Tag: servers

Industry faces a server shortage

The COVID-19 outbreak has sparked a server supply shortage due to the shuttering of major hardware manufacturers in China.

Internet infrastructure provider Heficed has warned that the demand cannot be served by the current stock supply  has left firms without the resources to build and maintain their network infrastructure.

Inability to staff the production lines and during the lockdown has resulted in a “significant server supply shortage” in the market, Heficed said, and although many businesses have now restarted their work, they still have a long road ahead to mitigate long-term industry damage.

Server revenues doing ok

Beancounters at IDC have noted that while server numbers are down, sales revenues are doing OK thanks to higher ASPs.

A review of the global server market from IDC found that although demand had dropped year-on-year in first quarter by 5.1 percent the higher unit prices improved revenue by 4.4 percent.

Low-end and mid-range servers fared much better than higher-end products, which suffered a 24.7 percent decline, a second consecutive quarter of decline.

Dell rulez servers

Tin box shifter Michael Dell took the number one position in the worldwide vendor server market for the third quarter of 2018, according to beancounters at IDC.

It had 17.5 percent of market share, followed by HPE at 16.3 percent. HPE had held top position for the same period in 2017.

Overall revenue in the global server market increased 37.7 percent year-on-year to $23.4 billion in the third quarter, marking its highest total revenue in a single quarter.

Dell promises to beef up the channel

A bevy of senior Dell EMC executives spoke to a bevy of tech hacks this morning and spelled out in detail their promise of reseller goodnesses for their mega storage and server businesses.

Speaking at the Canalys Channel Forum in sunny Barcelona, the company was quick to say it was prepared for the British exit from the EU (Brexit) from day one, and even before day one. It is talking to the UK government and to other bodies and organisations to ease the transition if and when and however it comes.

But, and relating to its channel strategy, Dell EMC said it had given its resellers a lower price, and “that forms a strong incentive to the channel. Large accounts worldwide are wide open. If our partners win that business they’re protected.”

Michael Collins

Dell EMC’s Michael Collins showing determination

Dell EMC said it will be a partner led strategy.

“Speaking to our partners and what they want from us is to look at the opportunities that exist in our enterprise business. We have to give them the ability to sell right across the range of Dell’s product portfolio.

“We’ve looked at where the opportunities are for the channel. We’re putting a commitment to the channel in order to invest and win incremental business, to be protected and we’ve introduced “partner of record” – that means the customer is locked to the partner for a period of a year. It’s exactly what our partners asked for.”

Dell EMC said there are two flavours of its preferred programme.

“It’s not just for enterprise customers but we’ve expanded this to include commercial as well. The benefit for the partner is really simple. When partners sell more, they make more margin and revenue and it gives incremental opportunities. This is very much based around our storage portfolio.”

Further, Dell EMC is pushing into its enterprise IoT business for large organisations and will offer eight bundles aimed at specific environments.”

It’s the software that is the secret, the company claimed, and the bundles are related to large requirements such as energy requirements for connected organisations.

“It is not going to pay all the bills this year, next year or even the year after. These are early attempts to figure out how to promote this technology. We have IoT training for customers and partners and have made this available through our distributors.”

Around a half of its enterprise storage and server offerings are fulfilled through the channel, the company claimed.

Inspur announces M5 based servers

bb6ca181438a098828227500ef8b4accInspur officially announced its new generation of M5 series server platforms.

The new M5 series family, designed based on different deployment and application scenarios, includes four major product groups (General Purpose, Enterprise, Application Optimized and Converged Architecture Series), 35 products, for cloud computing, big data, AI to provide customers with excellent and robust computing performance as well as reliable and efficient business protection.

General Purpose Series Servers and Enterprise Series Servers have enhanced RASUM (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Usability and Manageability) features are integrated to provide ERP, CRM and other traditional enterprise applications with strong, reliable and flexible supportive platforms.

The outfit’s new M5 Application Optimised Series Server meets the needs for computing-intensive applications and data-rich applications. In this group, some servers are designed for cloud data centers.

