Blades Have Arrived

Sales of miniaturized blade servers reached $47 million in the first quarter of 2003, eclipsing the $43 million sold in all of 2003, according to new data from IDC in a Network World article documenting the momentum for blades in enterprise computing. Blade architecture also seems to be making inroads in government computing, where "blade PCs" offer enhanced security by moving the hard drive off the desktop and into the data center, according to Federal Computer Week.

What will this mean for the data center? Heat, and lots of it. The issue of "hot spots" in raised-floor data centers is not new, as we've devoted numerous stories to the topic here at CarrierHotels.com (see Temperature's Rising in the Data Center in Nov. 2002, Cooling Becoming A Hot Topic in April 2002 and Smaller Servers, Large Loads in July 2001 as reference points).

But until now much of the discussion has focused on the future, as the adoption of high-density blade computing has been slowed by sluggish IT spending and resistance to implementing new technologies. This is changing, as illustrated by the 1Q03 sales figures as well as a story in ComputerWorld that tells how even veteran facility designers like Johnson Controls have experienced problems with overheating. Included is a table that details blade configurations from five vendors, each cramming between 70 and 280 blades into a single 42U rack, creating power usage of between 9 and 15 kilowatts per rack.

That means it's also showtime for new approaches to cooling that seek to make more efficient use of chilled air or use water or refrigerants to cool the rack space, and design firms offering solutions for high-density environments. No doubt that "ripple effect" will be welcomed in those two areas.