The IBM e-Server xSeries Hosting Appliance includes up to 40 pre-loaded applications and operates on Red Hat's Linux platform. Add in Sphera's Hosting Director and IBM has built an offer worthy of the Sun.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [April 15, 2002]

If your Internet service is Web service-centric, IBM has an intriguing offer that rivals one of the most popular 1U devices on the market today—namely, the Sun Cobalt Raq server.

"This is a game changing initiative," said Jay Holbrook, manager of worldwide marketing at IBM. Meet the IBM e-Server xSeries Hosting Appliance. Priced to kill at $2,569, the IBM e-Server xSeries is set to be unleashed on the world this week.

The 1U device shows that IBM is intrigued by the Web server business. "Web servers are a real target for us," said Holbrook. "According to IDC, the market is experiencing a 33.9 percent annual growth rate. At this price, we feel our product should be attractive to all customers, large and small."

The device runs on a 950 MHz Intel Celeron processor, comes with 256 KB of RAM (upgradeable to 1.5 GB), and with one 40 GB hard drive (a second can be added, either as a standalone or to support RAID). The product has a 128 KB level 2 cache and integrated 10/100 Ethernet. "We are focused on Ethernet," said Holbrook, "as we believe the rest of the industry is."

The unit comes with 40 standard pre-loaded applications, although some commercial applications have a 30 day trial version, after which a regular license can be purchased. Among software vendors, two applications stand out. IBM believes in Red Hat Linux and in Sphera's Hosting Director product.

The OS the product ships with is categorically Red Hat Linux version 7.1. The only Microsoft application on this device is FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions. In a further indication of its belief in the programming power of Linux, in early 2002 IBM opened its Linux Service Provider Lab in Oregon, where the company tests future Internet appliances.

IBM's embrace of Red Hat Linux is no surprise. The company has embraced the open source community to such an extent that the community firmly believes that IBM understands the value of Linux and is only afraid that IBM might change Linux or the open source development process. This is an ongoing dialogue, but it is peaceful, and should remain so.

Favorite director
More surprising is IBM's embrace of Sphera's Hosting Director. Yes, the Israel-founded but now U.S.-based company has software that has received testimonials from around the world. ISPs praise the software's ease of management, flexibility, open integration with APIs, and reliability. Hosting Director's features are so impressive that they form a core part of IBM's value message, which is somewhat of a surprise.

While there are many Sphera supporters, there is not the kind of community supporting Sphera that is inevitable in a successful open source project like Linux, and it takes courage to integrate another company's software into your own offering as completely as IBM has integrated Sphera into its latest device.

"We did a lot of research," explained Holbrook, "we talked to everyone from the largest service providers to individual end users. We found a lot of dissatisfaction about lack of reliability and also about the difficulty and cost of administration of devices currently on the market."

A key feature of Hosting Director is its support for hosting resellers. While most other software supports a user control layer and an administrator control layer, Holbrook believes that Hosting Director is the only software that supports a special layer of permissions for resellers.

Next, and definitely not least important, is security. Hosting Director's Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) technology allows a Web host to put several sites on a single server (up to a theoretical limit, in the case of the IBM device, of 1,000 sites, a limit that would probably not be reached because that would give each site only about 40 MB of space). In addition, Hosting Director is designed to ensure that if one site crashes or becomes contaminated or is hacked, other sites will not be affected.

X-Architecture features
But don't think that IBM's contributing nothing to the mix. IBM is providing technology developed for its mainframes and high end servers and putting it into the little package called the eServer xSeries Hosting Appliance.

"The X-Architecture," says Holbrook, "is all about taking large server and mainframe technologies and bringing them into the industry standard space. We've brought many technologies into this device."

He said that key X-Architecture features of the new device include IBM's Director Agent, which allows remote setup and monitoring. He says that as soon as the device is powered up and connected to Ethernet, it can be set up and managed remotely through the Director console. The Director Agent is also part of IBM's eLiza project, part of IBM's plan to build a nervous system for computers that would enable them to identify problems and heal themselves in the automated manner in which human bodies heal.

He also noted that as heat is "the biggest enemy of many of the components of any server," IBM's Vector Cooling design, which uses airflow data derived from the testing of high-end computers to augment the power of cooling fans, should be a key feature in ensuring the longevity of the device.

In the field
Holbrook says that it's more than just the X-Architecture. He says that IBM makes hosting cheaper. "Manufacturers will say that their devices take 20 minutes to set up, which is true, but we found that the set up cost was additive. Our Advanced Appliance Configuration Utility, which is an IBM created component, gives us the ability to do an automated network configuration, so that each additional device can be installed in a fraction of the time."

IBM's first announced customer for the new hosting appliance is Dialtone Internet of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Founded in 1997, the company specializes in managed hosting services.

President and CEO Alvaro Albarracin said the company has been working working with IBM for about one year.

"We are an IBM Premier Partner and have been with Sphera for about a year," Albarracin explained. "We've got about 3,000 servers in our data center. It's great to have all the applications pre-installed. Checking version updates for all of those applications is a serious problem."

Dialtone also provides Sun Cobalt Raq hosting, so the company itself will be an interesting laboratory for the coming battle between IBM and Sun in this market niche.

—End