Lab Validation Report SIGMABLADE Server Systems/PAN Manager Solution Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera By Vinny Choinski, Senior Lab Analyst, and Kerry Dolan, Lab Analyst October 2012
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 2 Contents Introduction... 3 Background... 3 Egenera PAN Manager and NEC SIGMABLADE Server Systems... 4 ESG Lab Validation... 6 Getting Started... 6 High Availability... 10 Disaster Recovery... 13 Adaptive Capacity and Multi-tenancy... 16 ESG Lab Validation Highlights... 19 Issues to Consider... 19 The Bigger Truth... 20 Appendix... 21 ESG Lab Reports The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by NEC and Egenera. All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.
Introduction Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 3 This ESG Lab Validation documents the hands-on testing of the NEC SIGMABLADE server systems with Egenera PAN Manager software, a fully integrated foundation for integrated computing environments. The report focuses on the benefits an integrated computing environment can provide to IT organizations, including streamlined operational procedures, more efficient resource utilization, and greater management flexibility for both physical and virtual resources. Background Sometimes referred to as converged or private cloud infrastructures (depending on the latest marketing terms), integrated computing platforms offer an appealing alternative to traditional infrastructure deployments in which organizations purchase infrastructure on a component-by-component basis. ESG has defined an integrated computing infrastructure as an offering with a proactive design built around integration (rather than integration after the fact) of servers, storage, networking, and server virtualization software, with consideration for management tools and processes. Because the components are designed to be integrated rather than created in production silos, compatibility is guaranteed. Inherently virtualized, integrated computing solutions include management software that can orchestrate the entire stack, and they come complete with automation tools that simplify IT operations. According to ESG survey respondents, among the drivers of integrated computing infrastructures are simplified management, reduced time to deployment, and achievement of a better economic model through lowered TCO (see Figure 1). 1 ESG research further indicates that organizations that have already deployed integrated solutions are more likely to report benefits across the board. Figure 1. Benefits of an Integrated Computing Platform What benefits do you believe an integrated computing platform offers your organization? (Percent of respondents, N=471, multiple responses accepted) Ease of management 44% Faster deployment time Improved total cost of ownership (TCO) Less time and resources required for hardware and/or software integration Reduction in interoperability issues Improved application performance Improved service and support It is more straightforward to purchase from one vendor as opposed to several Less training required 19% 17% 37% 35% 33% 28% 28% 28% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2012. 1 Source: ESG Research Brief, Integrated Computing Trends, March 2011.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 4 Egenera PAN Manager and NEC SIGMABLADE Server Systems Egenera s PAN Manager infrastructure management and automation software is certified to run on the NEC SIGMABLADE server platform, and together they provide an ideal solution for dynamic IT departments. Delivering simplified infrastructure management, fast provisioning, high availability, and disaster recovery, this joint solution is designed for use in traditional IT environments as well as multi-tenant public and private clouds. Egenera PAN Manager PAN Manager is an open software application that manages the heterogeneous physical and virtual resources of an infrastructure domain. Based on the concept of a Processing Area Network (PAN), PAN Manager creates resource pools of compute, network, and storage resources to bring virtualized management to both physical and virtual resources. The PAN Manager software integrates server, network, and storage resources, and automatically keeps applications running despite demand spikes, failures, or site disasters. Its foundation is based on I/O virtualization, a stateless environment that eliminates the need to manually ensure compatibility with hardware versions, firmware, etc., and an intelligent fabric. This underlying structure enables management services that include flexible server definitions, on-demand provisioning, chargeback management, automation, disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), and integration with virtual server management. PAN Manager includes both graphical and command-line interfaces, and can quickly and easily re-allocate resources to accommodate workload changes. It supports multi-tenant environments within an infrastructure domain, with role-based access privileges. PAN Manager runs on a 64-bit RHEL 6 server in either a rack server installation or hosted on a VMware ESX virtual machine (VM). This RHEL 6 server is referred to as a PAN OPServer and should be dedicated to the exclusive use of running PAN Manager. Redundant configurations are supported in a master/slave relationship. Figure 2 shows the NEC Expresss5800/R120a server pair on which PAN Manager was run during ESG testing, as well as the fully stocked NEC SIGMABLADE enclosure and NEC M-Series storage. Figure 2. SIGMABLADE/PAN Manager Solution
