Embedded HBA moving through the blades. (Storage Networking).

The Internet has changed the server usage model from single servers to higher density server farms. However, system administrators find deployment and operation difficult. Server resilience and complex cabling are serious problems for server farms. There are also problems associated with securing and managing large numbers of servers.

Blade servers address server farm issues by stacking independent servers within a single cabinet. Each blade is an independent system with its own memory, processor and network connection. Multiple blade servers can be placed in a single rack or enclosure. IDC predicts that the blade server market will reach $3.7 billion by 2006.

The host bus adapter industry needs to address the blade server market. The HBA business is a fiercely competitive one, and the challenges to HBA vendors to address the needs of blade-server OEMs are legion. The lack of expansion slots is pushing Fibre Channel HBAs into an embedded configuration, putting the ports on silicon or an ASIC, rather than a board. Mike Smith at Emulex says, "What you're starting to see now is purpose-built hardware for low-end applications; specifically blade server architectures that are starting to be configured for data center applications. And by that I mean that they're specifically being designed to accommodate SAN connectivity. And because of the real estate constraints and the form factors involved you need to have some sort of an embedded fibre-channel solution if you're going to deploy fibre-channel."

Part of the challenge facing the FC HBA market is the variety of FC alternatives either in the market or soon to be introduced. For example, Infiniband may prove to be a threat to all HBA vendors. Infiniband does employ different products, including host channel adapters (HCAs), target channel adapters (TCAs), Infiniband-specific switches, and routers. Additionally, the movement to IP storage will likely increase. The FC HBA market could well erode with IP storage becoming more prevalent, if for no other reason than increased competition.

Embedded HBAs

Vigorous speculation is taking place about whether the growth of embedded HBAs will impact the market positively or adversely. Embedded solutions are growing, especially in the blade server area Shelby Serafi at A.G. Edwards suggests that the migration from card-based FC HBAs to embedded FC HBAs is likely to be gradual over the next year (initially in the blade server market and later into the +2U server market). He also notes that it may migrate to the 2Us as early as 2004 or 2005.

QLogic Corporation is active in the embedded FC HBAs to the extent that their trademarked term Fibre Down is in danger of falling into the public domain. According to QLogic's Frank Berry, Fibre Down is the integration of single-chip Fibre Channel host bus adapters onto blade servers. Designed to enable the deployment of blade server farms in data centers, this innovative technology increases the storage expansion capabilities of blade servers by providing high bandwidth, long distance connectivity to Fibre Channel SANs. The solution is already shipping to such OEMs as IBM, HP and others.

Emulex has entered the arena with their own dual channel 2Gb/s Fibre Channel controller. This new controller, code-named Thor, embeds a standard microprocessor core and supports consolidated, single-chip external memory, which together drive down the solution footprint. Thor reduces controller solution footprint by 35 percent over previous generation single channel solutions, and by nearly 75 percent over prior generation dual channel solutions. At the same time, according to Emulex, Thor's ability to sustain dual channel performance of more than 100,000 I/Os per second delivers a 20 percent improvement in processing power compared to prior generation solutions.

Self-Defeating?

The trend seems in the direction of embedded FC HBAs for blades, and later for 2U and better servers. The chip level solutions will most likely sell at a lower price than conventional HBAs. Is the drive for embedded FC HBAs going to eventually displace card based solutions? A.G. Edwards' Serafinotes that such an eventuality could hurt if it becomes widespread, but will take a long time becoming so.

Qlogic's Berry observes that the number of ports should actually increase with the wider-spread integration of their Fibre Down strategy (see chart). Their product suite at press time includes a 2Gb, 2 channel chip with 80,000 IOPs External Memory, a 2Gb, 2 channel chip with 160,000 External Memory, and an upcoming 10Gb version.

Smith at Emulex also discounts any belief that migration to chip or ASIC-based HBAs are self-defeating. Says Smith, "I think that the real answer is that it's not a monolithic market... What that means from the standpoint of Emulex and host bus adapters is that you need more connectivity to those arrays to make maximum use of that storage. Regardless of what you may have on the motherboard, if you had an embedded solution, you need to add channels, you need to add ports for scaling the connectivity out of that server. I look at the decision of putting fibre-channel embedded into a solution on a case-by-case basis given the platform type and the particular physical constraints or the particular type of deployment that's typical for that server. But I also look at it as only a partial solution to the total demand of connectivity."

Whether the number of new ports will offset a lower selling price is a matter for the information technology budget availability. There is absolutely no doubt that the demand for high-throughput connectivity is a strong one. But it would be unrealistic not to remain concerned about the near term capital information technology spending environment, which some observers believe will not improve until mid-2003 at best.

www.emulex.com

www.qlogic.com

www.ibm.com

www.hp.com

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