive rack-optimized servers so you can get reduced overhead without transitioning your hardware. In many respects, blade servers are the testing grounds for management solutions that will eventually span all types of servers. How will the heat and power problems with Itanium 2 affect adoption? The power and heat profile of Itanium was quite high in the firstgeneration Itanium chip, but Intel's road map reduces the power consumption and heat generation with each generation of change. However, in the 2002-to-2003 time frame, the power and heat will remain relatively high (especially in comparison with Xeon), and this will make it difficult for vendors to deliver Itanium technology in blades and rack-optimized servers. What is the viability of VMware for enabling Windows and Linux partitions? Will it increase Intel market share? VMware and its competitor Connectix implements virtual servers in an Intel Architecture environment. This means a single Intel Architecture server can run multiple copies of Linux, Windows or both, with each copy isolated from the others. The primary enterprise benefit is that fewer servers can be deployed a single server running a single application at 30 percent resource utilization could be redeployed running multiple operating-system instances with multiple applications and possibly increase overall server efficiency to 80 percent or more. In this sense, it will not actually increase Intel market share, but it will increase usage efficiency. Microsoft does not officially support virtual server technology today; therefore, VMware and Connectix products will remain tactical tools until Microsoft changes its position. Is there a market for RISC-based blades? Who will be the leader? We expect IBM, Sun and HP to introduce RISC-based blades but not to have more than a niche market impact. Introducing RISC- 28 October

6 based blades in addition to the Intel ones will make it hard to differentiate them by market, and they will tend to bloat and complicate server vendor portfolios. We may see mixed racks of RISC and Intel blades to satisfy different performance needs (for example, front-end applications and back-end databases), but, aside from the benefits of some physical consolidation, users will be just as well off retaining current RISC-based servers for highend applications. At this time, it's too early to judge leadership in RISC blades, since that part of the market has not yet developed. What is IBM Linux? There is no "IBM Linux" at this time. However, the business model for a Linux distributor based on system integration and enhancements to the Linux kernel is a precarious one. Should the platform vendors some day face the prospect of only one or two surviving distributors and total dependence for an enterprise Linux distribution on the survivors, the vendors may have to step in and create and market their own distributions. This goes one step beyond Sun's action of taking responsibility for the Linux operating system on its LX50, because Sun still depends on a kernel assembled by Red Hat. What is the timeline for eight- to 16-processor servers in 1Uto-2U enclosures? Prototype eight-way 1U (U is a rack unit a standard increment used to express the height of a piece of rack-mounted computer or networking equipment, abbreviated as "U" and equal to 1.75 inches) servers exist today, but will not be on the market until the 2006-to-2007 time frame (0.7 probability). 2U eight-way servers will come to market earlier in the 2005-to-2006 time frame (0.7 probability). Availability of rack-optimized 16-way servers will be at the end of, or beyond, the current five-year planning cycle (2007). What is the estimated use of Linux by platform: Intel vs. other? We believe Linux server deployments are about 90 percent Intel and will remain largely that way during the planning period. Users feel they maximize total cost of ownership (TCO) using Intel hardware, as opposed to other platforms, such as RISC. Indeed, Linux is seen as a vehicle to get off of RISC to more economical platforms. In some technical and analytical applications, we expect RISC will be employed with either Unix or Linux when very high floating-point performance is a requirement. 28 October

7 Acronym Key CRM ERP FTE HP IPF ISV NUMA POS RISC SAN SCM SMP TCO Customer relationship management Enterprise resource planning Full-time equivalent Hewlett-Packard Itanium Processor Family Independent software vendor Nonuniform memory access Point of sale Reduced instruction set computer Storage area network Supply chain management Symmetric multiprocessing Total cost of ownership Bottom Line: Enterprises constrained by space or power, or that are moving to consolidate service provisioning, should consider blade technology if return on investment can be proved within two to three years. Intel's IPF will eventually challenge RISCbased Unix solutions in middle and back tiers of the enterprise by 2007, but a clear market segment for IA-32 servers will continue in Web and front-end applications during that period. The greatest impact of Linux will continue to be in the network infrastructure, Web servers and compute clusters through the next three years, but Linux will require advances in scalability, application support and manageability to make inroads at the back end, with much of the onus of proven TCO and performance placed on users. Linux will most likely displace Unix rather than Windows, because of less severe migration costs and compatibility issues. 28 October