If it's new, hyped, and small enough to fit on the head of a pin, then chances are RLX Technologies is putting it to work in their smaller-than-tiny servers. This company is brought to you by Transmeta, IBM, and Compaq.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [May 17, 2001]

When Transmeta's Crusoe processors were first released, its power saving capabilities were presented as essential to the salvation for battery-sucking portable computers. But with rolling brownouts in California, and belt-tightening around the world, the power saving grace of the Crusoe processor is being adapted in servers and on server farms today.

Based outside of Houston, RLX Technologies introduced another Transmeta-based server last week. The company works closely with IBM, and is closely tied to another down-home Houston-based firm, known as Compaq. RLX Technologies' executive staff includes a signicant number of former Compaq employees.

Compaq at the core
In November of 2000, Gary Stimac joined RLX and took the helm as the company's new chief executive officer. At Compaq, he had been vice president of its server division. Stimac wrangled other Compaq executives over to RLX and the rejuvenated executive team got busy developing ways to build uninterruptible server solutions so small, that the technology could fit on server blades—packing several server solutions into a single form factor.

RLX Technologies first server product was dubbed RLX System 324, because it put 24-servers into a single 3U chassis.

IBM plays a key role in manufacturing the Transmeta chip. IBM provides similar assistance to RLX Technologies through its spinoff, PEMSTAR. Based in Rochester, MN, the company takes care of much of RLX's fabrication requirements.

Richard Swingle, RLX Technologies vice president of marketing and 10-year Compaq veteran, said the company had already chosen IBM's 2.5-inch TravelStar hard drives when they tapped into "Big Blue" for fabrication services, too.

When RLX placed a large order for hard drives, IBM did its due diligance to make sure RLX could pay. The people at IBM must have liked what they saw in RLX and its Transmeta system, because IBM became an investor, an equipment supplier, a sales partner through its IBM Global Services arm, and helped arrange financing for RLX clients through its IBM Global Financing division.

Get down
RLX designed its circuitry and motherboard to better realize the power saving capabilities of the Transmeta chip. The chip powers down whenever possible, and the RLX servers do, too. Swingle said that many servers do not power down if they are carrying a light load. Of course different types of servers have different peak performance requirements, but very few servers need to be kept running at top speed all of the time.

For its Windows-based servers, RLX adapted an OEM version of the Windows operating system, known as "Windows Powered," to produce RLX Windows Powered servers. It's a server-only operating system for a headless device—a machine with no monitor, mouse, or keyboard. The OS doesn't bother to look for a VGA chip and also doesn't run MSSQL or MS Exchange.

Similarly, RLX adapted the 2.4 Linux kernel for another headless server system by stripping away unnecessary elements of the OS. In order to appease the open-source community, RLX also prepared "cookbooks" that provide engineers and programmers with details of all RLX Linux "recipes" so that users can find out what elements of the OS were removed, and can add their own elements to the mix.

The sum of all these different parts can be found in RLX's serverblade (right). Twenty-four servers fit in a 3U chassis, allowing clients to put 336 RLX servers into a single data center cage, as opposed to putting in 42 1U servers in the same. The resulting server density enables service providers to produce greater "per-square-foot" revenue from each server cage.

Resulting ROI
In its white paper, Redefining Server Economics ( .pdf available here), RLX Technologies calculates the power-saving capabilities of its servers in terms of pages-served per square-foot, revenue per square-foot, and power consumption efficiency.

RLX calculates that a 1U server consumes 665-kilowatt hours in one year and that its Transmeta chipset servers consume only 131-kilowatt hours over one year's use at peak performance. If the RLX server is idle, then it only consumers 61-kilowatt hours during one year.

If electric power costs $.07 per kilowatt hour, then a server farm with 200 1U units would cost about $14,912 per year to operate. But the same costs for the RLX servers would run only $2,940 a year. Naturally, additional savings are realized from the reduced heat put out by RLX servers.

When it comes to RLX, developing smart server systems isn't about thinking big to produce more—it's all about thinking small to use less.

—End