Egenera
Encyclopedia
Egenera, Inc. is a multinational converged infrastructure technology company with corporate headquarters in Marlborough, Massachusetts
in the United States
. Egenera designs, manufactures, and sells blade servers as well as converged infrastructure management software, and offers consulting and training services related to its products and technologies. Egenera is a privately held company with over 350 employees. Founded in March 2000, the company was named by Network World as one of the top 10 startups to watch in 2002 and was a winner in the annual "Red Herring 100 North America" award given by Red Herring magazine in 2006.
Egenera maintains overseas headquarters in the United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong.
Group in New York. Under Mr. Brownell's leadership, Egenera pioneered the Processing Area Network (PAN) which is designed to virtualize and interconnect computing, storage and network resources, creating shared pools that can be centrally managed. Mr. Brownell conceived of the idea for PAN based on his experiences with growing data center complexity at Goldman Sachs.
The company launched its first product, the Egenera BladeFrame, in October, 2001. BladeFrame is a combination of bladed servers, fabric backplane, firmware and management software. In October, 2006, Egenera announced its plan to create a separate line of business in order to make its virtualization management software, called PAN Manager, available under OEM agreement to other server vendors.
Egenera has received numerous patents for its technology, including the Processing Area Network, N+1 disaster recovery and virtualized server failover technology.
and network virtualization
technology in a single package. A BladeFrame consists of a chassis, backplane, specialty blades, and multiple bladed servers.
Each server, called a "pBlade", contains one or more Intel or AMD processors. pBlades are considered stateless because they are composed only of processors and memory, and do not contain disk drives, direct interfaces to external devices, or other elements that associate the server with a specific identity.
Specialty blades include a Switch Blade (sBlade) that implements networking protocols among the pBlades and a Control Blade (cBlade) that manages the BladeFrame and connects the BladeFrame to external storage and data networks. Communication among the blades takes place over a redundant, high-performance backplane fabric with up to 10 Gigabits-per-second throughput. All system and application software is loaded onto the server blades from an attached storage area network
(SAN).
The BladeFrame EX supports up to 24 server blades per chassis and the BladeFrame ES supports up to six blades per chassis.
PAN Manager integrates XenEnterprise hypervisor
software from XenSource into a service called PAN vmBuilder (formerly vBlade). vmBuilder provides the capability to automatically install and configure a hypervisor instance on any server within the PAN.
PAN Manager's high-level capabilities include:
PAN Manager is independent of server form factor and works with Egenera BladeFrame, servers from Egenera's OEM partners and blade systems from HP
and Dell
.
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Egenera designs, manufactures, and sells blade servers as well as converged infrastructure management software, and offers consulting and training services related to its products and technologies. Egenera is a privately held company with over 350 employees. Founded in March 2000, the company was named by Network World as one of the top 10 startups to watch in 2002 and was a winner in the annual "Red Herring 100 North America" award given by Red Herring magazine in 2006.
Egenera maintains overseas headquarters in the United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong.
History
Egenera was founded by Vern Brownell in March 2000. Prior to Egenera, he spent 11 years as chief technology officer for the financial firm Goldman SachsGoldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
Group in New York. Under Mr. Brownell's leadership, Egenera pioneered the Processing Area Network (PAN) which is designed to virtualize and interconnect computing, storage and network resources, creating shared pools that can be centrally managed. Mr. Brownell conceived of the idea for PAN based on his experiences with growing data center complexity at Goldman Sachs.
The company launched its first product, the Egenera BladeFrame, in October, 2001. BladeFrame is a combination of bladed servers, fabric backplane, firmware and management software. In October, 2006, Egenera announced its plan to create a separate line of business in order to make its virtualization management software, called PAN Manager, available under OEM agreement to other server vendors.
Egenera has received numerous patents for its technology, including the Processing Area Network, N+1 disaster recovery and virtualized server failover technology.
Bladeframe
BladeFrame is a hardware product that combines bladed servers together with storageStorage Virtualization
Storage virtualization or storage virtualisation is a concept and term used within computer science. Specifically, storage systems may use virtualization concepts as a tool to enable better functionality and more advanced features within the storage system.Broadly speaking, a 'storage system' is...
and network virtualization
Network virtualization
In computing, Network Virtualization is the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network...
technology in a single package. A BladeFrame consists of a chassis, backplane, specialty blades, and multiple bladed servers.
Each server, called a "pBlade", contains one or more Intel or AMD processors. pBlades are considered stateless because they are composed only of processors and memory, and do not contain disk drives, direct interfaces to external devices, or other elements that associate the server with a specific identity.
Specialty blades include a Switch Blade (sBlade) that implements networking protocols among the pBlades and a Control Blade (cBlade) that manages the BladeFrame and connects the BladeFrame to external storage and data networks. Communication among the blades takes place over a redundant, high-performance backplane fabric with up to 10 Gigabits-per-second throughput. All system and application software is loaded onto the server blades from an attached storage area network
Storage area network
A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...
(SAN).
The BladeFrame EX supports up to 24 server blades per chassis and the BladeFrame ES supports up to six blades per chassis.
PAN Manager
PAN Manager is Egenera's management software for aggregating pools of compute, storage and network resources into a Processing Area Network (PAN) similar in architecture to unified computing systems. An XML-based specification, called an "abstract server definition", specifies a portable definition of system and application software along with associated PAN resource components such as network and storage addresses. The server definition capability allows IT administrators using PAN Manager to assign applications to any physical server or virtual server within the PAN for purposes of server provisioning, application availability and disaster recovery.PAN Manager integrates XenEnterprise hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
software from XenSource into a service called PAN vmBuilder (formerly vBlade). vmBuilder provides the capability to automatically install and configure a hypervisor instance on any server within the PAN.
PAN Manager's high-level capabilities include:
- Server provisioning and management
- N+1 High Availability with automatic server failover
- N+1 Disaster Recovery
- Resource logging/chargeback
- Security services
PAN Manager is independent of server form factor and works with Egenera BladeFrame, servers from Egenera's OEM partners and blade systems from HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
and Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
.
Management
Egenera's senior management is:- Pete Manca, President and Chief Executive Officer & Chairman
- Jim Bandanza, Executive Vice President and COO
- Kevin Kerrigan, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
- Scott Geng, Senior Vice President of Engineering
- John Humphreys, Vice President of Marketing
Industries
Egenera primarily serves the IT markets for financial services, banking, service providers, telecommunications and government.OEM partners
As of 2008, Egenera has OEM agreements with the following vendors:- Dell
- Fujitsu Siemens Computers
See also
- Storage virtualizationStorage VirtualizationStorage virtualization or storage virtualisation is a concept and term used within computer science. Specifically, storage systems may use virtualization concepts as a tool to enable better functionality and more advanced features within the storage system.Broadly speaking, a 'storage system' is...
- Network virtualizationNetwork virtualizationIn computing, Network Virtualization is the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network...
- x86 virtualizationX86 virtualizationIn computing, x86 virtualization is the facility that allows multiple operating systems to simultaneously share x86 processor resources in a safe and efficient manner, a facility generically known as hardware virtualization...
- Blade ServerBlade serverA blade server is a stripped down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Whereas a standard rack-mount server can function with a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power...
- Fabric computingFabric computingFabric computing or unified computing involves the creation of a computing fabric consisting of interconnected nodes that look like a 'weave' or a 'fabric' when viewed collectively from a distance....
- Unified computing