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 5 A PAN consists of a hardware domain and its associated processing and I/O resources, including individual hardware blades ( pnodes ), server profiles ( pservers ) that include application configurations and service-level requirements that are implemented on pnodes, and logical PANs ( LPANs ) that can be partitioned off with rolebased administration. LPANS are often used for maintenance and upgrades, individual applications, and multitenant environments. PAN Manager enables an enterprise to: Manage infrastructure out of the box without reconfiguring storage and data networks. Maximize availability for physical servers, VMs, and any combination. Provide elastic, on-demand provisioning as a foundation for private or public cloud computing. Simplify management and optimize server, network, and storage resources. Reduce CAPEX, OPEX, and run book steps. Automate disaster recovery and high availability. Maximize ROI of current infrastructure investments. NEC SIGMABLADE Server Systems The certified solution includes the NEC SIGMABLADE enclosure with up to 16 NEC Express5800/B120d blades and the NEC 10Gb Intelligent L3 Switch, with underlying iscsi storage from NEC. The SIGMABLADE enclosure features hot swappable, redundant components in a 16-blade chassis, with a high-density 10U architecture and high-speed backplane for maximum performance. Pass-through and switch module options are available in 1Gb Ethernet or fibre channel speeds. The NEC Express5800/B120d-h server is a robust, two-socket blade built with the Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors. It was designed for high quality, high availability, energy-efficiency, and longevity to provide the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). The Express5800/B120d server comes with additional I/O ports and the ability to boot from the SAN, making it a virtualization-friendly blade. The efficient memory access of its Intel Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) technology enables high throughput performance for clustered applications, databases, and hypervisor platforms. The NEC SIGMABLADE server platform offers a unique, fast failover option in which blades can be staged, with power on and all self-testing completed in order to speed blade failover. It also includes robust management software that tracks power trends and caps overall power consumption to minimize energy costs. The NEC SIGMABLADE server systems also monitor CPU usage rates and dynamically allocate server resources to optimize resource allocation. Using Egenera PAN Manager and NEC SIGMABLADE server systems, organizations can fully automate the provisioning and management of existing physical and virtual resources, delivering high application availability and business continuity from a single management interface. Benefits include: One-click high availability and failover. Verifiable disaster recovery, with fast failover and failback. Instant, on-demand provisioning. Secure partitioning and multi-tenancy. Lights out management.
ESG Lab Validation Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 6 ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of the solution at an Egenera facility in Boxborough, Massachusetts. Testing focused on the simplification of deployment with reduced complexity, tightly integrated management, and optimized resource utilization and availability. Getting Started ESG Lab began its exploration of the NEC/Egenera integrated solution by leveraging the test environment illustrated in Figure 3. The figure shows the Egenera PAN Manager user interface on the far left, running on a pair of NEC Express5800/R120-a blade servers. These management servers are LAN-connected to a primary NEC SIGMABLADE Hv2 chassis, which is connected via iscsi SAN to an NEC M-Series storage array. ESG Lab Testing Using this environment, ESG Lab was able to centrally discover, configure, and manage all the hardware and operating system components running on the NEC blade server chassis. We started with a review of the PAN Manager software management features by navigating common management tasks via the PAN Manager GUI. Figure 3. ESG Lab Validation Test Bed
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 7 Next, the Lab inserted a new blade into the SIGMABLADE chassis, and reviewed the discovery and indexing process. Figure 4 shows an individual blade being added to a free slot in a running chassis. The right side of the figure shows that PAN Manager discovered the new blade resource and provided detailed information about the resource, including its physical location. Once discovered, the resource can be managed at a very granular level. As shown in Figure 4, the blade is currently powered off, but still displays detailed information. At this point the blade is available to use as a resource in an existing configuration (PAN or LPAN) or for a pserver in a new configuration. Figure 4. Component Discovery Continuing the ease of use experience, ESG Lab added the new blade server to a pool of pnodes in an existing LPAN configuration. The blade showed up as a usable resource in the existing LPAN, enabling the Lab to conduct pnode power-on and shutdown operations while observing pserver availability attributes as the pservers moved between available pnodes. ESG Lab then removed the blade from the existing configuration and created a new logical configuration.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 8 Next, ESG Lab configured a new LPAN named esg, leveraging the newly discovered blade. As shown in Figure 5, the new esg LPAN shows up with the existing LPANs MS-Mail, apache, weblogic, and the maintenance LPAN. The Lab used the option to create a new LPAN from the GUI and selected the available pnode in chassis slot one as a resource for the new LPAN. As shown in Figure 5, the new LPAN is created, but has no pservers currently defined within it. Figure 5. LPAN Creation
