There is a trade-off with blades. Space savings vs hot-swapable parts. If the servers are in a "farm" -- web, Citrix, VMware, etc. than the entire blade is "hot-swapable", in a sense. Otherwise, you have no redundancy, since you have to shut down the individual blade (server) to change hard drives. The idea is that you should be able to lose a server with no effect to the enironment, but the blade doesn't buy you that -- it's how you configure the envrionment. You still have to re-deploy an OS after a blade is replaced. Marketing makes it sound like you have an automatic cluster, when they are simply individual servers inserted vertically.
We have found that until a rack is about 80% full, they are a little more expensive than 1-U, or 2-U servers, but there is a problem getting that much power to a rack, so we can't fill one up. You tend to get much more powerful servers in a large form factor. The blades only help to minimize space and cabling. The power problem is only getting worse as new processors are developed. As Michael mentioned the HP is much better in our experience, and not just for blades. That goes for any server. On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 20:19, Randall Shimizu wrote: > 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
