What is a Blade Server?

A blade server is a server unit that can be inserted into multiple card-type units in a standard-height rack cabinet. It is a low-cost server platform that implements HAHD (High Availability High Density). It is a special application industry. And high-density computing environments. Blade servers are like "blades", each "blade" is actually a system motherboard.

The so-called blade server (to be precise, it should be called

Generally, people will

(1) Deploy the blade

Hidden danger one: the cost of the blade chassis is too expensive

Blade chassis are generally very expensive, even if the blade server itself is cheaper than a rack server. According to the product quotations of major blade vendors, it usually accommodates up to 8 blade servers. Each blade is about $ 500 cheaper than a rack server of the same specification. This means that even if a blade chassis is fully configured with 8 blade servers, it will cost more than $ 1,000 more than the traditional method.

In addition, each additional blade slot will incur additional costs. The blade chassis usually accommodates 8 to 16 blade servers. For enterprises that do not have many early applications, the cost of purchasing blade servers in the early stage is too high.

Hidden danger two: blade technology updates frequently change

Unlike traditional racks, blade chassis technology is up-to-date, and each replacement requires a replacement chassis to support a new blade server. If the number of servers in the enterprise is not large, the cost of replacing the chassis is a big challenge.

Hidden danger three: major manufacturers lock their own technologies

The technology of traditional rack server products does not have much connection with the manufacturers. Most service providers mix and match a variety of servers, power supplies, routers, switch monitoring equipment, and other equipment on racks in the computer room. The blade server must use a specific manufacturer, and each product cannot give up its own supplier and technology, which will greatly increase the risk of small service providers.

Here are some factors to consider before you decide to use a blade server:

Determine power demand

Work with your vendor, equipment staff, or electrician to determine what power source and type of power connector you need to support multiple blade server centers. Many blade server vendors' websites provide power calculators and other tools to help determine possible power savings.

Project growth plans and capacity requirements. Review your growth plans and

The problem of space resources

Compared with traditional rack-mounted servers, blade technology can save a lot of space resources. However, because of the high density of the blades, you must consider the issues of power drive and cooling. The huge chassis and racks may exceed your affordability in terms of power drives and data center cooling.

In some cases, if you continue to use traditional rack server data centers for consolidation and consolidation, it may make space resources quite limited, which means that new data centers need to be established. In these cases, blade technology can provide significant cost savings. When a new type of data center must be established, there is no doubt that designing a facility that uses blade technology will be able to create a new model of equipment to produce a true next-generation data center.

Server positioning: remote or central

If you plan to consolidate your server systems, but still need some servers in remote locations, then blade technology can greatly simplify your management problems. Blade technology has strong remote management capabilities, meaning that IT technical staff can fully manage these remote blade systems, including every task, except for physical hardware exchange. This blade technology chassis management module can provide remote control capabilities, can perform hardware diagnostics, restart, and even shut down certain functions. Blade technology also simplifies some of the necessary physical tasks for the site, and this is done primarily through easy-to-read indicators, such as which indicator shows which blade has a problem, so even non-technical employees can Replace the defective blade with a new one.

Blade management functions can be integrated with other management tools, such as IBM Director, HP Insight Manager, Dell OpenManage, and Microsoft management tools. And, in terms of software configuration and supply, more and more software tools can finally be qualified for this process, including tools from some large manufacturers, but also some small manufacturers, such as Altiris, Cyclades (acquired by Avocent Group), Ardence, etc. .

Follow dynamic configuration principles

If you are consolidating servers in a central location, and some servers are idle in some spare time, you can configure these idle servers to other applications and regions according to the change of time zone, so that you can Provide some additional integrations and savings. With their modular approach, blade technology can handle and drive this process, as long as it is combined with the software provided and configured. If the blades used are anonymous and resources can be obtained from a storage area network (SAN), then this work process will become easier. Virtual technology software can add additional processing layers, which requires multiple virtual server provisioning and multiple viable blades at all times.

Number of servers

Because different blades share the common component resources in the chassis, it is necessary to make their investment costs in the chassis and blades roughly balanced. Generally speaking, this kind of balance point is that the investment of each chassis is equivalent to the investment of 5-6 blades. So if the number of servers in a certain location is less than 5, don't expect any major development, and the blade may not be the best choice here. As more and more blades are added to the chassis, the cost of each blade will decrease as they share certain common resources (such as energy, cooling, conversion modules, etc.). However, the site and rack need to be fully configured based on the cooling capacity of the data center. Of course, this also needs to be limited by the number and ability of management technical staff in evaluation, planning and execution processes.

Application software type

Despite the increasing performance of CPUs in blades, blades are still unable to keep pace with the growth of high-performance computing tasks. The increasing number of application software requires strong CPU resources and even many processors in a single system image; this type of application software may be more suitable for rack servers (although some blade manufacturers in this field are To debate). On the contrary, continuously expanding application software requires many servers to run the same application software (such as web servers, some application software servers, and some database servers, etc.). This application software is more suitable for integration and management of blade technology.

Another area that is attracted by blade technology is the "packaged data center" approach; under this approach, a blade server system is configured with all the components needed for remote sites. For example, you can configure a chassis system to have network servers, application software servers, database servers, and conversion modules, and also include firewall tools, download balancing tools, and everything that is suitable for storage or storage connectivity (NAS Or SAN).