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 9 Finally, ESG Lab created a new Linux pserver within the esg LPAN. As shown in Figure 6, pserver esgtest was deployed using the RedHat Linux distribution image stored on the PAN OPServer. Many of the tasks are similar to configuring conventional hardware, but they are all done through the PAN Manager software. When a user completes these tasks, she can administer the pserver much as she would a traditional server. Figure 6. pserver Creation Why This Matters IT personnel operate with constrained resources of many kinds, and time is one of them. Discovering system components and defining server definitions is a time-consuming task that takes multiple tools. Simplifying these tasks will improve productivity and help IT to meet service-level objectives. In addition, getting the system up and running quickly and easily saves time and money. ESG Lab confirmed that creating and managing resources (both physical and virtual) with the NEC SIGMABLADE Server Systems/Egenera PAN Manager solution was on par with managing VM resources in a virtual-only environment. Hardware and operating systems can be managed with great granularity and flexibility from the single pane of glass management interface, saving time and ultimately reducing operating expenses.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 10 High Availability PAN Manager and NEC SIGMABLADE server systems ensure high availability by automatically detecting failures and re-deploying pservers on assigned failover nodes. Failover can be designated to an individual node or to a pool. The NEC SIGMABLADE server platform offers fast failover using a staged blade that is powered on and has completed the self-test process. This option is helpful for organizations that have stringent uptime requirements. ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab tested the automatic failover function using a pserver called esg2 that we created in the apache LPAN. Figure 7 shows that esg2 was deployed on pnode p3 in the NEC SIGMABLADE enclosure, and was configured to fail over to a three-node pool with one available pnode. Figure 7. pserver Failover Next, ESG Lab removed pnode p3 to create a failure scenario. The health status tab for pserver esg2 immediately brought up three active alerts to inform the administrator that esg2 s heartbeat was unavailable, that its power was down, and that it was attempting recovery. PAN Manager then automatically redeployed pserver esg2 on the available node in the pool and updated PAN Manager with new pserver location and pnode availability information. The pnode configuration screen shows three pnodes powered on, pserver esg2 running on p4, and p3 powered off (see Figure 8). A complete event history is available in the Events tab, and the administrator may click on the Tasks tab to review start and completion times for each task.
Seconds Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 11 Figure 8. pnode Configuration Screen after Failover Next, ESG Lab tested NEC SIGMABLADE system fast failover performance by tracking the time required for a powered-on pnode to boot a RHEL 6 pserver. ESG Lab compared a staged NEC pnode with a standard blade from another vendor, using both saved and new pserver profiles. Figure 9. pserver Boot Time 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 pserver Boot Time (less is better) Saved pserver Profile New pserver Profile NEC Staged Blade Other Vendor Blade
What the Numbers Mean Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 12 Booting the saved pserver profile took 100.2 seconds for the NEC staged blade, compared with 225.2 seconds for the other blade, or 2.25x faster boot time for the NEC blade. Booting the new pserver profile took 111.9 seconds for the NEC staged blade, compared with 349.4 seconds for the other blade, or 3.12x faster boot time for the NEC blade. Why This Matters In standard IT as well as private and public cloud deployments, the ability to monitor and manage hardware, OS, and hypervisor faults and conditions from a central location can help keep an organization up and running and able to meet SLAs. Administrators gain a better understanding with monitoring and management tools that increase visibility and enable IT to maximize availability and performance. While failover is key, the speed of failover has a direct impact; fast failover can enable an organization to remain productive and helps to ensure regulatory compliance. These capabilities are essential for service providers, as their profitability depends on the ability to maintain customer application and data availability. In addition, they can help IT to maintain control and eliminate shadow IT, where end-users reach outside of their IT department to purchase cloud services on their own. ESG Lab validated that PAN Manager detected a failure, automatically failed over a pserver to pnode in a designated pool, and provided informational alerts and event history. ESG Lab also validated that NEC SIGMABLADE staged blades were able to boot a pserver more than twice as fast as a standard blade.
