Rack Server Raid

Blade Servers ... are They for My Company?

Blade servers ... Are they for my company?

 

The technology Blade is one of the most interesting topics in the world of servers. The Blades are frequently commented on by the press, blogs and IT companies, but not always easy to distinguish when it makes sense or not to have Blades servers in a data center. There are two important messages behind the technology Blade:

 

1. Blades are not for everyone and

 

2. Blades offer great benefits if they are implemented in the correct position.

 

In this article I will address the first item ...

 

The Blades are not for everyone

 

The Blades have great benefits, But not perfect, nor designed for all the burdens of work and situations. A server Blade is an extremely compact server designed to provide a high level of performance and simplicity with an efficient power consumption. With these benefits, they also certain limitations:

 

Limited expandability (less and less PCI slots & equivalent hard drives)

 

Tie the purchase of components from one supplier (only can buy servers, KVMs, ethernet switches, fiber switches and other components that come into the chassis from their Bladescenter vendor.

 

The expansion in the Blades tend to tie you up because the expansion slots can only be populated by "daughtercards" with proprietary specifications. This implies that the network cards, fiber-channel controllers SAS / RAID / SCSI cards and remote access will have to be purchased from the manufacturer of the Blade.

 

Although the power consumption of a Blade is smaller than that of a normal server, its small size allows more servers in a rack proving a timely increase in electricity consumption in the rack - which means that to make the most out their compact infrastructure Blades will have to invest considerably in cooling and electrical infrastructure. In addition to get the maximum benefit to lower power consumption, the chassis of the Blade must be populated in its entirety.

 

The limited capacity on disk in the Blades leads it to require facilities SAN type (which brings significant benefits - but they are expensive). Additionally, some manufacturers recommend setting a "Boot from SAN "on all servers within the chassis to avoid having disks in each Blade - although this may sound interesting is relatively expensive.

 

These items are not necessarily negative, but involve costs and investments that have to be looked at the time that evaluates technology Blade. Though blades still have a great benefits offered by the Blades when they are implemented in the correct position. Many other articles on the web are discussing the benefits of blades, here we just thought to make sure the limitation is pointed out. In fact, these limitations are quite difference from a vendor to another, to find the best fitting vendor with less limitation check out:

 

Dell Bladecenter vs SUN Bladecenter

 

These two comparisons should offer you a hint on which way to go blade or not. In addition, if you decided on going the blade route it will help you decide on the blade vendor to go with.

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