Cloud providers Amazon.com, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are driving demand for white box servers
The explosion in demand for streaming video content – to both homes and mobile devices – has set the stage for cloud-based content delivery, supported by constantly expanding server-packed data centers.
In this climate, cloud providers like Amazon.com, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have begun to eschew traditional servers made by companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard in favor of less-costly, purpose-built white box servers.
This industry movement is reflected in the economics. Consider recent research from the Dell’Oro Group, which found more than one-third of all servers shipped in North America in the first quarter of 2015 were white box servers.
Dell’Oro Group director Sameh Boujelbene said cloud data centers are driving the demand for white box servers.
“While the growth in servers destined for cloud deployment has benefited various vendors, including the top U.S.-based server vendors, it has disproportionately bolstered the performance of white box server vendors,” Boujelbene said. “This is because most of the growth in the cloud data centers during the quarter was driven by the big four (Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft), who are mainly deploying white box servers.”
White box servers are custom built to a client’s specifications using readily available hardware. This differs from an off-the-rack server, which will come in a sleek box with the vendor name and logo on it.
White box server manufacturers include Super Micro, ABMX and Servers Direct, or you can build your own using Open Compute Project designs and specs.
Joe Sanchez of VMware summed up the “why” of white box servers in a recent article: “My point is this. To cloud providers like Google and Amazon, compute, space, bandwidth, efficiency and lower infrastructure costs are key to their success. I’m not saying we should all build our own servers, but do we need most of the stuff we’re buying? If all you need is compute that can be swapped out when something dies, then white box is good enough.”
Sanchez name checks IBM, HP, Dell and Cisco as server manufacturers whose equipment will be received with, “No complaints, however you will pay for the brand the higher quality.”
As for white box servers, Sanchez exemplifies the process with ABMX: “On the ABMX website you can choose from a variety of 1u, 2u, 3u, 4u and blade server hardware configurations. Pick any drive, controller, CPU, PS, or memory combination from a drop down. Just like a candy store at the mall, ABMX has everything a server hardware guru could ever dream of.”
This stripped down approach, focused on providing the right level of functionality for a minimum total cost of ownership, is necessary for the Googles and Amazons of the world because of the volume involved; said another way, when you need to buy thousands of boxes, cost is king.
But could the preference for white box servers make its way from cloud providers down to the enterprise?
Volanto consultant Jim O’Reilly thinks so, according to a recent Q&A published by Stratacloud.
Asked about the appeal of white box servers, O’Reilly said, “I did the first storage installation for Microsoft Azure, and believe me it was nothing like standard servers and nowhere near hyperconverged. It was very purpose built, but also very bare bones. I’ve been involved with Amazon and Google since then a few times and they don’t look for any frills and furbelows. They get right down to it. They want cheap, functional and relatively limited – and in very high volume. … The way the cloud operators buy their gear is percolating and it may filter down into smaller companies very soon. There’s going to be a trend of people buying open compute designs and those are coming from the smaller vendors.”
