Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only From Dinosaurs to Ants The Evolution of Servers Nuova Systems Tech Talk 3/24/06

2 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only What is a Server? • A server is a computer which primarily interacts with other computers, not humans • Networking is necessary for servers • Every kind of network system got its start as a dedicated server! – Bridges – Routers – Firewalls – Content Cache • Switches are highly evolved bridges, some to the point of losing the computer part

3 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only

4 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only The Dinosaurs • ENIAC, EDVAC, UNIVAC • IBM… • Huge room full of electronics • Huge cost of capital • Huger cost of ownership! • Roller Skates for Changing Tubes! • Enormous physical requirements

5 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only 1960 Tape Storage Input Output CPU Core Memory console CPU Unique Interface Types For Each Connection

6 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only From Mainframe to Server • As small computers evolved, it was natural to want to connect them to the big computer • The only form of network offered by the big computers was to user terminals • Early networking was all terminal emulation and screen scraping – yecch • A whole generation of big computers died because they had lousy networking • The ones with good networking are called servers!

7 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only I/O CTLR I/O CPU MEM console CPU channel interconnect MEM CTLR CTLR console Rudimentary storage sharing Common interfaces for storage and I/O (channels) Beginnings of CPU to CPU communication 1970 Illiac IV

8 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only WAN Terminal Controller WAN Controller CPU MEM CPU MEM 1980 Mini-Computers Point to Point WAN Networks Terminal Networks Large Disk Farms

9 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Bigger is Better • Customers with big problems are all to eager to buy big iron! • Even if its not necessary! • It wasn’t I.T., but rather users, who discovered their PCs were as fast as the big shared mainframe • In 10 years, mainframe went from being incredibly over-subscribed to under-subscribed • What if the gave a mainframe and nobody came? – Repurpose the storage and call it a server!

10 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only switch switch Router WAN CPU memory CPU CPU memory CPU SCSI 1990 SMP! PCs LANs Client/Server Some shared SCSI

11 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Servers Today • Use mainstream processors – x86, etc. • Run general purpose OS – Windows, Linux, UNIX • Run in-house or 3rd party applications • Reliability is key • Differentiation going, commoditization coming • Slowly evolving to be more manageable than PCs

12 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Internet LAN CPU/MEM CPU/MEM CPU/MEM CPU/MEM CPU CPU CPU CPU CPU CPU CPU MEM MEM MEM MEM MEM MEM MEM SAN 2000 Big SMPs Clusters SANs Internet

13 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Server Technology • Look inside a network appliance or a switch or a storage node, what do you see? – X86 processors – Linux OS – Integrated OS & Apps – Improved reliability & manageability • The evolution of servers is directly tied to the evolution of everything else in the data center

Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Capacity

15 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Symmetric Multi-Processing • In 1964, IBM announced System/360 with a 50:1 ratio between fastest and slowest processors – If you need more capacity, buy the next biggest computer • Today, the ratio between fastest and slowest server processors is more like 3:1 – If you need more capacity, buy more processors • Formerly, computers were much more than just processors; buying another computer wasn’t desirable. Also much harder to manage • Now, buying clusters of small computers (Scale- Out) is cheaper and faster than using scaleable large SMPs (Scale-Up)

16 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only SMP vs Cluster Software • Writing code for SMPs or clusters is much harder than writing single-threaded code • Writing cluster code (no shared memory) is totally different than writing SMP code (shared memory) • The 80s and 90s encouraged SMP software • Built into languages like Java – Being taught worldwide • Clustering big trend since late 90s – harness lots of cheap computers – but software very difficult

17 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only MultiCore – Rebirth of SMPs • Frequency limits in chips means processors don’t go faster anymore • Moore’s law of density stays valid – plenty more room on chips • Intel, AMD adding more processors to chips to keep increasing performance • But SMP software is needed to leverage multi-cores • Today, dual-socket, dual-core = 4 processors • In 2007, quad-socket, quad-core = 16 processors • Few, if any, real SMP apps use more than 16 Ps

18 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Whither Clusters? • Does multi-core replace need for clusters? • No, because the killer app for clusters is fault- tolerance • Also, clusters are the right approach for the embarrassingly parallel loads caused by zillions of internet connections • So complex systems will use both SMP and cluster techniques

19 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Virtualization • Virtualization, aka partitioning, evolved as a way to share large computer among lighter workloads • A large system without virtualization is probably under-utilized • VMWare brings virtualization to x86, adds new benefit of containerization – frees OS from specific HW • VMWare, Xen critical to success of multi-core processors

20 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Management

21 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only The Ants Come Marching… • The Transaction Iceberg • Dedicated servers • Redundant servers • Scale-Out vs Scale-Up • Ever increasing cycles to stay on the net – Security – SPAM – Bots

22 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only The Transaction Iceberg • What the web user sees in a transaction is just the tip of the iceberg • How many servers are involved in buying a book on Amazon? 10s, 100s, 1000s? – includes warehouses, credit card processors, fedex/ups, … • Pre-processing: How many servers consumed just getting ready for that transaction? – Google: hundreds of thousands at Google, bothering millions of web servers every day • Post-processing: feed every transaction into model, try to predict future behavior – Where does Walmart send the next truck?

23 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Dedicated Servers • Each major application dictates the exact versions & patches to underlying middleware & OS • Therefore, each app requires its own OS image • Each OS requires own server, or virtual server • An appliance just pre-packages this mess for the end-user

24 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Redundant Servers • Clusters are much more common with Linux than with Windows • Software licensing is still mostly per machine rather than per processor, user, or application • Software costs of clusters suck unless you’re using freeware! • Servers are viewed as disposable as long as you don’t flush your licenses at the same time

25 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Scale-Up vs Scale-Out • Scale-Up, aka Big SMP, is the new dinosaur – Huge costs for coherent memory interconnect – Huge cost for processors with CMI • Multi-core, aka Little SMP, takes away most of the market from Big SMP • Scale-Out Little Clusters necessary for reliability • Scale-Out Big Clusters previously successful only with HPC & Internet • Now bleeding into business analytics – OLAP, financial modeling, fraud prevention, …

26 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only CPU CPU CPU CPU Internet Dumb Desktops Storage Storage Storage Storage LAN 10Gbit LAN 10Gbit Memory Memory Memory 2010 Pooled Storage on SANs Pooled, Clustered, CPUs Pooled Memory?

27 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only What is a Server? • A box? • A blade? • A partition? • A virtual machine? • An OS image? • A cluster? • Does a server still exist when its not running? • A ServerArray?

28 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Sun E25K vs ServerArray • 18 slots • 4 dual core UltraSPARC IV @ 1.35Ghz/slot • 32GB ram/slot • 1x38.4Gb ic / slot • 144 processors, 576GB, 691Gbps bw • 42 slots • 4 dual core Opteron 880 @ 2.4Ghz/slot • 32GB ram/slot • 2x10Gb ic / slot • 336 processors, 1344GB, nx560Gbps bw

29 Nuova Systems Confidential – Internal Use only Ants… • I don’t know how many servers there will be in the future • But the number of server cores will be astronomical! • Far greater than the number of laptop or desktop cores • More cores than people! • More cores than ants?? • Computers can keep each other much busier than humans can!