blade servers (was Re: [Bioclusters] Any experiences with these guys? reeks)

[Goran Ceric]

We've had a rack full of IBM blades for 3-4 months now, and I am really 
impressed. Management module has very nice administration and monitoring 
capabilities including console redirection, environment monitoring, and 
collecting data from individual management processors. Blade centers 
also come with a copy of IBM Director 4 which I think is a great piece 
of software. We didn't get their deployment software since I didn't want 
to pay for it. Systemimager still works well enough for me. Cabling is 
extremely neat since blade centers have built-in gigabit ethernet 
switches, built-in power supplies etc. 14 blades in a single 7U blade 
center are networked internally, and there are 4 external ports in each 
switch.  Also, instead of 84 power cables, there are only 24 in a whole 
rack, and half of these are from redundant power supplies. Considering 
that you get all this redundancy and gigabit switches included, plus 
avoid the cabling nightmare, and get a system that is extremely easy to 
manage, I don't think IBM blades cost much more (with our pricing) than 
a comparable setup with standard 1U machines from a major hardware 
vendor. Another neat thing is when IBM comes out with Power blades 
eventually (or possibly Opteron and/or Itanium), they will plug in the 
same chassis as P4 blades (probably with different power supplies 
though). So, to answer your question, yes, I believe it's worth paying a 
little premium for them.

Goran

Chris Dagdigian wrote:

>
> Rackable denies sending the astroturf message and points to big sales 
> numbers (and order backlog) as reasons why even aggressive salespeople 
> would not be out trying to drum up more business. I've been 'joe 
> jobbed' by spammers using one of my domain names to forge email so I 
> am open to the possibility that some other sneaky stuff may be going 
> on by people who are not part of Rackable. Interesting stuff but not 
> on-topic for this list :)
>
> Ok back on topic..
>
> You bring up an interesting point about blades that I'd love to get 
> some discussion going.
>
> My take is this:
>
> (1) The real value for blade servers is mostly in the management, 
> monitoring and provisioning software that you get with the blade 
> platform. When done right it is the software that delivers the actual 
> savings in terms of operational burden and that is what really tips 
> the scales over in favor of paying extra $$ for blades.
>
> (2) Of the blade platforms that I've looked at I found that I only 
> really enjoyed working with the IBM Bladecenter and RLX product 
> offerings. Both had excellent software tools IMHO.
>
> What do others think? Is the management and provisioning software just 
> as important as the form factor and wiring density savings?
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
>
> Philip MacMenamin wrote:
>
>> First off, this mail smells bogey, and hats off to the boys who did 
>> some sherlock holmesing.
>> Second off, Blades are ALSO cool because they plug into a chassis, 
>> all very easy, nice and tidy. The fact that they do not have miles of 
>> cable hanging out of the back is a genuine advantage. I didn't read 
>> all of this mail too closely (see first point) but there seems still 
>> to be miles of cable hanging out of the back of these units. So I am 
>> still a blade convertee...
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters