Blade Network produces low power green blade 15 August, 2007 By Paul Weinberg

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William Terrill, associate senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, described the consumption of only 25 to 30 watts on the new Blade switch "as dramatic," compared to competing internal blade Ethernet switches from Cisco

"With an external switch that has the same number of ten gigabit Ethernet ports you are probably talking about 100 watts, minimum. Even the new Fujitsu, external switch which has 20 ports, ten gigs, generates about 200 watts."

Terrill noted that Cisco "owns" the network infrastructure, which has forced the upstart Blade to focus on internal blade Ethernet switch technology.

"Blade believes blades are where most people in the data centre are going to be for their data center technology."

Blade has positioned itself as a vendor of 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches at a time when one gig Ethernet is running to "the upper limits of the performance," stated Terrill.

The 10-Gigabit from Blade is the first Ethernet switch that offers both connectivity to the processor blades within blade servers and 10-gig capabilities for the external network, he continued.

One gig may have reached its level in terms of performance in the transferring of data among blades.

"One gig, two or three years ago was overkill. But now with virtualization and the new multi-core processing, you are beginning to reach the limits of one gig Ethernet for a lot of activities, a lot of applications."

This potential overloading of the network with one gig represents a direct result of virtualization where there is a major push to keep those processors on the blade servers running at 80 per cent utilization, Terrill stated.

"With multiple applications accessing the network simultaneously, one gig could be a major bottleneck."

Terrill also predicted a lengthy transition for the full adoption of the new green blades in existing and new HP, IBM and NEC blade servers.

Meanwhile, Vikram Mehta, president and CEO of Blade, suggested that much of the discussion around power savings and increased cooling has been centered on servers.

But, he maintained, "It is not just servers. There is a whole bunch of networking equipment as well that adds to that problem."

Blade is also aggressively pricing its 20-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch at $9,500 (U.S.) or $475 per port.

The company has also set up a new channel program to encourage channel partners to sell its software upgrades for such applications as manageability, performance, security and various new functions under server virtualization to customers.

Mehta estimates there are more than 200,000 Blade Network Technologies blade server switches in use today among end user organizations.

"There is an opportunity for these channel partners to provide consulting, integration, network planning and design."

Meanwhile, Terrill told eChannelLine that addition of NEC as new OEM customer for Blade is an opportunity for it to make gains in the lucrative Japanese market where "NEC is huge."