BUILD THE BUSINESS CASE

Transcription

1 BUILD THE BUSINESS CASE Choosing Blades to Lower IT Costs and Improve Agility table of contents + Building the ROI Model for A TechTarget White Paper brought to you by

2 Savvy IT professionals are finding that blade servers are less expensive than traditional rack servers for most new deployments, while also delivering improvements in agility, scalability and manageability. If your organization is deploying a new server farm or cluster for any reason a newly virtualized application or a growing business initiative, perhaps this is the time to consider blade servers as a cost-effective alternative to traditional rack servers. In most use cases, you will find blade servers to be less expensive than rack servers for both the initial purchase as well as for long-term total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition, blades enable improvements in manageability, agility, scalability and power consumption. Let s take a look at a cumulative TCO over a three-year period for a 16-server rack system versus a 16-blade server deployment using HP ProLiant BL 460c Gen8 server blades. The cost savings for the blade system are significant: According to the HP Rack to BladeSystem TCO Analysis Calculator, the TCO of the rack system over three years would be more than $426,000, while a comparable blade system would cost around $214,000, for savings of approximately $212,000, or nearly 50%. This type of dramatic TCO improvement has been realized in the real world by enterprise and midsize companies of all types. In 2012, IDC conducted a study of seven large and midsize companies spanning the equipment rental, healthcare, retail, research and telecommunications industries. Over a threeyear period, the companies saw their implementation of a blade infrastructure generate $1.4 million in benefits and deliver a return on investment (ROI) of 316%. 1 As you dig deeper into the TCO analysis of blades versus racks, you will find additional cost benefits of blade servers, depending upon your environment. For example, if your environment uses Fibre Channel, you will find that you 1 Business Value of Blade Infrastructures, IDC, December

3 will need an additional switch for rack servers that you won t need for blade servers, which could add more than $18,000 to your initial investment, in addition to port licensing fees as your networks grow. You will also find that Fibre Channel network adapter cards cost less for blade servers than for rack servers. Now let s look at the initial purchase price for a greenfield project. If your infrastructure is using 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) as your transmission medium, you will find that once you have at least three or four servers, the cost of a blade solution is lower than the cost of a rack solution. As you add more blades, the cost differential will grow wider and blades will become even more cost efficient. If your storage infrastructure is using Fibre Channel as its transmission medium, you will find that a single-server blade solution is more cost efficient than a comparable rack solution right from the very outset. Surprised? You re probably not alone. Many IT professionals assume that blade servers are more expensive to deploy than rack servers in smaller environments because the blades require an enclosure and accompanying infrastructure that can cost more than $35,000 for a solution that would house up to 16 blades. However, even with the expense of the enclosure, careful analysis reveals that blades deliver significant cost benefits even at low server levels, particularly for new environments where there is no legacy infrastructure in place to help ameliorate costs. Building the ROI Model for Where do the cost differentials come from, and how do they stack up in favor of blades versus racks for new server deployments? These are the major areas: n Server Hardware: The cost of each blade server is significantly lower than a comparable rack server, so right from the outset you are spending less money on each server. As your environment grows, your hardware savings keep multiplying n Cabling: Each rack server requires multiple cables, which alone can run up to $500 for each server. But it s more than just the cabling. Each 10 GbE cable requires a transceiver, also known as a small form-factor pluggable, on each end. This could be an additional cost of $400 per server. So, in addition to the higher cost of server hardware, you could be spending an additional $900 on cabling for each rack server. With blade servers, cabling is consolidated because the servers connect via a midplane to the interconnects or switches in the enclosure. 2

4 n Power: When you purchase a rack server, you have to buy two power supplies and multiple fans for each server. With a blade server, the enclosure comes with six power supplies and 10 fans for up to 16 servers. Thousands of sensors are constantly monitored across the servers, interconnects and the enclosure so that unused power supplies can be placed on standby while maintaining redundancy. In addition, fans can be spun down. The net effect is that the system needs less power and less cold airflow. n Software Licensing Fees: For each environment, you have to purchase software licenses for the management of the server. This covers functions such as health alerting, deployment of the server and server migration. With blade servers, you are able to purchase that license in bulk. With rack servers, you wind up paying a licensing fee for each server, which turns out to be more expensive, particularly as your environment grows. n Installation, Service and Maintenance: Your startup cost for hardware installation and startup services will be less for a BladeSystem than for a rack system, and your ongoing costs for hardware services and support will also be lower for blades. Peeling Back the Numbers Once you ve taken all of these factors into account, how do the numbers add up? The HP Rack to BladeSystem TCO Analysis Calculator compares and assesses the cost of ownership for rack server operations versus an HP BladeSystem environment. In each of the comparisons, a typical rack server deployment was compared with a similar deployment using HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 server blades. Here is a summary of the results: n 10-GbE Environment TCO Crossover Point Is at the Third Server: In a new deployment with comparable10-gbe ports and comparable redundancy across the infrastructure, the blade configuration becomes equally cost efficient to the rack system when you get to the third sever. The cost differential between one- and two-server configurations is minimal, and once you get to the fourth server, the blades are more cost efficient. As your server environment grows, the financial advantage of having blade servers grows as well. By the time the deployment fills the enclosure with 16 blade servers, the cost savings to your organization are significant. TCO for a BladeSystem with 16 servers will be approximately $21,000 3

5 less than a comparable rack system, giving your organization savings of approximately 22% for the entire deployment. n Fibre Channel HBA Environment Blades Are Less Expensive From the Outset: Looking at a similar comparison between rack servers and blade servers in a deployment with a single dual-port Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA), you will actually save money from the beginning using blade servers. In a single-server environment, a BladeSystem even with the enclosure and infrastructure for 16 blades is nearly $3,000 less expensive than the rack system. For each additional server, the cost savings continue to accrue, so that when you ve reached the full capacity of 16 servers for the enclosure, you will have achieved cost savings of nearly $50,000, or savings of approximately 30% in terms of your initial purchase price. Even for organizations with smaller server environments one or two servers, for example it makes far more sense to invest in a blade solution versus a rack solution for new deployments. The cost differential at one or two servers is quite minimal, and you will be able to take advantage of the blades manageability, ease of deployment and scalability. Furthermore, it is far more likely that your server environment is going to expand in the near future, rather than remain stagnant. And as the environment grows, the business case for blade servers becomes powerful. With the growth of virtualization, cloud computing, big data and other initiatives, it makes sense to deploy a solution that saves you money as your needs scale up. The Case for Blades Of course, building a business case goes beyond TCO, and in the case of blade servers versus rack servers, your organization will reap additional benefits immediately and over the long term by using blades for new deployments. Among these benefits are: n Reduced Complexity: Blades require approximately 45% less setup and configuration time than rack servers, according to IDC. 2 In addition, there will be fewer cables and network switches to install, maintain and manage. n Improved Manageability: With an HP ProLiant Gen8 BladeSystem solution, you can take advantage of tools such as out-of-band management, so that server maintenance doesn t interfere with end users. HP Insight 2 Ibid 4

6 Management software and HP Integrated Lifecycle Automation simplify key functions in deploying and managing your server environment over the long haul. By automating functions such as health alerting, advanced logging for quicker root cause analysis, migrations, and firmware and driver updates, you will be able to improve availability and reduce the strain on your IT organization. n Simple Scalability: Because the infrastructure is already in place with the BladeSystem enclosure with Virtual Connect, adding new servers is a relatively simple process, with no need to worry about additional cabling, power supplies or software management fees for new servers. Virtual Connect eliminates the need to interrupt LAN and SAN administrators every time you add or move a server, because all networking and storage is plumbed once, at the enclosure level and not on a server-by-server basis. The gain in agility is phenomenal. n Less Space, Less Power Consumption: Blade servers consume, on average, 40% less power than traditional rack servers and take up 37% less space, according to IDC. 3 n Open Platform: By choosing a ProLiant Gen8 BladeSystem from HP, you can ensure maximum flexibility that can help you avoid vendor lock-in. Some vendors force you to purchase a top-of-the rack switch for your blade solution, and the switch has to be a proprietary offering from that particular vendor. With HP, there is no comparable requirement. HP also provides unique, low-cost bladed storage solutions, so almost any workload can be moved to blades. Conclusion In today s environment, IT professionals must build infrastructures with an eye toward the future. Initiatives such as virtualization, cloud computing, social networking and big data ensure that IT will remain under pressure to deliver more value and more agility without the benefits of unlimited budgets. It is critical to spend wisely, maximize investments and choose solutions that reduce complexity, simplify scalability and automate many of the manual tasks involved in system deployments and upgrades. For any new environment that is being built today or is being planned for the near-term future, blade systems offer significant improvements over traditional 3 Ibid 5

7 rack systems. The biggest advantage, as noted, is the opportunity to achieve savings in TCO, even if you are starting with just one server for your new environment. As your deployment grows, your TCO savings continue to multiply with blades. In addition, by partnering with HP on your blade server solution, you can take advantage of next-generation management tools such as HP Insight Management and HP Integrated Lifecycle Automation to provide a fully integrated solution that delivers dramatic improvements in manageability, scalability and business agility, as well as other intrinsic advantages such as reduced space requirements and footprint. Learn how your organization can reap all of the benefits of a ProLiant Gen8 BladeSystem solution from HP. 6