Growing Role for Blade Servers in SMB Virtualization?

An industry organization says blade servers are the preferred virtualization platform among SMBs. At least one analyst says maybe not.

By Geoffrey Oldmixon

Blade servers are the preferred virtualization platform among SMBs. That was the message from Blade.org this past spring, after the industry organization compiled and released the results of an Internet-based survey conducted from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009.

Gordon Haff, however, is suspicious of this claim. Haff, principal IT adviser with analyst firm Illuminata Inc., says he raises an eyebrow to any Internet survey, but especially one "conducted by an organization that, of course, wants to say that blades are popular."

Blade.org was founded in 2006 to increase development of blade technologies and bring them to market, and is made up of nearly 100 blade hardware and software providers. According to Lisa Galish, Blade.org's marketing committee chairperson, nearly two-thirds of SMB survey participants expressed involvement with blade servers. "In SMB organizations, 28 percent have already virtualized using blades, with another 36 percent in the planning stage," she reports. Survey results also show that as few as 15 percent of respondents claim to have "no plans to virtualize."

Galish argues that blade servers have "fundamental advantages in consolidation, ease of management, and cost reduction." That's true, concedes Haff, but that doesn't necessarily make them ideal for virtualization in general. Aside from their built-in I/O network and storage advantages, blades have very little to do with virtualization, says Haff. "Virtualization tends to require servers with more physical memory than other hardware," he says. "And to that degree, rack-mount servers can be a better fit than blades."

Even so, Haff acknowledges several popular advantages of blade technology. "Blade servers are kind of thought of as a data center in a box," he says. "The idea, particularly for SMBs, is that you can have a blade server chassis, and you can really put an entire IT infrastructure into that box. If you have a small IT staff, you can use blade servers."

Among organizations with IT budgets over $1 million, virtualization has been the cost-saving answer to problems stemming from maintenance and energy costs. Surveys like the one conducted by Blade.org, however, suggest increasing interest among SMBs as well. But take that sentiment with a grain of salt, suggests Haff: "Talking about virtualization in the context of blade servers muddles the conversation. Lots of people are doing virtualization, and virtualization is done on lots of different platforms."

Though he admits virtualization is gaining ground, Haff asserts that it has advanced slower in the SMB channel because it adds complexity. "If you're implementing VMware in more than a tactical, limited way, it takes know-how," he says.

Still, virtualization does seem to be expanding in the SMB space. The trend is supported by another online study conducted by King Research at the start of the year. The survey asked 500 hands-on IT professionals, managers, and executives about virtualization and found that the vast majority are involved with the technology. (For more on virtualization trends, see related story.)