And some are designed to manage big data, deep learning and other emerging data-rich applications. All these servers provide physical storage capacity and heterogeneous computing power far better than general products. For example, the NF5288M5, a purpose-built deep learning server, offers superb performance for extreme AI computing and HPC mission.

Converged Architecture Product Series is the next generation data center modular solution. The physical indicators, including product performance density, storage density and energy efficiency, as well as the scalability of computing, storage, I/O and other various resources are far superior to traditional servers.

The new M5 series family is equipped with multi-dimensional automatic management solution, and supports OpenBMC and Redfish, the two standard management API interfaces. Inspur also participates in all Open Data Center Projects, which include OCP, OCS, ODCC, Open19.

 

Dell EMC takes over from HPE as server king

michael-dell-2Beancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that Dell EMC has taken over from HPE as the king of the server market.

HPE still makes more money holding 24.1 percent of the market share – down from 25.2 percent in the first quarter of 2016. But it would seem that Dell EMC is catching up in that  too, with its market share increasing by 4.8 percent to over the same period to take 19 per cent market share in the latest quarter.

Gartner research director Adrian O’Connell said that the first quarter of the year tends to be relatively strong for Dell, but the acquisition of EMC was proving positive for the server business at the moment.

“HPE’s size means it is subject to the moves of the wider market more than some other vendors. Weakness in the business segment and sourcing changes in the service provider space have reduced its revenue significantly.”

Worldwide server sales continue to decline with the growth of cloud computing, Gartner’s figures show. Companies are also opting to move to hyperscale infrastructures, buying lower cost servers from ODMs too, meaning total worldwide server revenue declined 4.5 per cent year-on-year, with shipments falling by 4.2 percent.

EMEA was impacted more than the rest of the world, with the region’s revenues reducing by 12.2 percent year-on-year to $2.8 billion in the first quarter of 2017 and shipments totaling 503,000 – a reduction of eight percent year-on-year.

IBM and Lenovo most felt the squeeze, with revenues reducing by 34 percent year-on-year and 16 percent year-on-year respectively. Lenovo’s shipments also shrank by 26 percent.

 

Dell becomes the king of the servers

Michael DellNew numbers from the Gartner Group show that Dell has beaten HPE to the top spot for server shipments.

To be fair, though, the market shrank and worldwide server revenue is down 0.8 percent.  Shipments are up by two percent which means that there is some pretty nasty price cutting going on.

Everywhere except for Asia/Pacific and North America is in decline, though shipments in those areas grew by 5.6 percent and three percent respectively.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner said: “Dell garnered 19.3 per cent of the market and moved into the No. 1 position in worldwide server shipments due primarily to growth resulting from programmes it has in place in the Asia/Pacific region, most notably in China. However, HPE continued to lead the x86 market in revenue with 26 per cent of the market.”

He added: “x86 servers grew 2.1 percent in shipments and 5.8 percent in revenue in the second quarter of 2016.”

Dell’s strong performance did not see its revenues match the growth. HPE continues to hold more of the market share in revenue though that contracted by 6.4 percent year-on-year, while Dell saw almost 10 percent growth.

IBM’s server revenues dropped by 34.4 percent but then it did flog its business to Lenovo.

HPE’s shipments also contracted year-on-year, shrinking by more than 18 percent, while Dell, Lenovo, Huawei, Inspur and others pulled up their socks.

Eastern ODMs take bite out of server market

hp_serversUnless you are HPE, everyone appears to be doing well out of the global server market,  but it seems that the Asian ODMs such as Quanta and Wistron are continuing to bite out a larger share of the global server market.

According to beancounters at Gartner’s the global server market grew 8.2 percent in shipments and 9.2 percent in revenues in the fourth quarter on an annual comparison.

Those outside the top five saw revenues beef up 18.9 percent to $4.75 billion and shipments increase 16 percent to 1.26 million in Q4.

Between them they have between 31.4 and 42.5 percent of the market in revenue and shipment terms, respectively.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner said that this demonstrates that the growth of hyperscale datacentres, like those of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, continues to be the leading contributor to physical server increases globally.

