Check both sides of the blade server (1)

Now IT administrators urgently need to reduce costs and improve performance, so they try to put more computing capabilities into a smaller space. The establishment of a computing infrastructure using blade servers is undoubtedly a way out. However, this revolutionary solution also has advantages and disadvantages.

What are the advantages of blade servers?

• Compact structure and high density
The blade server allows more processing capabilities to be inserted into smaller spaces, simplifying cabling, storage, and maintenance. Blade servers are often used for grid computing. The advantage of blade servers is that multiple servers with shared power supplies and other components can be placed in one cabinet, it also allows you to merge storage and network devices and other related resources into a smaller architecture than a cluster composed of common servers.

• Server Load balancer and Failover
Like most cluster application systems, the blade server has another advantage in managing the blade server, adding load balancing, failover, and other functions. Although this can also be achieved through clusters composed of common servers, the blade servers share much simpler and more compact infrastructure, and are often designed by vendors specifically for this task, therefore, it is easier to manage Server Load balancer and failover when using blade servers. In case of any hardware fault on the blade server or the chassis itself, the self-diagnosis function will automatically start to take effect, and the indicator display of each server blade can confirm the fault area.

• Power consumption and Power Management
Most importantly, blade servers can reduce power consumption and improve power management. The power system is integrated into the blade chassis, reducing the number of independent power supplies required, while reducing the power demand for each server. Because each server blade is streamlined to the maximum extent, there are no other components in the traditional server, such as the keyboard, video card, and other components. Therefore, less power-consuming devices are used. This reduces the overall power consumption. A blade server with 16 server blades consumes much less than 16 servers of full size.

• Reduce management costs
This is a major advantage over traditional servers. Blade servers are often equipped with an interface for centralized management of each server in the chassis. Server Consolidation and resource centralization simplify server deployment and management.
Hardware configuration management, operation status monitoring, and fault monitoring all implement centralized control, thus reducing the burden on system administrators. The system can promptly notify the administrator of errors by email or other means.
If necessary, the administrator can send out the prepared disk image operating system and application software at the same time ). This feature significantly reduces the time required for system management.

 

 
• Network and other Wiring
Imagine: You have 16 independent servers. Each server needs to be connected to a network, so it needs several hundred meters or even several kilometers of long cables. Blade servers simplify cabling and greatly reduce cable lengths. In addition, it greatly reduces power cables, operating cable keyboards, and mouse), communication cable Ethernet, storage area network connections, and cluster connections ).

• Flexibility, scalability, and ease of upgrading
Today, the blade server adopts a special design method to extract and insert the server blade while the system is running normally. You only need to configure it on the administrator interface. New processors, communication components, storage devices, and interconnect devices can be added to the blade, and the blade can be easily loaded into the existing device, which basically has no interference with the functions of the entire system. You can expand or reconfigure the system, except for tasks related to upgrading and replaceable server blades that you process without stopping ).

The module can be added to the same blade server chassis. The server blades in the chassis are not necessarily the same. For example, depending on the type of the chassis you use, one server blade can be an Intel Xeon architecture, and the other can be an Intel anteng architecture. You can enable one server blade to support Windows, and the other server blade to support Linux.

• Deployment and scalability
The same is true for adding a new server blade to the system. Once the blade server chassis has been installed, you can add additional servers as long as the additional servers are inserted into the extra bracket while the entire system is running normally.
You only need to add a new server blade to expand the blade as needed. Deploying additional server blades is undoubtedly easier than deploying new independent servers.

• Disaster Management
Even if the server blade is inserted into a single chassis to share resources, redundant power modules can be configured for the chassis to implement failover.