Blade server versus Rack Server advantage Comparison

Because the blade server has the features of small size of rack server, easy to install, and the free expansion of server cluster, the performance is powerful, so we will compare it with these two kinds of servers. Before we introduce the blade server and the server cluster comparison, this article further compares it with the rack-mounted server.

L) Higher blade server density

Blade servers and rack servers are compared first from the façade structure, that is, from the density aspect.

As we have already described earlier, blade servers are denser than rack servers, saving more room space, and usually a blade occupies only the same 1/3-1/2 as the performance of the rack server. In a standard cabinet environment, the processing density of the blade server is increased by 4-5 times. For example, in a high-density computing server environment that handles 1024 of nodes, if you have a server with LU configuration, you need 24 cabinets, which do not include the machine root space occupied by the Ethernet switching hub, and a blade server with 8 "blades", which requires only 9 enclosures. It includes the enclosure space of the Ethernet switch hub.

2) Blade Service for easier cabling

Because the blade server cluster "Blades" are shared many components, so the blade server in the computer room cloth money as long as the uniform cloth network cable, power cord, "blade" between the need not cabling, directly through the President or a short dedicated cable connection. And the rack-type server to each server's network cable, power line wiring.

If you install multiple LUs on a 42U cabinet, there is a lot of wiring behind the cabinet and it looks messy. If we need 10 high reliability LU Rack server, and need to have Kym, network and management functions, then we need the accessory is 20 power supply (Yuan Yu power), io root Kym Cable, at least 20 network cable (each server need management line and network line one root), This does not include cables that connect external storage and other devices. The cable routing of the Blade server scheme is significantly better than the LU rack scheme.

3) Lower blade server Management costs

Because blade servers can be seen as a cluster of "blades", with unified management, blade servers are easier to manage from a TCO perspective, provide more processing power in smaller spaces, and spend less, such as using multiple "blades" to share power, fans, DVD drives, Remote management module and so on.

4) Blade Service report easier to maintain

When using the ordinary Rack server scheme, the original network, the power plug-in point is reduced, and the system reliability is increased by the large number of plug-in points generated by the power cord and net money, resulting in a large number of potential "point-of-failure" switching to blade server chassis and Blade server solutions.

In addition, due to the high density of the blade server, the vendor is designed to take full account of the stability of the server, for example, all key components of the blade service bran can be redundant or hot-swappable, including cooling systems, power supplies, Ethernet controllers and switches, intermediate backplane and backplane, hard disk and service processors. Some important thermal components, such as CPUs, hard drives, and so on, are usually low-voltage versions.

For blade server maintenance, only the faulty "blades" in the blade server can be dialed out of the cabinet, as simple as removing a hot-swappable hard drive. Advanced Blade Server systems provide an intelligent way to achieve highly sensitive maintenance, and advanced diagnostic capabilities instruct service personnel to directly locate faulty components for fast and efficient recovery, and some blades do not even have an island point of failure. Rack server maintenance is a bit more complicated than a blade.

These are some of the main advantages of blade servers, but they also have specific deficiencies that are determined by their own characteristics.

5) More flexibility in Rack server expansion

In terms of extensibility, rack servers are significantly better than blade servers. As the rack server space is relatively large, there are more than one blade server in which the various expansion 1/0 slots are configured, so that the rack service can connect more l/0 devices than blade servers. For example, most blade servers can only support up to 4 memory slots, and the rack-mounted server has a memory slot of 8 or more. Blade servers also have less disk shelves--just two of them, two disks can be installed, and rack-mounted can have more than 4 magnetic-lift positions.

In addition, because the blade server standards have not been unified, the blade standards of the manufacturers are still fragmented, so that different manufacturers of blade equipment can not be mixed, to the expansion of the blade server brings a lot of inconvenience.

6) Rack-mount storage features are good

The same is because the blade server space is relatively small, space is limited, so the disk rack bit in the blade server is usually only about 2, which determines that the blade server can only install two disks, it is best to deploy Raldo only, or raidi a disk array with no redundancy: While a rack server can install 4 or more magnetic keys, you can configure a disk array with redundancy, such as raids. Of course, blade servers can achieve more advanced disk array configurations through external storage networks like Sans, but this is a much higher cost.

The above is compared from the disk array storage features, also subject to the disk rack bit limit, blade server can only install two disk, it will certainly be more than the rack-type 4 disk storage capacity is much smaller. Therefore, the rack-mounted server is more suitable for the application server selection of large storage capacity, such as database server, FTP file server, etc., and blade server is generally only suitable for applications such as Web servers, mail servers, such as the storage capacity is not very high requirements of the application server.

However, the overall expansion performance of the blade service cake is better than the rack service reel, the rack server is extended, usually through the cluster, and the blade server only need to install a new "blade". The configuration aspect is also simpler.

7) Rack service unveiled overall costs lower

Theoretically, because of the reduced number of repetitive unnecessary components such as DVDs, power supplies, and KVM:FLL networks, the purchase cost of the blade server is lower than the equivalent number of rack servers. However, because of the blade server manufacturers each home to send their own proprietary blade architecture, due to the monopoly, the technical costs have not been sufficiently down, so that the overall price of Blade server products is still very expensive. Adding a chassis towel in the blade server requires a SAN or Ethernet switch to connect the "blades", which is a huge expense because these sans or Ethernet switches are not freely available in the market, and the monopoly is definitely a high price. You can buy a rack server with a very good performance in just one blade chassis.

Of course, this is only relative to a single blade server, for a certain size of the blade server cluster, compared to the same size of the rack-mounted server, the overall cost of Blade server is still a certain advantage. It can be said that the higher the hard blade cluster, the lower the cost of the unit blades.

In short, rack-mount service and blade servers have their own main features, as well as the areas of their main applications, at least for the moment, and neither side can completely replace the other.

Blade server versus Rack Server advantage Comparison