Hyperscale Computing

• XS23 Cloud Server

  Tue. May. 13, 2008
  by Todd Brannon, Dell Data Center Solutions

  There has been some recent press around some of the equipment we’ve developed in our cloud computing group. The core of our business is essentially a consulting and design service and developing new products for customers is a big part of the fun. Because these aren’t mainstream PowerEdge systems, we don’t get the chance to show them off as much as we’d like. Our group has been talking for some time about “optimized designs” for cloud and hyperscale computing without showing what that can really mean, so it’s time to unveil something that’s come out of the lab.  Pictured here is one of our favorites: the XS23.

  

  XS23 front – twelve 3.5” SAS or SATA drives; 3 per server

  This product was designed for a customer that needed maximum compute density, a healthy amount of local disk and, of course, lowest power draw possible. Our architecture team threw all that in the blender and out came a 2U standard rack mount chassis that houses four dual-socket servers and twelve 3.5” hot plug drives.

  

  XS23 exploded view: two dual-socket servers mounted in chassis bottom; two in a mezzanine above. Industry standard rack-mount chassis.

  Density of this type is certainly not unheard of (half depth or twin 1U’s), but by going to a 2U chassis we were able to fit it with larger, more efficient fans and stack 3 rows of full 3.5” drives across the front. So, even with a 25% higher density than general purpose blades, it provides three local spindles of 3.5” SAS/SATA disk to each server. Of course there are tradeoffs. This was expressly designed for an environment with high node failure tolerance - a cloud application. By designing out a lot of the capabilities that weren’t required (like redundant power) we were able to deliver the performance and power profile required. Efficiencies are gained by shared resources - as seen in a lot of general purpose designs available today. We think the key to designing the perfect cloud server is knowing where to stop and also what not to build in. This is a function of each customer’s unique design goals. Applications truly capable of foregoing high availability in hardware are somewhat rare, but customers in this space have it – as well as a laser focus on their business levers. So in this case we took the problem statement and made the tradeoffs to yield highest efficiency and density within the performance parameters of the application.

  It’s important for me to emphasize that the XS23 is not generally available. This system is qualified and supported for only a handful of specific customer applications and locations; it’s not completely productized to bear a PowerEdge badge. I hope you’ll watch this space for more unique designs and the discussion on cloud taxonomy and architecture that Jimmy's leading.

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• More Conversations: Dell Launches Cloud Computing Blog

  Thu. Mar. 06, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  For those keeping score, we launched Direct2Dell back in July 2006. IdeaStorm roared onto the scene in February last year. From there, we began expanding into other languages: Direct2Dell Chinese in March 2007, Spanish in May last year, and Norwegian in September, and there will be more in the future. Most recently, our Investor Relations blog called DellShares went live in November 2007.

  From the beginning, the purpose of Direct2Dell has been to educate and to support our customers on a wide variety of topics that they care about. This blog has grown since those early days. And that growth has encouraged more Dell folks to want to have conversations with our customers. Up to now, I've added more categories on Direct2Dell to expand the topics of discussion. That strategy has worked to a point, but now it's time to evolve.

  Starting today, members from our Data Center Solutions (DCS) team will support a group blog called In the Clouds. It will focus on cloud computing and the backend server, storage and architecture required to make it work. If you're not familiar with the concept of cloud computing, think using web-based e-mail from Yahoo, Google or AOL (see link for their slick integration with Silverlight), or uploading videos to YouTube, pictures to Flickr, or microblogging with Twitter. When you do those kinds of things you aren't storing them on your local device.. you're storing them "in the clouds," or to a remote location in the Internet.

  So, why start with Cloud Computing? The short answer is there's a lot happening in this space right now. Take a look at what Adobe's doing with their AIR product (go Twhirl!) that they recently brought to market. Google continues to surge forward with their Google document apps (Spreadsheet Forms and Google Calendar synch are two recent enhancements that rock), and this week at MIX08, Microsoft is rolling out some cool stuff with Silverlight 2.0 and Internet Explorer 8. 

  What this all means is that we're at the beginning stages of a shift from the model of the past where applications and all the content created for them were stored locally. This shift has the potential to increase the types of Internet-connected devices we use to consume and create content (check out the good discussion Scoble has going about the battle for web-based content on mobile phones).  

  So, what does all this have to do with Dell and the kind of content you can expect to see in the cloud computing blog? These web-based activities require reams of server and storage hardware architected around complex custom networks. As such, these environments differ from traditional server/storage environments. Our DCS team's purpose is to help customers make sense of that complexity—see this PDF, or www.dell.com/cloudcomputing for more context. That's the kind of content you can expect from reading Dell's Cloud Computing blog.

  If this sounds interesting, I encourage you to subscribe to the Cloud Computing RSS feed. If you'd rather access it directly, go here:

  www.direct2dell.com/cloudcomputing

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