Well there is a lot to consider here thanks Mike. My impression however is that the real gains for blades will come from dual core processor and RISC . If anyone has seen any good roi studies and also covers some issues that Mike mentioned I would be very interested. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael J McCafferty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Main Discussion List for KPLUG" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: PC blades Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:44:58 -0700
> > > Well, my problem with the blade systems I have used in the past are > as follows: > > 1) Expensive and low power blades. After you figure in the cost of > the chassis, they ain't so cheap. If I was desperately low on rack > space, or if i was going to use so many of them that my data center > wasn't large enough then, the cost might be justified. > > 2) Performance. The blades I used in the past had laptop drives, > there's no way I'd make 10 Windows users suffer on a single blade. > But, it was amazing to see 16 blades in just 3U of rack space > though. Compute clusters, DNS servers, stuff like that... great use > for these things. > > 3) Misc. weirdness and proprietary hardware: Strange network switch > built in, couldn't run Windows cuz it didn't have a video card on > the blades or anyway to share one... and Windows wouldn't install > headless. Solaris and Linux worked great though. > > That being said, I am surfing the HP site for blade servers now, > and it appears that there has been a quantum leap in blade power, > and cost. I still think that the applications are limited. Your > question about why not a big SMP machine can be answered in a > million different ways, depending on which of the million different > uses for a computer you are considering. For instance, if you > needed to run a heavily used 10TB+ Data Warehouse, your gonna want > that large SMP machine. If you want to run 20 different > applications, put `em on 20 blades instead of a bigger single box. > I notice that HP has a quad-Xeon blade with room for 12Gb of RAM > and 2 SAN cards.... maybe you CAN use a blade for a big DB. Well, I > have learned something in this thread. > > > > At 10:12 AM 10/26/2005, Michael O'Keefe wrote: > > Randall Shimizu wrote: > >> I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on PC blades. IBM (HP and > >> Clearcube make PC blades also ) > >> (http://news.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=/10-5-0&fp=435e179035481b19&ei=HP5eQ6nXL8Oa6wH259HkCA&url=http%3A//www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml%3FarticleID%3D172303304&cid=1101960915 > >> > ) has announced a new solutions offering with their Bladecenter > >> product. IBM has partnered with VMware to offer a virtualized > >> desktiop environment. According to IBM they can host from 10-15 > >> clients on each blade. IBM"s solution is a VMware Citrix client for > >> those in the Windows group. 20 clients is what I heard on linux > >> terminal services. > >> So the question then becomes is the blade the right platform ....??? > >> After all 10-20 not all that much. Would not a large SMP machine be > >> much more suitable.....?? Now of course scalability is entirely > >> different for Linux and Window, but does raise some interesting roi > >> questions.... > > > > I've used both IBM's and HP's blade systems at work. > > I currently have the IBM's, but I preferred the HP's > > I run vmWare's ESX product on each blade, and have 7 guest OS's > > (all linux) on each, giving me about 80 hosts (IIRC) > > > > I don't remember the cost, but I think it was something like $90k ? > > So if that's correct, it runs about $1k/host > > But that's more a vmWare ROI than a blade-center ROI answer.... > > > > -- > > Michael O'Keefe | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Live on and Ride a 03 BMW F650GSDakar| [EMAIL PROTECTED] / | > > I like less more or less less than |Work:+1 858 845 3514 / | > > more. UNIX-live it,love it,fork() it |Fax :+1 858 845 2652 /_p_| > > My views are MINE ALONE, blah, blah, |Home:+1 760 788 1296 \`O'| > > blah, yackety yack - don't come back |Fax :+1 858 _/_\|_, > > > > > > -- > > [email protected] > > http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list > > > -- [email protected] > http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list Randall Shimizu Cabrillo Computer Solutions 619-223-6947 -- ___________________________________________________ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