Meanwhile Market leader HPE’s shipments were hit by global weakness in Windows-based x86 servers, while its revenues were affected by a drop in RISC/Itanium Unix server sales.

HPE’s share of server revenues dropped from 27.9 to 25.2 percent however it is still  10 points ahead of closest rival Dell, which grew revenues 4.5 percent. IBM grew revenues 10.3 percent, Lenovo 2.9 percent and Cisco 20.2 percent.

 

 

Notebook ODMs fleeing to the cloud

cloudbustThere could be a drastic cut back in the number of notebooks on the market.

Word in from the Far East is that  notebook ODMs, such as Quanta and Compal, have been expanding staff specifically for servers used in cloud computing data centres, their component suppliers, including thermal modules, power supplies and metal stamping, have also extended related production.

It seems likely that the manufacturers have had a gutsful of making PCs that no one wants and are seeing the future as being cloudy.

Intel’s datacentre business units had 10% growth in second-quarter revenues, while profits from the business also surpassed those of its PC business, making the datacentre centre business the CPU giant’s new main profit contributor. The trend also triggered upstream supply chains to start turning their focuses to the segment.

Choung Technology said that more than 40 per cent  of its revenues contributed by server-related products. CCI ships about eight million thermal modules for servers each year, and is supplying to clients including HP, Dell, and Quanta.

Furukawa Electric also stuck its foot in the door supplying Google and Microsoft to supply products for their datacentres. The company also started sending samples to Facebook and Amazon recently, looking to expand into their supply chains.

Quanta’s server team has about 1,000 employees and is focusing mainly on the integration between software and hardware. By the end of 2015, Quanta is looking to double the team’s personnel and will continue to recruit more talent in 2016.

Notebook makers get into servers

server-racksFed up with losing money in a shrinking PC market, notebook OEMs are getting into servers and datacentre hardware.

According to DigitimesQuanta and Compal have been hiring staff specifically to create hardware for servers used in cloud computing data centres and their component suppliers. Apparently thermal modules, power supplies and metal stamping, have also extended related production makes a mile of cash.

The role model for the move is Intel, which saw its datacentre business units grow by 10 percent while profits from the business also surpassed its PC business.

The trend also triggered upstream supply chains to start turning their focuses to the segment.

Taiwan-based thermal module maker Chaun-Choung has 40 percent of its revenues contributed by server-related products. CCI ships about eight million thermal modules for servers each year, and is supplying to clients including HP, Dell, and Quanta.

Japan-based thermal module maker Furukawa also recently entered the supply chain of Google and Microsoft to supply products for their datacenters. The company also started sending samples to Facebook and Amazon recently, looking to expand into their supply chains.

Quanta’s server team has 1,000 employees and is focusing mainly on the integration between software and hardware and wants to double the team’s personnel by Christmas. Compal’s server team has recruited about 300 employees in two years and is still expanding.

Apple buys into white box servers

novità-apple-2013Cupertino based Apple Inc has decided to ditch HP and Dell to supply its servers and instead is looking to Taiwanese firms to supply its data centre needs.

That’s according to Taiwan wire Digitimes which said some of the local white box server manufacturers have already received orders from Apple for boxes.

One of the major manufacturers of servers is Quanta, which used to specialise almost wholly in making notebooks for big vendors but has diversified its business over the last two years.

It offers servers at a price that undercuts Dell and HP and will customise the machines for customers which already include giants like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Apple said recently it will open data centres in Ireland and in Denmark and it’s also spending billions on building up data centres in the USA.

The company is also cuddling up to IBM and wants to release tablet machines that will appeal to enterprises rather than the home users it has depended on in the past.

AMD leans on ARM for next phase


arm-wrestlingAMD is pinning
its hopes on ARM servers and custom designs to pull its nadgers out of the fire, sources inside the company are saying.

New CEO Lisa Su has said ARM servers will account for as much as 15 percent of the total server market in less than five years and AMD wants a slice of that.

It is a long term gamble, and one which is a move away from AMD’s traditional x86 plans.