Disaster Recovery Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 13 PAN Manager simplifies disaster recovery (DR) by enabling the administrator to capture and migrate all configuration information for a PAN to a secondary location. Configuration and mapping details can be saved to a lightweight archive file; the archived configuration is used to redeploy the environment on identical hardware at a remote location. The PAN archive file can be copied (along with data and applications) using SAN-based replication, or it can be copied onto removable media such as a flash drive and manually inserted; both methods make it simple to bring the configuration up remotely. Media images uploaded to virtual CDs have their own archives that can be brought over along with the PAN archive. PAN Manager can create an archive on demand, or archive captures can be scheduled to run automatically with no impact on application performance. The archive file contains configuration details for every pserver in the PAN, including primary and failover pnodes, network settings, initiator details, event actions, archive schedules, and resources. If necessary, pnodes, uplinks, switch ports, and boot targets may be manually mapped in the archive file. PAN Manager can then validate the available resources at DR to ensure that the archive deployment will succeed. The archive can then be exported to a file, stored in the PAN OPServer file system, and opened with the.tar utility for use in the event of a disaster. Figure 10. PAN Archive Stored on Flash Drive
ESG Lab Testing Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 14 ESG Lab began by scheduling an automatic archive of the necpan. Scheduling options include the archive type, ability to export to a file, whether it overwrites the previous archive, and the time and frequency of automatic capture. ESG Lab scheduled an archive to run at 10:30 a.m. and named it esg-archive. Once the schedule was completed, the necpan disaster recovery configuration tab listed six PAN archives, one image archive, and the scheduled esg-archive (see Figure 11). When the scheduled time arrived, the archive was non-disruptively created in seconds. Figure 11. Scheduled Archive ESG Lab simulated disaster recovery by initiating a DR swap and deploying the necpan archive file. PAN Manager immediately shut down all pservers and LPANS, tore down the domain configuration, and removed uplinks, vswitches, and all PAN details from the domain. Next, PAN Manager used the configuration stored in the archive file to deploy the PAN. PAN Manager guidelines suggest that the process takes 30-60 minutes to complete. The ESG Lab DR swap took 45 minutes. Figure 12 shows pservers deploying from the archive file.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 15 Figure 12. Disaster Recovery with PAN Manager Why This Matters Data protection and disaster recovery are key areas of concern. Respondents to ESG s survey on IT spending priorities rated improving data backup and recovery first on the priority list for this year, tied with increased use of server virtualization. 2 Stressed by strict SLAs and business continuance requirements, organizations are being pushed to back up and restore data and operations as quickly as possible, and to restart automatically in the event of a disaster. However, re-creating the computing environment at a remote location is difficult, disruptive, and time-consuming. For example, imagine an environment with 16 domains in a PAN. To manually build and configure racks of servers in the same configuration could take weeks. Rebuilding it from scratch using PAN Manager would be possible, but could take hours. Conversely, with the PAN Manager archive, the DR site can be up and running in under an hour. ESG Lab confirmed that PAN Manager can schedule automatic capture of PAN archives, save PAN configuration details in a file, and automatically re-deploy the PAN on another NEC SIGMABLADE server for DR purposes. 2 Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2012.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 16 Adaptive Capacity and Multi-tenancy PAN Manager supports adaptive capacity, enabling rapid provisioning and repurposing of hardware for physical and/or virtual host servers. It enables administrators to balance system resources for optimal productivity in the event of a fault, and is ideally suited to delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and optimizing cloud-based infrastructures. Should a node fail while running a high-priority pserver, that pserver can kick a lower priority pserver off of its pnode and immediately deploy on that node. The lower priority server (designated as preemptible ) will be redeployed automatically when another pnode is available. Multi-tenancy supports multiple pools of resources in secure logical partitions, enabling different applications, departments, or service provider customers to share a common infrastructure. Role-based access control segregates each partition, and enables charge-back capabilities for system usage. ESG Lab Testing ESG Lab tested adaptive capacity by removing a pnode with a running pserver that was designated to fail over to a pool. Figure 13 shows a pool in the apache LPAN with three pnodes, all running pservers. There are no available pnodes, but the pserver on p11 is pre-emptible (indicated by the pre- designation on the pserver name). ESG Lab selected pnode 4 (which was running pserver esg2) and removed it from the NEC SIGMABLADE enclosure. PAN Manager immediately shut down the pre-emptible pserver and changed its status to boot pending (1). Next, PAN Manager began to deploy esg2 on that pnode (2), and upon completion listed esg2 as booted (3). Figure 13. Adaptive Capacity In Figure 13, the last step (3) also shows colored icons for boot status, power, agent, and heartbeat. These graphic features are enabled by Egenera PAN Tools. PAN tools are included at no additional charge, and installation is optional. Without PAN Tools, a heartbeat can be detected by pinging the pserver, but the icons will remain gray.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 17 In multi-tenant environments, multiple administrative roles can be defined, effectively carving up the SIGMABLADE enclosure so that it supports various applications or users with complete segregation. Figure 14 shows the logins associated with specific PAN and LPAN management privileges. The root login is assigned to the PAN administrator, while other logins are assigned to LPAN administrators, operators, and monitors, and the esgadmin login is designated for the esg LPAN administrator. Figure 14. Multi-tenancy
