With ever more sophisticated hardware coming to market, the
much-hyped development of Windows 2000, and a more positive
attitude toward designing bespoke systems to meet particular needs,
it's no longer true to say that enterprise computing is based on
the 'one size fits all' philosophy. Murdoch MacTaggart takes a look
at recent developments
It's been a persistent rumour for several years that mainframes
are about to step down and make way for systems based on what is,
fundamentally, PC architecture.
That view has rightly been derided by those involved with
high-end systems processing huge amounts of data. With the maturing
of electronic business and the shift towards the pervasive and
seamless network, the need for the robust, reliable, powerful
data-crunching at which mainframes excel is rising rather than
falling.
Everything changes
Yet things are changing in ways which will have major impacts on
enterprise computing. This week Microsoft launched three elements
within its Windows 2000 family - Professional, Server and Advanced
Server. Perhaps much more importantly, Data Center Server is due
out in mid-2000 which coincides with the launch of Intel's Itanium
64-bit processor (formerly known as Merced).
Storage technology is developing rapidly, both in capacity and
rapid access, with EMC and other big players introducing innovative
new techniques. Companies such as EMC's subsidiary, Data General,
as well as Unisys, Bull, HP, IBM and its subsidiary Sequent, are
developing or extending techniques to combine multiple processors.
Storage companies are also working to partition hardware servers to
run multiple operating systems according to demand.
At the same time, user expectations are rising. It has long
seemed an absurdity that it's not possible, except in fairly small
databases, to query live data. Instead, users must work through
replicated warehouses which are snapshots frozen in time.
Fixed, cleaned, historic data is sometimes required, of course,
but that's a choice which many would prefer to be open to the user
rather than dictated by processing limitations. With the growing
need for dynamic analysis and rapid response, fuelled by the
Internet, such expectations and associated demands will
increase.
According to Mike McCormac, business manager of Intel server
division at Bull, there has been a significant shift in perception
over Windows NT, now Windows 2000, over the past 18 months. "No-one
would then have dreamed of putting a large SAP installation on to
NT," he says. "But now there's a measurable and growing use and NT
is starting to become very important."
Bull's Express 5800 series uses symmetric multi-processing (SMP)
technology to offer up to 8-way processor systems with duplicated,
hot-swappable power supplies and significant amounts of memory and
I/O.
NT4 can handle just four processors with clustering available
for pairs of servers, but Windows 2000 takes this much further.
Advanced Server now supports 8-way SMP and 2-way clustering,
although this increases to four-node clusters under Data Center
Server.
An important addition is the introduction of network load
balancing (NLB), for both these server editions, which allows up to
32 servers to be managed as a unit with traffic distributed evenly
among them according to demand and configuration.
"I expect a significant number of 16- and 32-way systems to be
available by the end of the year," McCormac says.
Data General, like Bull, approaches Windows 2000 from the
mainframe rather than the desktop environment and is possibly less
focussed on NT although Steve Aucoin, director of Aviion Product
Marketing, believes its importance is growing.
Limits on SMP technology restricts the number of processors to
eight. Data General offers up to that number in its 8900 series
running NT, which is capable of being mounted five-up in a standard
rack.
High-end products
In its high-end products, Data General moves beyond the
limitations of SMP by employing its particular variation on
non-uniform memory access (Numa) technology and utilising Intel's
server motherboards and interconnect bridging.
The 25000 series, for example, supports up to 64 Intel Xeon
processors with 64Gbytes of system memory, but appears as a single
SMP system. AVFlex partitioning allows one 4-way block to run NT
with the balance running Unix.
According to Aucoin, Data General builds from industry standard
components rather than utilising proprietary technology.
Hewlett-Packard is similarly offering eight-way Intel servers -
its Netserver 8500 series - with up to 32Gbytes of system memory
and focussing on Advanced Server as the key operating system.
IBM is also in this area, although it is concentrating on Linux
and AIX rather than NT. The latest addition to its Netfinity series
- the Netfinity 400R - is aimed at the Internet service provider
and growing application service provider markets. Although only a
2-SMP product, albeit with up to 2Gbyte system memory and 1.5
terabits per second (Tbps) storage capacity, it's less than two
inches high and designed so that 42 units can be fitted into a
standard rack.
Unisys, in contrast, is heavily committed to Microsoft and sees
Windows 2000 as the future. Previewed at Comdex Fall in November
1999, its ES7000, which is due for release in March, is an
extremely powerful enterprise server which uses mainframe-style
crossbar architecture to provide direct communication paths between
components, most of which are hot-swappable.
There are up to eight sub-pods, each with four Intel Xeon
processors but which are capable of using the Itanium 64-bit
processors when these become available. Each pod presently has
8-16Mbytes third-level cache - those figures doubling for IA-64
pods - and each can support 12 PCI channels so giving 96 in
total.
Maximum memory is 64Gbytes and the aggregate memory bandwidth
20Gbps. There are dual power sectors as well as dual service
processors to provide redundancy. The latter continually monitors
the working of the systems and manages dynamic configurations and
management of resource allocation, with support for electronic
service requests.
The system uses Unisys's CMP technology to handle partitioning.
The ES7000 can appear as a single 32-SMP system or as partitioned
variants, using CMP, based on 4-block units and running any mix of
Windows NT4, Windows 2000 or SCO UnixWare.
The combination of the Unisys ES7000 with Intel 64-bit
processors and Windows 2000 Data Center Server is light years away
from a 386 running Windows 3.0, despite the observations of some
that not much has changed since then.
It remains to be seen whether Windows 2000 will live up to the
claims of reliability, robustness and scalability being made.
Analysts GartnerGroup and the Aberdeen Group are among those who
believe it will and that enterprise computing is about to change
significantly.
Peter Slavid, business strategy manager with ICL, a key
Microsoft partner, points out that a year ago choices were limited.
Now, opportunities provided by various forms of Windows 2000,
sophisticated hardware such as that from Unisys, and an approach
which recognises the importance of designing and configuring
complex systems for particular requirements, will transform
enterprise computing.
Focus on storage
More Windows 2000 news