What is also strange about the plan is that it does create rivals from companies that are also bidding to put ARM in the data centre.

There is also the problem that ARM adoption in the server space is new and lacks the software and driver maturity of x86 – something which AMD actually knows rather a lot about.

To keep the flag flying. AMD plans to increase its custom semi-design business. AMD has recently signed a number of new customers up to its “semicustom” practice, which it expects to grow into a business worth as much as $1 billion in much-needed new revenues.

Server market grew in Q4 2014

HP-MicroServerFigures supplied by market analyst company Gartner showed that the worldwide server market grew 4.8 percent in shipments for the fourth quarter of 2014.

And revenues grew 2.2 percent in that quarter, compared to the fourth quarter of 2013.

Jeffrey Hewitt a VP at Gartner, described server market for the whole of 2014 as showing strong growth. Growth for the whole year was 2.2 percent.

“Hyper scale data centre deployments as well as service provider installations drove the X86 market upwards,” he said. “Enterprises had less unit growth impact because of the ongoing presence of physical server consolidation through X86 server virtualisation. This overall market growth developed despite declines in both mainframe and Unix platforms.”

HP was the leader server vendor in the quarter in terms of revenues, but only grew 1.5 percent in the whole year. Its market share is 27.9 percent worldwide. IBM showed a decline of 50.6 percent, and Lenovo had extraordinary growth of 743.4 percent. This is because IBM sold its X86 server business to Lenovo in the fourth quarter.

Dell is the second biggest vendor with 17.3 percent in terms of revenues, IBM third, Lenovo fourth and Cisco fifth. “Others” had a market share of 28.6 percent.
HP also led the pack in terms of shipments, pushing out 642,007 units in the fourth quarter.

Server 2003 nemesis looms

Microsoft campusMicrosoft abandons support for Windows Server 2003 on July the 14 this year and that means servergeddon for IT managers who don’t keep up with the upgrades.

In fact, according tech company Insight UK, there are five “power struggles” set to happen in enterprises and public organisations on Bastille Day – that’s the 14th of July.

Insight estimates that 24 million servers worldwide could well be affected – and nearly 40 percent of Server OSes are Windows 2003.

Microsoft wants people to use its Azure Data Centre Migration but many have left things too little and too late.

Insight thinks that migrating servers could take an estimated 18 months, and short term patches cause problems in the migration.

And another problem is lack of compatability and interoperability problems, while new environments will require time to get to grips sure.

Sure enough, this is leading Insight to one conclusion – it can help you out. “Panic is not an option,” said MD Emma de Sousa, after telling enterprises that they better had panic, and quickly.

 

Intel plans Xeon E7-v3 CPUs with up to 18 Cores

Intel-Core-MIt seems that Intel is planning a version of its Xeon E7-v3 CPU with up to 18 Cores under the bonnet.

 CPU-World.com has dug up a list of specifications for some of the upcoming Xeon E7 series processors from Intel.

The information has not been confirmed by Intel but since the list comes from a CSV (Comma Separated Value) price list for the X-series server products from IBM it is likely to be reliable.

The CPUs based on Haswell are baked using the 22nm process. It seems to be 165 W TDP which is hardly a low power envelope but given that it is running a chip with 18 physical cores at 2.5 GHz it is pretty good.

The list is

Model                                   Cores    Frequency          TDP

Xeon E7-4809 v3               8              2.0 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4820 v3               10           1.9 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4830 v3               12           2.1 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-4850 v3               14           2.2 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-8860 v3               16           2.2 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8867 v3               16           2.5 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8870 v3               18           2.1 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8880 v3               18           2.3 GHz                 140W

Xeon E7-8880L v3             18           2.0 GHz                 115W

Xeon E7-8890 v3               18           2.5 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8891 v3               10           2.8 GHz                 165W

Xeon E7-8893 v3               4              3.2 GHz                 140W

 

Core counts range from four through 18 cores, and clock speeds  from 1.9 GHz through 3.2 GHz. More cores operate at lower clock speeds.

No word on price yet but these processors are likely to be very expensive so they are only going to go into server situations where they are going to get shedloads of use.