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 18 Figure 15 shows the view that each login provides. The root login at the top can view five LPANs, while the esgadmin can only view the esg LPAN. Figure 15. Multi-tenancy Login Views Why This Matters The ability to use infrastructure resources for multiple purposes increases efficiency and flexibility, improves ROI, and keeps hardware costs to a minimum. This adds value, as long as the cost of additional management doesn t detract from the benefit. ESG Research underscores the importance of these features. According to our 2012 Spending Intentions survey, the top considerations for justifying IT investments are business process improvement, ROI/speed of payback, and reduction in operational expenditures. 3 Adaptive capacity provides a way to automatically re-provision nodes for availability assurance or dynamic expansion. For example, using the same servers to run virtual desktops during the day and batch processes at night would offer dramatic hardware savings, and enabling that function with minimal intervention would provide operational savings. Similarly, multi-tenancy enables IT and service providers to use hardware for multiple purposes, but only with a tool that makes shared infrastructure simple to configure and manage can organizations take full advantage. ESG Lab validated the ability of the NEC SIGMABLADE server systems/egenera PAN Manager solution to automatically move a higher priority pserver to a pnode occupied by a pre-emptible pserver, and re-deploy the pre-emptible pserver when another resource was available. In addition, ESG Lab confirmed the secure multitenancy feature with role-based access. 3 Source: Ibid.
Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 19 ESG Lab Validation Highlights ESG Lab confirmed the benefit of the discovery and indexing capabilities of the NEC/Egenera combined solution. It was as if we had a single console with graphical detail into 16 individual physical servers. It made adding server resources to the environment easy and flexible while providing detailed component information even for powered down blades. System configuration and management was intuitive and easy. The PAN Manager software leverages the boot from SAN capabilities of the hardware to create logical server profiles for physical servers that can be moved easily from blade to blade. This type of feature is commonly only seen at the hypervisor level in virtual environments. ESG Lab demonstrated that the NEC SIGMABLADE system fast failover using a staged blade booted 2x-3x faster than another blade. This can significantly improve application uptime in the event of a failure. ESG Lab validated availability features throughout the solution. These features start with the hot swappable, redundant components of the SIGMABLADE chassis itself and continue through the PAN Manager software s ability to create redundant pools of resources for mission-critical servers. We confirmed that the solution simplifies the disaster recovery process through deep integration with existing server and storage capabilities (e.g., Boot from SAN and Storage Replication) that enable a small amount of configuration data to be archived off and easily moved to a recovery location. ESG Lab tested and confirmed the concept of adaptive capacity. This feature allows the administrator to define a server as a high-priority asset. Once set, the solution can automatically assure availability of priority assets by shutting down less critical servers to free up pnode resources. With the multi-tenancy feature of the solution, ESG Lab was able to easily and securely separate system resources into segregated compute environments. This feature is important to service providers that intend to host multiple clients on the same platform or organizations that need to separate compute resources by department. Issues to Consider The NEC SIGMABLADE server systems currently support Egenera PAN Manager version 7.2, which supports a single domain in a PAN. ESG looks forward to NEC completing certification of version 7.3, which will enable features including up to 16 domains in a single PAN, giving customers the ability to deploy this integrated solution in larger environments. For cloud deployments in particular, ESG believes several features on the PAN Manager horizon will improve flexibility. These include disaster recovery of LPANs, and a self-service portal front-end to PAN Manager with a catalog function. This should also include support for license management by the LPAN administrator. PAN Manager brings fully automated management to physical and virtual resources, and ESG believes that adding storage integration features would greatly enhance the user experience. The ability to visualize storage resources in PAN Manager and execute basic management features such as creating links and LUNs, would further simplify infrastructure management.
The Bigger Truth Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 20 While server virtualization adoption continues to gain momentum, IT organizations continue to face numerous hurdles as they move towards a fully virtualized data center. ESG research indicates that many organizations struggle with concerns over performance and scalability, technology complexity and integration, security, and a lack of knowledge and skills. Only by finding solutions to these challenges can they feel comfortable virtualizing tier-1 applications. 4 Otherwise they refrain from initiating or expanding virtual deployments, and they miss significant CAPEX and OPEX benefits. With these challenges in mind, forward-looking IT professionals are deploying integrated computing solutions that leverage virtualization. Instead of trying to pull the pieces together on their own, they take advantage of the work that technology vendors have done to reduce risk, time, and costs. While only 10% of the organizations ESG surveyed had deployed an integrated solution, two-thirds expressed interest in the value of a fully integrated solution. 5 The NEC/Egenera solution enables the fully automated management benefits commonly only found in hypervisor environments, but for physical infrastructure resources, and simplifies provisioning and management of computing environments with a single point of management. The combination of NEC s enterprise hardware features and PAN Manager s ability to automate high availability, disaster recovery, adaptive capacity, and multi-tenancy create a powerful platform for traditional IT as well as cloud implementations. ESG Lab was particularly impressed with the ease of configuration and manageability of the NEC/Egenera solution. Provisioning and managing a mixed physical and virtual server environment with traditional servers and a SANattached disk array often requires extensive knowledge of RAID, server, and availability management software packages. Costs are often increased as extra software is deployed with a goal of avoiding management problems. In contrast, the SIGMABLADE server system/pan Manager solution is extremely easy to configure and manage in mixed physical and virtual server environments. Business has never been more dynamic than today. Pressured by rigorous user demands, budget restraints, and expectations of 24-hour productivity, IT organizations often struggle to achieve their objectives. The combined NEC/Egenera solution can bring real relief, helping IT to keep applications up and running with minimal management, and gain a greater return on their infrastructure investments. 4 Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010. 5 Source: ESG Research Brief, Integrated Computing Trends, March 2011.
Appendix Lab Validation: Integrated Computing from NEC and Egenera 21 Table 1. ESG Lab Test Bed Detail NEC Blade server Chassis (16) NEC Express5800/B120d Blades (2) NEC Rack Servers NEC iscsi Storage Arrays Blade Server Chassis and Blades Utility Servers Storage NEC SIGMABLADE HV2 Enclosure High-density 10U architecture Hot swappable, redundant components Supports 16 blade modules CPU: Two-socket Intel Xeon 5500 Speed: 2.5GHz RAM: 8GB Express5800/R120a CPU: Intel Xeon 5505 Speed: 2.26GHz RAM 8GB Management Application NEC M-Series Arrays Dual controller 8GB RAM 24 SAS disk drives (4) 10/1Gb iscsi host connection Egenera Solution Management Software PAN Manager Version 7.2 Additional Software Microsoft Windows Windows Server 2008 R2 Red Hat Linux RHEL 6 VMware vsphere 5.1
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